'No dig' flower borders - Charles Dowding tips
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- Опубликовано: 31 авг 2018
- Charles Dowding, the guru of organic 'no dig' gardening, tells the Middlesized Garden how 'no dig' flower beds are easy, weed-free and brilliantly colourful.
Find out how his top tips apply to gardening with flowers just as much as with vegetables.
Charles Dowding's courses, workshops and books can be found on www.charlesdowding.co.uk/
'Organic Gardening, The Natural No-Dig Way' by Charles Dowding is published by Green Books (www.greenbooks.co.uk/) and is also available on Amazon: amzn.to/2omCqQM
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#NoDigGardening #NoDig #nodigflowers 
Хобби
The new home I moved to presented me with a garden dilemma. My soil is a combination of clay and decomposed volcanic rock. My property sits on the side of an ancient volcano. Nothing had been grown in the area for decades. The soil was of very poor quality, rock hard and everything I planted that first year died. So I was forced to dig up the earth at least 12 inches down and added tons of compost and organic matter. This year,the soil has greatly improved and I keep adding organic matter. I could eventually see getting to a no dig technique, but for now, I continue to dig in the compost. My flowers are finally blooming on most plants and the shrubs are growing and thriving. Your soil and his soil look amazing compared to my very hard and depleted soil. At least now it’s much, much better. 🌿
Thank you for sharing this. My first question after watching this lovely video was going to be 'but does this work for hard clay soil too?!'. I myself am starting to plant a garden from scratch, with a foot of rock hard clay with chalk under that! I have bitten the bullet too (financially and time-wise!) and started digging in loads of mushroom compost and loamy top soil. Here's hoping mine moves in the same direction as yours! Best wishes
I love Charles! I have 4 of his books!! He is my favorite gardener, US or on BBC. He has figured it out!! I have gardened for years but since I have used his No Dig method its been amazing!! Less work, more flowers and veggies, I plant both in the garden. Husband and I started the classic long border last fall. We are using the no dig method. Thank you Charles!!
I agree, I am a great fan of all his work.
I love Charles have been following him for years.
This is the very first time I hear about the combination no dig + flower borders. That has been a question in mind whenever I saw Dowding's videos about vegs.
All hail Charles Dowding!
Indeed!
Very interesting Alexandra - especially his thought's on soil being a living organism with recovery time etc. That's really cool
Charles Dowding is so good at explaining these things.
Its such a respectful and friendly way to look at soil and growth. Add timesaving and and the how beautiful it looks !
You have such a beautiful garden thank you for the information.
Please tell me what that lovely airy white flower is in his border?
Charles is a treasure!!!!
Love Charles ❤️💚
Oh wowza! Two of my favourite RUclips stars in one episode! Great video Alexandra - I know Charles Dowding's methods backwards and I'll be using them in my upcoming little flower farm. Awesome!
Thank you - look forward to hearing more about your upcoming flower farm,
Your channel is awe-inspiring! I've only just found you, but I've learned so much already. Thank you from Illinois, USA!
Amazing! I am trying this out this year with my flower borders.
How did it work out? I am considering buying CD’s no dig courses but I primarily need it for flower beds with mixed shrubs, trees, perennials and annuals.Just wondering how effective it is for that purpose.
Great video Alexandra!
great stuff
Charles is my garden guru for life! 🌶 I will never upheave the soil again!
Mine too! He gave me some spinach plants and I've finally managed to grow spinach. For some reason it always bolted before.
The Middle-Sized Garden .....I have never been so excited over gardening incorporating his no dig methods. I had a load of cow manure delivered last year and it’s well rotted now. I’m in the process of creating no dig beds!!🌱🌱
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Alaxandra. You are bringing us more and more valuable vudeos. I have not shared with my friends yet but I will soon. Keep going - well done.
Thank you so much!
Love it❣
Some rare tips are given in this excellent video. I had wondered about no-dig gardening for borders at various times and the explanations given by Charles support the value of this approach. Interestingly, the last tip about being able to walk out on the border is really important to me as my main garden is on a slope and after digging compost into the soil I can't walk on it comfortably and have to take a lot of care. In fact I ruined a good pair of shoes a week ago walking out onto a bed to tend to plants. The shoes are now covered in a solidified mixture of clay and compost! (groan) One part I am not keen on however is thorough mulching (excluding light) as I would have to give up a bed for a while to get it done. I am also not sure that I have the patience and energy to dig out perennial plants, separate out any entangled perennial weeds and return the perennial plants to the garden. I will have a look at Charles' channel to learn more about his approach. Many thanks Alexandra for putting together this interesting and informative video!
Sorry, I've just spotted this comment, and hadn't replied to it. Although I'm not a strict 'no dig' person, I only ever leave compost and mulch on the top of the soil - the worms and micro-organisms do the digging for me, and it's always all gone in about three months. So I think digging in compost and mulch is definitely something we can all take off our 'to do' lists!
Hi Alexandra,you make good points. I am with you in spirit on the no-dig, but what happens is that I am often planting/moving plants and have to dig holes for a new plant, which requires moving aside mulch and sometimes compost, then digging a hole. During that process, some of the mulch and compost somehow gets worked into the soil. After a few months there remains a mixture of compost, soil and mulch to walk on. If it's been raining, it becomes soggy and hard to walk on. Also I think just walking on the mulch (bush mulch) pushes the mulch little by little into the soil.
Boom 💥 quite a cameo 👍🏼
Glad to find you!!
Thank you!
Hi Alexandra, I LOVE your channel - thank you. I wonder if this method would work on a very compacted new build soil and how long I should leave it before planting? Thanks :)
Yay! I do ONLY No Dig for my entire flower garden - now about 1/4 acre and growing all the time. A farmer brings me manure, we do a hot compost that gets to 140 degrees - that top layer is truly weed free and darkens the layers below to stop weed growth. I had some difficulty in COVID finding enough cardboard to start the beds - but really I haven't always needed the cardboard at the bottom. Even for raspberries = very hard to eradicate from beds - 2 layers of cardboard pretty much smothers the roots with some picking of stragglers. For roses and deep perennials of that ilk, I do dig the hole of course - but I surround the area with a No Dig Bed - so far so great.
Thanks for this great interview!
Warm regards
Jennie
Thank you, great to hear you've had such success eradicating weeds.
Very smart
Thank you
I never dig over my soil but also never added compost. I shall try adding compost this spring once I’ve done my annual cutting back.
I've realised that I add mulch to my main border but often forget to cover the others - and that's possibly why they don't seem to be so healthy. So I too have decided to add more compost, thank you for commenting
Excellent video, thanks for the professional advice on no dig, it's impressive the way you get the good guests.
Would you think about doing a video about Hugelculture? It looks rather fun and promising but not sure of the end results or what is best to plant on them, in them, etc.
That's an excellent idea and I will certainly do that some time over the next six months. I'd like to find someone who talks clearly and authoritatively on it.
In my experience the classic Hugelculture does not always look tidy and attractive enough for most gardens (it's a pile, after all). What you can do instead is fill raised beds, large holes or similar with wood in a manner similar to Hugelculture but have a flat planting surface instead of a sloping one.
I had not heard of Hugelculture before your comment so off to googling I went! Thank you! From first glance it looks like bringing nature home, as in a forest with downed trees rotting and new life eventually springing up.
I don't really dig beyond putting root balls into the soil and using a hoe but I do leave some weeds like willow herb because they're beautiful. I am planning to use leaf mould this year as my garden is relatively small and fills with quantities of the stuff, and if it winds up looking anything like this I'll be happy!
A shed video would be helpful!
I’m intending to grow roses and dahlias at my newly acquired garden plot.. it’s mainly covered in grass and I’m wondering if the no dig way is suitable for my roses. The potted roses do need to be planted up to the graft union so that’s easily 12 -15 inches in depth.. I’m just wondering if I prepare raised beds on the grassy areas of my plot and mulch with 15 inches of compost/manure mix.. would they be suitable for my roses net year.. and given roses has deep root system would the underlying grass have disintegrated enough for the roses’ roots to penetrate through..
I have a small patch of lawn I want to give over to flowers. Should I just put manure and compost on top of the grass and plant my flowers or do I need to dig up the grass first? Or is there a different better way to go about this? Thank you.
I've seen a lot of no dig gardeners lay cardboard on the grass to deprive it of light, then lay the manure and compost on top of that. The cardboard will break down in about four months and improve the soil. If you want to plant before that, you could make holes in the cardboard.
Have you ever heard of Masanobu Fukuoka? He pioneered no-till rice cultivation.
No I hadn't but will look out for him.
I have an establish lawn with Centipede grass do I need to remove that before adding cardboard or the soil in fear that the grass will come up into the flower garden?
Can I mulch with cardboard and compost for lavender? Or should I use weed fabric cut a hole and put the lavender plants in? My garden is full of perennial weeds.
I grow beds of dahlias and, because of space restrictions, grow them closely. How would planting and lifted them be possible in a no-dig bed? Could I sit the corms on the bed and mound them up with compost?
I plant my dahlias closely and I just leave them in the ground over winter. I cut off the dying foliage and pile compost or mulch on top, but I do live in what approximates to a USA hardiness Zone 8 (South East England) so if you live somewhere very cold, that probably wont work for you. In terms of digging up plants or digging plants Charles says make the hole as big as you need it to be, but no larger (ie don't follow the normal advice about digging a hole bigger than root balls) and leave the soil around it undisturbed.
!Ah! It’s about TIME SAVING...!
I wonder if he uses the flowers in that boarder by the end of the year, by pulling it and using it in the compost or by leaving it creating a mulch for next year? Since its annuals mostly, im not thinking he would leave it. It would look too messy in such an tidy beautiful garden... what do you think?
I'm fairly sure he pulls up and composts rather than just letting things decompose in the border. I didn't see any sign of plants just being left and I visited at the end of August when some things would have been over already.
Not digging was common long before charles dowding started championing it.
Is it possible to create lavender fields with the no dig method and cardboard ? Are there any experiments of such?
?i have a no-weed-fabric that has been successful for over ten years...I want to no-dig plant...so do I pull up this fabric?? Or leave it and layer up and plant (making a shallow bed)??
Yes, you'll need to pull up the no-weed fabric. Then add mulch, etc on top.
Very informative video! What is the name of the flower at 4.12 / 4.13?
Gaillardia flowers aka blanket flowers
@@verawallace9055 Thank you! Beautiful flower!♡
Can you do this in a container? Just adding fresh compost on top?
It doesn't really work in a container because the container isn't really an eco-system of its own. The nutrients get depleted and have to be replaced. but you can add fresh compost to the top of a container, then feed the plant with a fertiliser as well, and that should be fine. But it's not the same as 'no dig/no till'
I wonder how much compost to put down, before putting down mulch?
Mulch is a generic term which includes compost, so you wouldn't have to put both down. A few inches of compost over your beds should be sufficient to mulch them. Sorry this reply is so late, I didn't see some of my comments until today.
@@TheMiddlesizedGarden Thanks so much!
It is beneficial to know how to make tree compost?
All compost is good
If you have very rocky soil, you need to dig to remove the rocks that will inhibit growth.
Yes, that's true.
Please, can someone help me identify the clump of delicate white flowers at 04:00?😍😍😍😍😍
Those are Gaura. They are sometimes seen in pink.
I used to do so.
But I moved and live now in a moutain country (Pyrénées, south of France) and that became much harder.
Two reasons: the most important one: slugs.
(But also voles. (Bulbs))
Both like this way of gardenning when there is enough moisture even in Summer.
Here we can have 41 ° Celsius in the afternoon but still a lot of dew each night due to altitude.
Is there anyone who experienced this kind of issue?
If so, how she or he solved this?
Maybe you need to breed hedgehogs who'll eat both of those or train weasels to go after the voles? Perkins uses wood chip boarders which slugs find difficult (if not impossible) to navigate to discourage them (Spanish "murder slugs" no doubt). He also uses a gas pump to pump into their holes then ignite...
On another note, I wish Rory Bremner would do an impersonation of Charles Dowding...
@@commentarytalk1446
@Commentary Talk
Many hedgehogs live there. And birds, toads, snakes, salamanders etc..
I have also chip bordes, they don t mind.
My garden is a country one, in mountain, with much water (ground sources, rivers), and a large hay meadow near woods.
I catch about 900 slugs every evening, from march to early november.
This is crazy.
Not just a few.
For , I use rat traps, so they re not a problem on springs or summers.
But during winter, with snow and ice (I can't dig to annoy them, then they eat dalhias, canas and many bulbs. (Not all, they seems don t like daffodils or crocosmias for example).
I'm sorry, I don't have experience of gardening in those conditions - although I know many people who protect their dahlias by keeping them in pots until they're big enough to withstand some slug damage. Over a certain size, they seem to survive even if they get a bit nibbled.
@@TheMiddlesizedGarden this is the choice I made this year.
Containers in the gneenhouse where there is less moisture .
@@TheMiddlesizedGardenI forgot: don't be sorry.
I really enjoy your vidéos.
Thanks for your time.
?do I do no dig if I already have earthworms (clay dirt)??
I have a ten year old weed fabric that has never produced weeds...
No dig encourages earthworms, but you should also have them in your soil even if you do dig.
I think "no dig" Is common sense, in the wood the leaves fall on too the soil and the snowdrops, bluebells and foxgloves all grow no problem. Farmers dig the ground and the land becomes an ecological desert.
I agree
could you post charles is video, i think the mic setting is too loud.
Charles has a channel and you can find all his videos on that. He hasn't done a specific video on this topic, but you will find lots of good information on his channel generally: ruclips.net/user/CharlesDowding1nodig
@@TheMiddlesizedGarden thanks it's still a good video. keep up the hard work.
I think dig in my experience because you need to remove all the plastic and junk that many allotments, gardens have. If you don't dig deep you don't know what's under there. Also animals disturb soil, pigs and trees and things move so disturbing the soil probably isn't such a big deal.
You're right that all sorts of things lurk under the soil in many gardens and allotments!
Hum. Not sure I understand all that
Sorry to hear that. The basics are to add a layer of garden compost on your soil once a year. Don't dig it in. Otherwise only dig when you have to take a plant out or put one in. Hope that helps.
His idea...the plants are not green...it’s light green