No Dig Organic Home & Garden: Grow, Cook, Use & Store Your Harvest

As indicated by its subtitle, this book is ambitious in scope. It deals with a large variety of subjects normally found in two or three other books, fully and clearly. In particular, it deals with the important topics of composting and no-dig, which may give considerable relief to gardeners who would otherwise suffer from back problems, as well as our health services which would otherwise have to look after them. And our soils will be far healthier for being treated in this more natural way. What Charles Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty don't know and write about their subjects may not be worth knowing. It may not be a text for agronomists, but for anyone interested in growing their own vegetables in a temperate climate (my reason for buying it), I don't know a better book - and I've got many of them.

I love this book! I usually grow fruit and veg in my small garden during the summer, but this year I have decided to invest in a couple more raised beds and grow some greens through winter for the first time. This book is brilliant for explaining the no dig method, but also lots of helpful tips for growing a wide range of fruit, veg, salad leaves and herbs. The growing times given have helped me to plan better so that I can have a constant supply of veggies/greens/salad leaves, making the most of a small area with a little effort. I keep this book in the garden, so it is always on hand whenever I have ‘tea break’!

This was purchased as a present. The person was really pleased with it

I have yet to complete reading through this book but is very good so far. What I have read is very informative and interesting, it easy to understand and surprises you with the results of the system used. All very practical and inspires you to have a go.

This is such a good book. I bought this book as I am a big fan of No Dig methods. I first experimented with this way of caring for the soil some years ago when I had a large garden and access to plenty of manure and other organic matter. I can honestly say I love this way of growing crops. When I compared it to the more traditional method of digging that I was used to, I did notice a significant difference. I had larger and healthier looking yields from my no dig beds and also a lot fewer weeds. I think the book is visually appealing and very informative. A new favorite on my bookshelf.

In a new to us house and garden. Our garden extremely overgrown and large, decided we would give no dig a try. So far so good we have loads of veg and fruit growing in raised beds with no digging. This makes such sense. They say that seeing is believing and have put this practice to use also in our new poly tunnel, Everything is just growing madly away. Can't wait to taste the strawberries and raspberries, with cream of course!

The sort of book to refer to throughout the growing season......or to curl up with besides a log fire with a glass of sloe gin as the first snow falls. Charles and Stephanie give clear instructions on how to move towards a low effort, great returns style of gardening. Fantastic illustrations and an enjoyable style of writing.

I bought this out of boredom when ordering J Seymour’s Self sufficient Gardener 1978 edition and am greatly impressed. It’s a superb book and their blow by blow account of converting a meadow into a magnificent vegetable plot in around five years, with photographic evidence and detailed tabulated results, is so compelling I have given half my plot over to non-dig this month and already the difference is becoming obvious. Plus, check out real seeds in the appendix. 😊