(gentle guitar music)
- In my work, I'm known for two things I reckon, mainly.
The first one, most obviously, is No Dig,
and the second one is growing great vegetables.
And that's led to an interesting story
that when Dorling Kindersley approached me two years ago
to write a book about growing vegetables,
it was gonna be called originally
"Charles Dowding's Vegetable Growing Masterclass."
And that was the working title
that's written on my contract.
And then as we got into it and discussing and writing,
and swapping a lot of notes,
we realised that the basis underpinning everything
is so much No Dig,
you still need all the knowledge to do the vegetables,
but No Dig is so much the starting point that
that's ended up becoming the title of the book.
And I want to explain to you
that all the other things that are in this book,
which is actually three quarters
about growing great vegetables, but we start with No Dig
because this area's a lovely example.
I still call it the new area 'cause we were working
in here last year a lot making videos.
There's a video playlist on YouTube
where you can follow the progression through
from February, 2021.
I wasn't sure about quite how it was gonna evolve,
what we were gonna do exactly,
but the principles of No Dig took me through very nicely.
And those are the kinds of things I explain
in the first quarter of the book
and how you smother weeds and different ways to do that.
How you build the fertility of the soil,
the value of compost in doing that
and all those nice, basic starting points.
And from there, then we get into the possibilities
of what you can do with your ground,
once you've got the lovely, No Dig soil ready for them
with its surface mulch of compost.
It's very easy to sow and plant into, for example,
although, I also explain why it's worth doing a lot
of propagation undercover, for extra success.
A lot of it's about succeeding with everything you do.
There's nothing worse in gardening
than spending time and effort, money even, buying seeds
and getting no result.
And that's what I'm looking to guide you
through all the understandings you need,
so that that doesn't happen and you get great results.
So once you've propagated, how to look after your seedlings
and how to transplant them, actually how to put them
in the ground, you know, really going to the nitty gritty
of the details of that for each different vegetable.
So there's a couple of pages roughly
on each different vegetable
where I give you the best times to sow.
Timing is really important as well,
seed packers don't always tell you that.
How to look after your sowings, how to plant them,
how to space them to get the most from each planting
and your whole area in general.
How to water them,
how to protect them from weather and pests.
Pest protection is so important, you know,
you could do everything else right and then miss that one,
you could lose a lot.
And then how to harvest, that's a big one.
So that can increase your total harvest,
if you harvest it the right way, start at the right time.
What you're looking for, how you know
when your vegetables are ready.
Each different one has a different sign, for example,
and then you can prolong your period of harvest
and even if the time is right
and you've got a lot, how to store as well.
That's a big way you can increase your total harvest
by storing it nicely and actually storing's simpler
than it's often made out to be,
but I give you those tips for each vegetable.
The book, therefore, is really comprehensive in terms
of looking after your soil for immediate value
and for long term benefit
and about how, while you're doing that,
you can grow a range of harvests, right the way
through the season and have food
for most of the year, in fact.
It's out right now, it's just come out.
Publication date is actually 1st September and you can buy
in all the usual places, including WH Smith, for example,
who are offering a discount code when you buy it,
and that's in my description of this video
and we are selling it also from my website,
there's a product page, we'll put a link to that as well.
And there are signed copies,
which you can also have dedicated if you like,
I'm signing them as we sell them.
(doves cooing)