The background to my writing

My first writing was in the 1980s, for various local and then national magazines. After I had appeared on a whole programme of BBC's Gardener's World in March 1989, with Geoff Hamilton no less, I was asked by Amateur Gardening to write articles about organic vegetable growing. They were, at the time, the UK's main gardening magazine. I did not cover or mention no dig, which at that time was meeting no interest. Everybody wanted more information about how to grow organically.

I have continued to write articles for monthly magazines. Currently I am in every issue of Which? Gardening Magazine, which has no adverts and is packed with information. Plus I write a monthly piece for Grow Your Own magazine.

I did not write a book of my own however, until 2006, and this came about entirely by chance. I was not pushing to write a book, but (though helping a fellow author) I happened to be visited by the commissioning editor of Green Books, Amanda Cuthbert. When she saw my garden at Lower Farm, she was blown away and exclaimed, 'you must write a gardening book'!
I wrote a sample chapter that afternoon, emailed it, and they commissioned me straight away. It's still Chapter 1 and that was the origin of Organic Gardening, and everything which followed. Thank you, Amanda.

My first writing was in the 1980s, for various local and then national magazines. After I had appeared on a whole programme of BBC's Gardener's World in March 1989, I was asked by Amateur Gardening to write articles about organic vegetable growing. They were, at the time, the UK's main gardening magazine. I did not cover or mention no dig, which at the time was meeting no interest. Everybody wanted more information about how to grow organically.

Then, in 1991, Basil Caplan asked me to write three chapters for his Complete Manual of Organic Gardening, published by Headline in 1992. In the late 1980s, Basil had founded and edited Organic Gardening magazine.

I wrote the chapters on soil, compost, and methods of cultivation. The first page of the latter is my 1991 take on no dig, which was very minority at that time. Much as I should like to have written more, I was then asked to describe digging, and even double digging, as viable options!

That was the limit of my book writing until 2004, when I was asked to write the chapter on food growing for a B&Q book called Outdoor Living. It was edited by Nick Bernard, who went on to found Rude Health food company. I knew Nick because he lived in the next village, and appreciated my vegetables from the local shop.

There are 14 pages in that book of 'Growing for the Table', and lovely photographs of my children's and wife’s hands, including Edward holding a snail. I don't think this book ever sold hugely, it's very much about B&Q products for the garden. I enjoyed writing it, and worked with Lucy Pope the photographer.

Also at that time, I was helping Mary Langman, an old family friend, then in her 90s. Mary had worked with the founders of London’s 1930s health experiment in Peckham, and she ran an organic market garden for them in the 1930s. Through that she came to know Eve Balfour, who in 1946 founded the Soil Association. In the 1960s, Mary co-founded with Lilian Schofield the pioneering Wholefoods of Baker Street, a shop which I supplied in the 1980s.

Mary was writing a biography of Eve Balfour and making progress only slowly, so I did my best to help. Sadly she never managed to finish it before dying in 2004. I had submitted an early version of her biography to Green Books, and, having seen it, they asked me to consider writing a book about growing organic vegetables.

The commissioning editor, Amanda Cuthbert, visited Lower Farm in 2006 and loved what she saw. She suggested I send them a chapter so they could check my writing style which I did straight away, that same afternoon: it flowed out of me. It became the book’s first chapter, The Art of Not Digging, and I haven't edited that chapter at all – Organic Gardening the Natural, No Dig Way.

The success of this first book prompted me to suggest to Amanda that I write a book about growing salad leaves. She hesitated because it's not a majority interest, even less so at that time. However, they accepted the proposal, and I wrote this book next – Salad Leaves for All Seasons.

As with my Organic Gardening book, this was not all-colour at the time, and the first editions look a little primitive now! In 2018 I updated the writing and photos, and included new recipes by Stephanie Hafferty. The book now also has a new title – Grow Organic Salad Leaves and Greens.

Growing food for winter has always been a priority in my gardening, and this made it logical to write a title about it – How to Grow Winter Vegetables. This turned into one of my favourite books and continues to receive lovely reviews from people who appreciate its layout, and comprehensive nature. The title is somewhat misleading, because it actually covers gardening for at least nine months of the year, and right into 'winter’s shadow' of the spring hungry gap.

We worked hard to get this book out in the spring because, for example, if you want to grow onions, you need to sow them in March. I was then disappointed by a very slow uptake and poor sales. Suddenly, however, in November as winter approached, the title caught people's interest. Especially following a hugely favourable review by Robin Lane Fox in the Financial Times (this was big for me at the time), sales improved, and continue to be strong.

Until this point, I had been published only by one small company, and I felt my work merited larger exposure. Through a chance meeting with Rosie Boycott, who lived locally and liked my work, I was introduced to a London agent who secured me a contract with Francis Lincoln. My next title, Charles Dowding’s Vegetable Course, is the book that appeared as a result.

I based it around my teaching of day courses. They are a comprehensive introduction to no dig and vegetable growing, for a good range of food all year. The book attracted enthusiastic reviews and sold reasonably well, but not hugely, and less than I had hoped.

After the relative success of How to Grow Winter Vegetables, Green Books requested more titles, and this led to publication of a book that I had first suggested to Amanda in 2008.

I had long noticed confusion among gardeners caused by so much old-fashioned and unquestioned 'advice'. They were being misled on many important subjects and I wanted to clarify things. Gardening Myths and Misconceptions is the book which resulted. I also produced a video with a similar title, which has had 633,000 views, way more than the book has sold copies.

Meanwhile, the commissioning editor of Frances Lincoln had an idea to produce a better selling book. She suggested I restructure the Vegetable Course book into a timeframe of month-by-month advice.

I started with the book as it was, then rewrote large sections and changed it to the monthly format, so it became more of a journal or almanac, with some pages for writing your own notes. This book, Charles Dowding's Veg Journal, has proved enduringly popular, plus it's cheaper and smaller than the original.

On a teaching trip to Ireland in 2015, I met Klaus Laitenberger, who had self-published Vegetables for the Irish Garden. He suggested I self-publish, saying that it was not difficult and that you got a better return for your work.

This coincided with my desire to write a diary-style book – not a diary per se, but one with advice week-by-week. My idea was to link it to seasonal information about no dig and making compost, in a ring-bound format with not too many words – Charles Dowding’s Vegetable Garden Diary.

I knew some designers who lived in Bruton, Robert and Lucy Carter, and they agreed to do the layout and design, plus gave me advice on self-publishing. That side of it was a big job, and still is! Klaus had not mentioned this, how you have all the organising of the edits and design, the printing, the distribution and publicity.

I enjoy doing all of that but I'm not convinced the rewards are in recompense. This is partly because I don't get books printed in Asia but prefer to keep it in the UK, which means the printing costs are considerably higher for all of my self-published books.

The diary has sold well, and I'm happy with how it continues to sell as well. We updated it thoroughly in 2019.

Stephanie Hafferty was my partner at this time – she is a keen writer, and also had good contact with the Permaculture Association, whose publishing arm is called Permanent Publishing. The owners, Mandy and Tim Harland, visited Homeacres in November 2013 and loved what they saw, suggesting that we jointly write a book.

I had not before written a book with someone else, and found it a mix of being challenging and good to have someone to discuss everything with. In theory we each wrote only half a book, but it's a big subject, and the book, No Dig Organic Home and Garden, has a lot of words!

I kept emphasising to Steph before finishing that this would not make her any worthwhile amount of money, since royalties are not huge. However, it has sold sufficiently that we both got a decent return for our work, and the icing on the cake was an event at the Savoy Hotel in 2017 – we won the Garden Media Guild's (GMG) Practical Book of the Year.

During 2017, I had occasional garden help from Lara Honnor. Since this time, she has gone on to qualify in horticultural training and now runs a children's allotment group near Yeovil. She’s a brilliant teacher and no dig gardener, fitting both into her busy life schedule.

While we were picking vegetables one morning in October of that year, she suggested I produce a calendar of sowing dates. I remember saying to her, 'Well, do you think that would sell?' And her replying most emphatically, 'Of course it would!'

Her husband Mikey had some experience of design work, and he helped to format the calendar, using a template he found online to create Charles Dowding’sVegetable Garden Calendar. It was very last minute and looks a little basic now, but sales came to nearly 3000 copies. This launched me on the path of bringing out a new calendar every year, with updates in content, design, and even title, the most recent being Charles Dowding's Calendar of Vegetable Sowing Dates, 2023.

By autumn 2018, I was writing my first online course, No Dig Gardening. I was going in at the deep end with no previous experience of publishing teaching material online, for payment. With the help of my website developers at the time, I found a plug-in to install and work with, and published the course in early 2019. It sold well.

Then I was looking at it with Anna, and considering how it might work as a book. We thought, 'Well, we almost have the book there, and just need to get it out into a document, and sort the photographs into publishing format – not too much work.' How wrong we were!

To go into book format, I can now see that we should have edited the course a great deal. The book, Course Book 1, No Dig Gardening, From Weeds to Vegetables Easily and Quickly, has great content, but is somewhat cumbersome, with (I now feel) too much introductory material. The background to that is timid. I created and wrote the online course when no dig was still very much off the map. Therefore I felt people needed more validation from me, that this was worth taking seriously.

Now I would rewrite the book in a more practical format. However, it was well received in lockdown year and continues to sell and be helpful.

I also recorded Course Book 1 as an audiobook. You might think it's simple to record a book that you have written yourself – like, sit down and read it! But it turns out there are a lot of complications, especially with non-fiction where the narrative is illustrated with diagrams, tables and photographs. How to convert them into audio form? Another aspect that I had not considered was outside sounds! I did the recording at Homeacres and the sound engineer/editor (same guy) supplied an extraordinary amount of foam walls and ceiling to make a recording booth, fully insulated. Even then we had to stop when helicopters flew over. Then I had to consider my woodburning stove which was sizzling a bit, not that I could hear it, but the microphone was picking that up.

Before recording, I did a lot of re-editing of the book to make sure it would flow without needing too much extra input on the day, to keep it a fluent read. Sometimes I ad-libbed because I was updating information. And at the end of each page, I had to stop, turn over the page, then start again – all discipline to get used to. We recorded the book in four days and I learnt a lot about audiobooks in that time!

In 2019–20, I created my second online course, Growing Success, teaching the details, methods and skills you need in order to achieve lots of healthy harvests. Then I was all set to follow the same pattern of publishing it as a book and had organised distribution for it, including in North America.

Subsequently working with Anna as editor during early 2021, we both came to feel the book needed a lot of editing, and even renaming. I had long reckoned that what is commonly missing, for new gardeners in particular, is a skill set of practical knowledge and technical know-how. The book seeks to address that, hence its title – Skills for Growing. This initially led to confusion because of the name change, and we have since matched the title of the online course to the book. Their written content is the same, with the course having videos and extra photos.

My workload increased with the self-publishing of this book, and my increasing social media work and teaching at Homeacres. Skills for Growing was the first new title to be published in 2022, a 13 month period that saw four new books, as well as the 2023 calendar.

Quickly after finishing my second online course in 2020, I was writing my new and third one, From Seed to Harvest – how to grow 40 of the most popular vegetables, with details on pests, diseases and growing under cover. This became a huge undertaking, and we decided initially to split it into two courses, both of a similar size to the two existing online courses. In the end it we merged the two courses into one, and there is some material we didn't include which is soon to appear!

My intention was to publish the vegetable growing material as a book, but then I had a very interesting approach.

One of Dorling Kindersley's commissioning editors had earlier known me through my writing articles for the RHS magazine, which he was editing. He emailed out of the blue early in 2021 and suggested I write a book for DK. This is the one that appeared in September 2022, with the title, No Dig – Nurture Your Soil to Grow Better Veg with Less Effort.

Yet, when he approached me, and when we were working on the book all through 2021, the working title was not that at all. It was Charles Dowding's Vegetable Growing Masterclass. The title morphing into No Dig emphasises the first part of my teaching: getting soil into perfect condition, making great compost, and understanding that process. Then it’s a whole new lot of learning to do well at vegetable growing.

This book is a classic because, thanks to DK, we have amalgamated so much into the one volume. They have editing teams who can produce loads of diagrams to condense the information, and they sent a photographer down for 12 whole days during 2021, someone I knew already, Jonathan Buckley – a brilliant garden photographer. Normally he appeared soon after dawn and left around 4–5pm, but one sunny day in early August he stayed until after 8pm to catch the golden hour of light.

DK set the price at £30 and I feared this would put people off, but happily it has not. In October 2022, for example, after a talk I gave in a local bookshop to promote the book, they ran out of stock. They were amazed because they said that normally a book selling for £30 does not attract so many buyers – so far at least, the price is not reducing sales. The sales and level of satisfaction in feedback is a fair reflection, I feel, of the considerable amount of well presented information the book contains.

Another possible project at this time was the thought to share vegetable recipes. For a few years, we had been toying with the idea of presenting some recipe cards or a simple pamphlet, based on the wonderful lunches created for my day courses at Homeacres. These had started with Susie, my ex-wife, in 2007, and the quality of dishes, plus their number, kept growing every year.

When I moved to Homeacres, Stephanie took over and developed her culinary skills. After we separated, Kate Forrester became the main chef – she already had the skills of professional cooking. Originally we thought that she would be the main author of recipes, but then she left to start her own market garden early in 2022. Before leaving, she had suggested Catherine Balaam as someone who cooks beautifully and who has a great affinity for working with vegetables.

So it's Catherine who has worked on and written the recipes for No Dig Cookbook, while I added mine for no knead bread. Plus I wrote tips for no dig, and growing many of the main vegetables. It's a self-published book, and through Catherine we found a wonderful designer James Pople. I have found his help invaluable, and his speedy responses to issues arising enabled us to stay right on schedule for printing.

There has been even more going on over the last 18 months, because in spring 2021 I was approached by Welbeck Publishing, to ask if I would consider writing a gardening book for children. They felt that my approach appeals a lot to kids, and gets them keen on gardening.

I was not looking for another book project, but Laura, the commissioning editor, explained how a children's book involves less writing than a book for adults. They could do a lot of the background work, such as finding an illustrator and working her designs into the book. This meant we needed fewer photographs as well.

I have really enjoyed working with the team there, and interest in No Dig Children’s Gardening Book is huge.

In a similar vein, and especially since lockdown, we have noticed how people attending courses here are much younger than they used to be. The same with social media – I'm sharing information with many in their 20s and 30s, who feel next generation to me now, and I’m excited by that. See the work of Roots Allotments, for example.

Going a step further to the under 13s is very exciting. In the children's competition that we recently ran for No Dig Day, the range and number of entries surpassed all our expectations.

There are more books I should like to write! Currently I’m in discussion with publishers and working on new online course modules, and we shall be bringing out the 2024 Calendar in September 2023.

See also this YouTube video: Thirty years of writing books, how it happened