Latest news from Charles
Sarah Raven welcomes Charles to Perch Hill on 30th September and the course is a sell out
Course attendees will hear Charles explain the principles of no dig and how it saves so much time and more…Gardeners are keen to learn and grow their own, and attending an educational course is all a part of that. We are glad that at Homeacres our courses continue as planned.
Three places available on the Intensive Weekend Course – 3rd & 4th October
Due to a cancellation we now have three places available on this weekend course. Shop here to grab your place.
Charles’s new book available on 1st October from Chelsea Green in the US
Charles Dowding’s No dig gardening – From weeds to vegetables easily and quickly will be available to order from Chelsea Green directly saving on shipping costs. Chelsea Green also stock Charles’s Vegetable Garden Diary and No Dig Organic Home & Garden. Click here for their website.
Grow Your Own Magazine – Great British Growing Awards
This is an annual competition organised by Grow Your Own, the UK's best-selling kitchen garden magazine. Charles is delighted to be honoured with not one but five awards, all voted for by the readers.
Read more >Covid-19 and Homeacres Courses
We are confident to run courses at Homeacres after the recent guidance from the government. We are a business and we invite you, our clients to come and learn Charles’s methods. We have taken a number of steps to ensure everyone feels comfortable and safe when attending a course, including the completion of a risk assessment. Please see here for details.
Read more >No Open Day – A tour by video instead!
Intro to Charles & No Dig Organic Gardening
Charles Dowding has explored and shared new ways to garden since 1983, most notably no dig organic gardening, and since 2003 has developed ways to continuous-crop salad leaves. His weed free, no dig methods give superb and time-saving results in both small and large garden areas. He sells produce from Homeacres bio-intensive and no dig garden, has written ten books on no dig and organic gardening, offers two online courses and teaching at Homeacres, writes for national and international magazines, runs a YouTube channel, appears on TV and radio, and teaches extensively at home and abroad.
For answers to your questions about no dig, see the FAQs
You can listen to my growing story on podcasts one and two with Joe Lamp’l 2019.
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As Seen In
Just wanted to thank you for the inspiration to experiment with no-dig, as I’ve tried it with amazing success in my container veg garden.
Erik Storhok
Michigan, 17.9.19
This is our first year of no dig and we are the envy of our fellow allotmenteers.
Jacqui D
You Tube Plan video 15.12.19
A combination of your you tube channel, the books I have bought from you and following on Facebook, have completely turned my gardening life around. Thank you for being so inspirational, informational, educational and thought provoking over this last couple of years.
Steve Randles, Cumbria
I learned of you while studying organic gardening at a community college in San Antonio Texas. I have since followed you on social media. In my book you are the most inspirational horticulturalist for 2019!
Jenna Leigh-Ann
Facebook 8.1.2020
I made the mistake of straying from your advice, and I tried “amending” my clay heavy soil in areas instead of continuing to add on compost with no-dig. This winter we’ve had a lot of rain and the only bed that has not flooded is the bed I left as no-dig! Now I know that digging around helps nothing, certainly not drainage. My no-dig bed absorbs the water like its nothing
Timothy K
Winter veg 27.1.20
Thank you so much for all the practical information, the exceptional food and the general sense of can-do, my favourite advice of all being ‘Alleviate your worries!’ I spent several enjoyable hours renovating a neglected bed of raspberries using compost and polythene, a job so daunting I had put it off for months. Am feeling very empowered.
Laura Evans
After day course 12.2.20
No-dig is a life changing way to garden. I’ve fallen in love with my garden again. Thank you!
Donna Creager
YouTube Beautiful Veg
I started this method four years ago and I wish Id known about it decades earlier. We had just bought a big rototiller to start all of our beds before I discovered no dig and ended up selling it. This method works very very well and for very little effort or money.
Janette Lavender
I am in Northern California, a mile east of the ocean. From your videos I attempted my first No Dig garden at the end of 2018. Even through winter storms it started producing, and by the time spring arrived, I had an abundant, healthy, thriving garden, with my nearest neighbours deciding they must take up the method themselves.
Linda Schneider
This has been my first year of no dig, I had such an amazing time and had loads of produce. Thank you Charles for all your help and amazing videos, and your books are brilliant.
Elaine Hutchinson
You Tube
I thoroughly enjoyed your online course and have learnt so much. I am just starting out on an allotment plot and already notice how few weeds I have compared to my plot-holder neighbours. And I’m loving weed-free paths!
Susan Souter
Cindy Conner
Californian flower farmer
I have learned so much from watching your videos. You’re an excellent teacher — concise and generous at the same time. You helped rekindle my love of growing food. Thank you!
Andrea Berry
I LOVE your videos and the online course was fantastic. Can’t wait for the next one.
Sharon Gunn
gardening in Texas USA
This has been my first year of no dig, I had such an amazing time and had loads of produce. Thank you Charles for all your help and your books are brilliant.
You have changed my approach to gardening, and I couldn’t be happier now than when I’m outside planting and growing and seeing the amazing results of your no dig advice.
Thank you sir for your amazing video advice. I followed your every thing to the letter I have an amazing garden and abundance
Complete incredible stuff in under 7 months: took keys of property on 6th December last year 1 acrePoly tunnel in place, my beds are feeding 5 people not fully but incredibly. Thank you for changing our lives.
Tinker bell
August 2018
“Many thanks for making the journey to Sheffield last week, and providing such a fantastic and stimulating talk for our audience. Everyone loved it!”
Gareth Roberts of Regather
Sheffield’s Festival of Debate Talk Attendee
“Charles has become the guru of no dig gardening. He’s a really good grower, organic, has fabulous produce and we went down to Somerset to see how he does it…. I’m a convert now, I want to dig as little as possible.”
Monty Don
BBC Gardeners World
I came on a course last August, and it has given me so much direction and understanding in my gardening thinking. And your updates through the winter are an absolute tonic.
Clare Finzi
Course Attendee
Have just received your splendid calendar with the sumptuous pics. An annus mirabilis at Homeacres methinks!! It will take pride of place in the potting shed to remind us what we should be doing
Jim Buckland
Head Gardener at West Dean College, Chichester.
August 15th update keep beds full, cucumbers tomatoes and melons, save seed, make compost, insect covers, store onions
Early August has been unusually warm here, night minimum temperatures averaging16C/61F and day maxima averaging 27C/81F. Growth is fast as long as one waters – we use a hose, which takes time w
August 2020 fast growth, succession plantings, onion harvest tips, compost quandaries, sowings now and soon
It’s a rainstorm as I write and I am grateful for it. Before today, July’s total rainfall was 29mm/1.2in and after this storm it’s 46mm/1.8in. Still below average. We have been water
July update 12th, prune squash, sow more & transplant leeks, make compost, onion and potato readiness, path mulch
It’s speeding up now, but growth has been slowed by the weather here. A cool two weeks until 10th July saw daytime maxima always under 20C 68F and averaging 18.5C 65F, with just 4.5 hours sunshi
July 2020 summer unfolds with more sowings, interplanting, weeds to hoe or pull, seeds to save, potato harvests and beware pyralids
June has been warm and with mixed weather, including decent rainfall! of 107mm so far. Rain in June is the best of any month, after the surge of growth in spring. At Homeacres it has rescued my peas,