Organic Gardening, Second Edition

This second edition of Charles Dowding's Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way features full-color photographs and more tips and advice.

Charles Dowding has been practicing no-dig organic growing for over thirty years. In this new, full-color edition of Organic Gardening he shares the wealth of his experience, explaining his approach to soil and plants and revealing the range of techniques that have enabled him to grow healthy and vibrant plants for decades. His success is based on some key principles:

• No-dig enhances soil structure and encourages healthy growth, especially when soil life is encouraged and multiplied through the addition of good compost and manure.
• Organic matter is best spread on the surface—just leave it on top and let the worms take it in, aerating the soil as they do so.
• When starting with weedy soil there is a period of three to twelve months, depending on weed types, when the emphasis is on cleaning and improving the soil.
• Using a no-dig method you can easily control weeds with just a little hand weeding or hoeing every ten days or so, when weeds are small.

Based on this approach and his experience with a system of permanent, slightly raised beds, Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way shows you how to grow a delicious variety of fruit and vegetables: what to choose; when to sow, plant and harvest; and how best to avoid pests and diseases without the need to dig.

About the Author

Charles Dowding

Charles Dowding has grown vegetables and salads organically for more than 25 years in Somerset, England, using surface composting methods. He started growing vegetables commercially in 1982 with one of the first vegetable-box schemes, and is currently farming an acre, selling about 200 salad bags of different sizes every week. He has written about surface composting in his book Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way.

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