There’s something about Charles’ speech cadence combined with his kindness that’s so enjoyable to observe and learn from. His gardening and teaching is all art in motion. Thank you Charles
I wasn’t going to do a veggie garden this year as I’m recovering from spinal fusion surgery I recently had but, alas, I was yearning for my garden! To remedy the situation I’m having a local college student help me do the heavy lifting. Todays task was topping off the rows with mushroom compost. As I explained the method to the madness with no dig, I realized I enjoyed passing on this knowledge to a younger generation. My summer just went from grim, boring, staring at an empty garden to sunny, educational and sharing in the joy of gardening with someone else. Thanks for all you do in passing on your wealth of knowledge Charles and know that it is paid forward.
Thanks for the tour mate! I'm in year 2 of no dig and I need to stop comparing my growth rate to yours. I'm a bit behind but I need quite a few more years to catch up to your soil quality! I am brewing a compost tea right now to try and boost things along 🤞
You can do it I'm sure. Also it's more than fertility. I call energy farming and it's in the last chapter of my Skills book. It's esoteric stuff and common sense. I wondering whether to be brave and make a video about it.
@@CharlesDowding1nodig I'd love to see that! Side note: I had a complete infestation of aphids in year one...this year NONE 😃 Garden is full of predator insects and birds 🥰
Your farm is beautiful. There is such a charm to it from the structures you have, how they’re placed, and the different heights of all the plantings. All the healthy growth without pesticides is absolutely amazing. Also no random tools and clutter anywhere is a big plus too. 😍😍
Absolutely wonderful Charles thank you so much for sharing and thank you so much for everything! Sixth year now no dig, year 2 at the new gardens and absolutely love it! 😁🌱💚🙏✨🍄🐝
Большое спасибо за прекрасное видео, сэр Чарльз!👍 Рада, что вы нашли отличное решение по укреплению дна вашего пруда! Грядки без перекапывания заметно отличаются от перекопаных, особенно по росту лука😃. Будем ждать новых прогулок по вашему замечательному участку! 💚💚💚
Good evening Charles, Very relaxing video for lunchtime. You’re garden is wonderful and your guidance is important for all gardeners in the world! Thank you for sharing knowhow and joy Have a good weekend
Thanks, always love a tour! Oh my, Lupins. One of my most difficult weeds here in Norway beside Creeping Buttercup and Northern Dock in my potatoes which are not No Dig. (yet). My wife's Great grandfather introduced Lupins to Iceland and now there are veritable fields of it.
Thanks, Charles - Homeacres looks great! Hope the bentonite does the pond - we use it in architecture (waterproofing when putting deep basements below water table) so should work -
Well, as per usual, there goes a despair of the growth- and yield-lag of our own garden, in comparison with this beauty of beauties. But it still is such a soothing consolation to just follow your means and ways of really caring for each aspect of growing. Letting those little seedlings fulfil their potential in almost a harmony - the best evergreen there is. Sending you a very fresh bunch of a exclamatio vulgaris, wraping my many thanks for being able to visually partake in this project from a very far!!!!!!!
Charles, your looking good sir! I think your looking brilliant in the rose colored shirt, bracelet and the goatee! Must be charming a young lady nearby! Best of health to you!
It's amazing that no-dig seems to bring broad bean harvests in late May regularly once the plot is established. Can't emphasise enough what great broad bean crops no-dig gardening brings. We will definitely be freezing some this year as eating them all will simply be impossible!
@@CharlesDowding1nodig I tend to save my own seeds for broad beans: I do do a second sowing in February in case over-wintering doesn't work, so hopefully we will be harvesting beans throughout June and into early July.
I saw a video where the host took a scrubby (that you would use for dishes), and cut out the middle so it would set on the ground under plants that were susceptible to slug damage. It's like a sharp rug that they would avoid walking on.
Hi Just to give a tip concerning the broad beans. If you harvest them yet while their case is tender , it is possible to cook the whole case to eat. Not as flavorsome as the kernels, but it can provide fiber to your diet, as well as the nutrients that are following into the kennels
Wow so much food! Thanks for talking about pest damage - it can be very dispiriting. Last week it rained hard so i went out to the patch at dusk with a head torch and a bucket and 'harvested' 21 slugs! My husband calls me the slug wrangler.
Hola maestro Charles Dowding hay muchos que seguimos su técnica 👉 no picar la tierra con excelentes resultados Gracias por eso 👏👏 es maravilloso todo su cultivo parece pintado de tan hermoso huerto , también tengo problemas con babosas y caracoles 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ no logro sacarlos 🌱 🤦🏻♀️, me encantó este video , abrazo grande desde 🇦🇷 Argentina
It's always great to see that blue dot, Charles Dowding is back. These tours help so much, always look forward to the advice along the way. Thanks again.
Merci Charles, pour cette visite de votre domaine tellement beau et choyé, c'est toujours passionnant. Je suis attentivement vos expérimentations ex. plantations dans le broyat, plantation dans le sol travaillé et à côté, un sol non travaillé etc... Ici, sécheresse et très grosses chaleurs, avec limitation des arrosages et nous ne sommes qu'au 20 mai. Bon jardinage.
Thankyou for the tour. I'm interested in hearing about the rye and seeing how the pond works out. I do a lot of growing in lasagne beds, the slugs generally eat the lasagne instead to the plants.
Thank you for the great tour, brother Charles ! Nice to see all the flowers, but how about some more? Many more :) Besides those that you mentioned and the other ones that were visible during the tour. Especially, flowers that are appropriate for companion planting and very attractive to bees and other pollinators: starflowers (Borago), nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus), pot marigolds (calendula)
Thank you for the video. I acquired an allotment in September and it is looking beautiful. However, your comment amount managing failures and dealing with pests in previous videos is a lesson I am learning the hard way! Lost all my gooseberries to Mr Blackbird! Like you I love to see my plants but I am having to protect everything!!
Fantastic tour, your gardens are always so beautiful and I always learn something new to put into use in my own gardens. Thank you for sharing and have a great week. 🌼Shary🌸
I've had a few problems with pests this year, mice getting into the greenhouse and eating seeds, slugs and now black fly on my broad beans. Its only my first year so am learning alot along the way. Thank you for all the information you share with us 👍
I just discovered slugs in my garden here in Fl. which was quite a shock, seeing that my poor excuse for soil, getting better, thanks to your advice and as much compost as I can make etc. refuses to hold water, I didn't even know we had slugs here.
I can't seem to focus on the plants this time. Your little white bracelet is so beautiful 😁😁 Dream garden as always, Charles. Thanks for sharing the updates.
Thank you for sharing, love to learn step by step from you and all people with soo important lessons and all the information makes the different. Bless you 🌱
Hola Charles, para mi es un deleite ver tu hermoso jardín y agradesco toda tu enseñanza, aquí en mi país estamos a fines de otoño con muchas heladas y muy seco, gracias por tu lindo video 🤗🇨🇱🌷
You just hit on another thing i am getting ready to try, Thank you!! I have found that some brands of Oil Dry are made from that clay, thinking of using it to help hold water in my soil and Iv'e read that it seems to be beneficial to plants also, more so than cat litter, which is another form of granulated clay Iv'e been adding for the same reason.
Thank you for the tour of your lovely gardens. I'm trying potatoes for the first time this year, just 20 plants. I'll dedicate one of my tall Birdies raised beds to the potatoes. I have 5 varieties so this should be fun!
Thank you Charles for this incredible update as always, no dig just makes so much sense, this year i've started to really concentrate of flowers as well, especially if they are pollinator friendly and this morning ive started to notice an increase albeit small in the variety of just a few different pollinators about the plot. So exciting. Have a great week!!!
Neil - I'm like you with flowers/pollinators the past three years. I've discovered that chives, lupins and phacelia are all incredible attractors of bees in spring-time - obviously the phacelia gets harvested (I use it to cover my squash beds in spring before planting out late May), but the chives and wild lupin come back each year. The three I mention are seriously easy to grow from seed (phacelia you just rake it into the top soil and away it goes) too.
Thank you for these garden tours! I love long videos from Sir Charles Thanks for all the extra time and effort and for the rehearsal with Mr Slug himself lol!
Thank you for the walkthrough Charles! I love this time of year in NY. The early plants that went in about a month ago are starting to take hold. Your garden looks very nice!
This is so helpful. Thank you. I am following the advice in Skills for Growing and having an exciting spring watching my veg beds grow. Trying to find the space for seedlings I have raised is getting challenging but now I know where to put the celeriac!
For the life of me I can't seem to get cabbage to grow in my gardens in Salt Lake City, Utah. every year I change my tactic and it still fails. This year I planted 9 in a 4x4ft plot and 7 died within a few weeks. The last two are now getting attacked hard by something. I've got a shade cloth over the last two right now but they still seem to struggle. It's planted in a 50/50 mix of homemade compost that has been amazing for my other plants and top soil.
I would try something radical such as Redmond sea salt which I'm experimenting with here. It sounds like something missing, not a big thing but like a 'key' which will unlock the fertility for your cabbage
If only more days in the Homeacres clime looked like that I might be tempted to move to your area, but, alas, I'm not fooled -- I already know your skies are gray more days of the year than my preachers' tresses. Charles -- I'd love to see your take on some sort of animals. Veg takes more time; animals are much less hassle, but require space. Now that you got a bit more of that, I'd love to see your take on some kind of small, profitable critter (hens and sheep come to mind). I know this might come off a bit like asking a woodworker to try a round of welding/metalworking, but I'm honest in it. As always, very grateful for your contribution here 🙏 P.s. what I mean is, others are out there teaching healthy meat-growing, but on a scale like yours, and with your decades-long commitment to healthy veg-growing, plus the fact that you'd be new to it (I'm assuming), I really thing you of all people are in a unique situation to make a formidable and positive influence. Just my 2-pence. I'll stop now ---- bless you.
Cheers Ted, I appreciate this. I have done it on a small farm in France in the 1990s where we kept every kind of farm animal. Ultimately my heart was not in it, I am much happier looking after and eating plants, than animals. Plus, I don't find that plants need more time than animals, for a given and healthy amount of food.
Our family loves watching your channel, and our children even more, although it is difficult for them to understand it due to the language barrier, it would be very helpful if it had subtitles.
Here is southern Tasmanian, I’ve just finished converting another patch of grass in our backyard to a raised no dig bed - roughly 10m x 1.2m. A layer of bicycle box cardboard - nice and big and thick! - followed by very old decomposed wood chip and alpaca poo, topped with about 10cm of, sadly, very poor quality brought in veggie bed soil. But I bought 7 cubic metres and I need to use it up. 🤷🏼♀️ I’m hoping the decomposed wood chip - which was full of worms and mycelium - along with the alpaca poo and a good dousing with diluted worm wee will inoculate and improve the poor soil. Anyway, it’s and experiment and I’ll probably just fill it with not very hungry alliums - mostly onions - this first season. It’s late autumn here so about to go allium crazy. Thanks for all your wonderful, informative videos.
If you harvest broad beans small, you actually can have a lot to eat - because you can eat them pod and all at that stage. I like to use both types of harvest for variety - small as green beans, and large as beans beans.
Lovely video Charles. Here in Colorado in the US it's gone from the last month or more being eighties and nineties to snow, yeah. Yes it is after the freeze date. I have layers of fleece on and hoping my garden is going to do OK. Hagd.
I often drop sacrificial leaves about as a trap for slugs, find this works quite well - lettuce, rhubarb kale and cabbage any large leaves the the hens get them
Phew, you can really see the mild climate in effect in this video! I planted out broad beans on 1st of March. Haven't had much frost actually, but kind of cool nights + very dry. They are only just now flowering, for us its more of a late june harvest rather than late May :) Inspirational video as always. I can't wait to get more space for a bigger garden!
I'm also finding alot of woodlouse and slug damage this year compared to last year thankfully Mr Lissie (hedgehog) named by my 6 year old son has appeared again and work's hard side by side with me in the garden
I can vouch for what you say around 18:12 about narrow vs wider beds. In the past I used 2.5 ft wide beds, following the "market gardening" approach. At my new place I opted for the 4 foot beds, and I really enjoy them much more. Im not putting down the former approach at all, in fact I learned quite a bit from it about healthy growing. But the wider beds are certainly more efficient. Can add that to the less edge less slug reasoning.
Pot noodle or similar pots, filled with beer and buried so that they are flush with the soil make excellent slug traps, and what a way to go. My uncle Archie fell into a vat of beer at a brewery and died. The guy who worked there said it wouldn't have been so bad, but he got out three times to go to the toilet. Seriously though beer traps are great.
Charles, I'm curious, how long are the hoops you use to hold up the netting. It seems it would need to be quite long to be stable enough to hold all the netting. I found some heavy wire that looks about the size you are using although it was a bit expensive so I want to make sure I don't waste any as I cut it to size.
Brilliant as always. Moved to Southern Ireland from Isle of Wight. Do you think I can achieve a no dig system in this wet sluggy county Mayo. Have started some beds
Dear Charles, amazing view of home acres as usual. I have noticed, purely by accident, that white butterflies do not lay eggs on my romensco planted next to onions but are laying eggs on some romensco planted elsewhere next to grapes. I am just wondering if this onions maybe a natural deterrent and removes the need to cover some brassicas.... have you ever noticed something similar or is it still too early for the white butterfly to do damage?
Hard to say from one observation, it may be a coincidence, perhaps also because the grapes are giving some shelter from the wind, to the butterflies. The caterpillars may cause some damage, hopefully not a lot, yet!
Thank you so much for your tour Charles. How do you manage your rabbit population. I have just discovered that my brassica’s have been completely destroyed by a rabbit or rabbits in my tunnel. Grown in the garden and no damage but in my tunnel total devastation. I’ve used fleece in the tunnel and they still got in and ate all the centre growth. Dreading planting up my runner beans. Any suggestions please
Good question Judith and last year we had a lot of rabbits and used mesh covers mostly over beds with susceptible plantings. That worked here but it depends how persistent you rabbits are. I can't offer 100% effective advice I'm afraid
Hi Charles. Love your videos, I find them comforting and exciting at the same time. The alium by a brocollibed with those hanging flowers is nectaroscordum Siculum, I think. Loosely translated from Dutch as a Bulgarian Onion. Probably someone has already posted this, (but more then 200 comments is a lot to read.) Greetings from the Netherlands!
Hi Charles, we have been incorporating no-dig into our garden. We are nearly at a point where we do not have to ever buy vegetables. One problem is some rural stray cats. They love to use our beds as litter boxes. Sprinkling coffee grounds has not been too successful. Do you face this issue at Homeacres and/or do you have any advice on deterring the cats?
@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you! The growth and methods are all thanks to you. I will put some netting on the beds right away. It does not help that I have a soft spot for the cats and feed them occasionally. At times, back garden is like an open-air cat shelter. 😅
Pests are avoidable though. The method is easy, but applying it for all your veggies is hard. If you look at this fascinating web conference : "Why insects do not (and cannot) attack healthy plants | Dr. Thomas Dykstra" on John Kempf's channel, you'll understand that insects only come if your plant is weak. And that weakness usually comes from issues in your soil, which means issues in your gardening methods. Plant health is easy : it's mostly diversity. If you got diverse plant families in the garden, they connect through mycorrhizae (unless you use mineral fertilizers like ammonia, urine, nitrates, rock dust etc... in that case they can't form a rhizosphere anymore) and exchange nutrients. Some plants are good at phosphorus, some at nitrogen. And they exchange it through fungi, the conductors of this little orchestra. But when we do a veggie patch, we often do big blocks of the same thing. We also rarely have diverse hedges or flower beds right next to them, or even trees. And we also grow under a greenhouse, which often is made out of a UV filtering material. And plants need those UVs to be healthy. You can easily measure if your plant are healthy with the leaf Brix. Not the fruit or root brix, the leaf Brix, so you can compare plant to plant. If you got less than 12, Thomas Dykstra proved you'll likely have insects attacking your plants. It's great coz it's quite neat : all plants seem healthy above 12 and won't get attacked. If it's really bad, around 6, you'll have sucking insects like aphids attacking. This is why you often see aphids on fava beans at the end of their production : they're about to die, so aphids attack. Sometimes it's because it's fragile hybrids, like those weird roses you can buy, that'll always get attacked it seems, because they've been selected for flowers rather than health. And often aphids attack because of nitrogen excess, through fertilizing (I suspect it's the same with slugs but Thomas doesn't mention them). So any time you got an insect coming, you should ask yourself "what did I do wrong ? Not enough diversity here ? Too much manure ? Not enough light ? Too densely planted ? Not enough water ? Too much ? Is my soil too poor ? Too compacted ?" and then it becomes so much simpler... Coz instead of fighting the symptom (the insect attacking), you're fighting the cause (not providing the right growing conditions for your plant).
There’s something about Charles’ speech cadence combined with his kindness that’s so enjoyable to observe and learn from. His gardening and teaching is all art in motion. Thank you Charles
Well thankyou Ivan.
I wasn’t going to do a veggie garden this year as I’m recovering from spinal fusion surgery I recently had but, alas, I was yearning for my garden! To remedy the situation I’m having a local college student help me do the heavy lifting. Todays task was topping off the rows with mushroom compost. As I explained the method to the madness with no dig, I realized I enjoyed passing on this knowledge to a younger generation. My summer just went from grim, boring, staring at an empty garden to sunny, educational and sharing in the joy of gardening with someone else. Thanks for all you do in passing on your wealth of knowledge Charles and know that it is paid forward.
How lovely Jackie and that sounds energising! Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely lovely.
Thanks for the tour mate! I'm in year 2 of no dig and I need to stop comparing my growth rate to yours. I'm a bit behind but I need quite a few more years to catch up to your soil quality! I am brewing a compost tea right now to try and boost things along 🤞
You can do it I'm sure.
Also it's more than fertility. I call energy farming and it's in the last chapter of my Skills book. It's esoteric stuff and common sense. I wondering whether to be brave and make a video about it.
@@CharlesDowding1nodig Please do 🙏
@@CharlesDowding1nodig I'd love to see that! Side note: I had a complete infestation of aphids in year one...this year NONE 😃 Garden is full of predator insects and birds 🥰
Nice1..☺🇦🇺
@@CharlesDowding1nodig Please be brave Charles! I would so love to hear your views about this!
Your farm is beautiful. There is such a charm to it from the structures you have, how they’re placed, and the different heights of all the plantings. All the healthy growth without pesticides is absolutely amazing. Also no random tools and clutter anywhere is a big plus too. 😍😍
Thanks so much :)
i love to go back to your old tour video's and select one of a few weeks ahead of current time, great to see whats still possible to sow
That is a great tip!
A tour of homeacres on a Saturday morning is just what the doctor ordered!!! Huzzah
Absolutely wonderful Charles thank you so much for sharing and thank you so much for everything! Sixth year now no dig, year 2 at the new gardens and absolutely love it! 😁🌱💚🙏✨🍄🐝
Rock on Scott!
@@CharlesDowding1nodig 😁🌱🍄🐝
Большое спасибо за прекрасное видео, сэр Чарльз!👍 Рада, что вы нашли отличное решение по укреплению дна вашего пруда! Грядки без перекапывания заметно отличаются от перекопаных, особенно по росту лука😃. Будем ждать новых прогулок по вашему замечательному участку! 💚💚💚
Приятно услышать Olga!
Beautiful NoDig garden. Thank you Charles for sharing your work.
I love these garden tours. Your comments give me confidence and more advice each time.
Excellent!!
Good evening Charles,
Very relaxing video for lunchtime.
You’re garden is wonderful and your guidance is important for all gardeners in the world!
Thank you for sharing knowhow and joy
Have a good weekend
Many thanks Carl
Beautiful garden 👍❤️ God bless you and your family 💕🙏🤗
Thanks so much 💚
Thanks, always love a tour!
Oh my, Lupins. One of my most difficult weeds here in Norway beside Creeping Buttercup and Northern Dock in my potatoes which are not No Dig. (yet).
My wife's Great grandfather introduced Lupins to Iceland and now there are veritable fields of it.
Oh wow! I am amazed! Thanks.
Lupins are good food for cattle.
Thanks, Charles - Homeacres looks great! Hope the bentonite does the pond - we use it in architecture (waterproofing when putting deep basements below water table) so should work -
Thanks Kathleen and that is interesting. It is still leaking, but more slowly!
Well, as per usual, there goes a despair of the growth- and yield-lag of our own garden, in comparison with this beauty of beauties. But it still is such a soothing consolation to just follow your means and ways of really caring for each aspect of growing. Letting those little seedlings fulfil their potential in almost a harmony - the best evergreen there is. Sending you a very fresh bunch of a exclamatio vulgaris, wraping my many thanks for being able to visually partake in this project from a very far!!!!!!!
So sorry, I don't want to dishearten you! May your plants put on a spurt :)
The garden is growing beautifully 👏🏻🥬
Thankyou Karl
I just love your tours, thank you for sharing! It’s very inspiring.
Enjoy seeing your phenomenal progress. Unusually cold spring here making outdoor planting a challenge. Blessings from Oregon.
Sorry to hear that and thanks Susan
Charles, your looking good sir! I think your looking brilliant in the rose colored shirt, bracelet and the goatee! Must be charming a young lady nearby! Best of health to you!
Thanks Sally, just the plants 😀
Ive been enjoying your videos so much and my garden is mostly based on your experience and methods so many thanks
Great to hear Stephen!
It's amazing that no-dig seems to bring broad bean harvests in late May regularly once the plot is established. Can't emphasise enough what great broad bean crops no-dig gardening brings. We will definitely be freezing some this year as eating them all will simply be impossible!
I agree for 2019, 20 and this year, but not 2021. I think it's weather related also, seed quality too
@@CharlesDowding1nodig I tend to save my own seeds for broad beans: I do do a second sowing in February in case over-wintering doesn't work, so hopefully we will be harvesting beans throughout June and into early July.
I saw a video where the host took a scrubby (that you would use for dishes), and cut out the middle so it would set on the ground under plants that were susceptible to slug damage. It's like a sharp rug that they would avoid walking on.
Sometimes that works Jamie, but imagine how many you need and the time involved!
Love your tours Charles…Thank you very much!
You are very welcome
One extraordinary garden of one great teacher! Thank you so much for sharing Charles! God Bless!
You are very welcome
Hi Just to give a tip concerning the broad beans. If you harvest them yet while their case is tender , it is possible to cook the whole case to eat. Not as flavorsome as the kernels, but it can provide fiber to your diet, as well as the nutrients that are following into the kennels
Thanks for the tip!
Wow, I'm not sure how I missed this one Charles but it was good to see the progress.
świetny materiał pouczający ale świetnie tez Pan wygląda w tych kolorach. Brawo
Dziękuję bardzo Dorota
Wow so much food! Thanks for talking about pest damage - it can be very dispiriting. Last week it rained hard so i went out to the patch at dusk with a head torch and a bucket and 'harvested' 21 slugs! My husband calls me the slug wrangler.
Thanks Sarah and well done! I'm sure your husband is happy to eat the food which you enable!
Hola maestro Charles Dowding hay muchos que seguimos su técnica 👉 no picar la tierra con excelentes resultados Gracias por eso 👏👏 es maravilloso todo su cultivo parece pintado de tan hermoso huerto , también tengo problemas con babosas y caracoles 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ no logro sacarlos 🌱 🤦🏻♀️, me encantó este video , abrazo grande desde 🇦🇷 Argentina
Estoy muy feliz de escuchar esto, gracias. Y siento que las babosas te hayan causado problemas, ¡no sé qué decir!
@@CharlesDowding1nodig muchas gracias por sus palabras pronto le buscaré una solución , abrazo
It's always great to see that blue dot, Charles Dowding is back. These tours help so much, always look forward to the advice along the way. Thanks again.
💚
Merci Charles, pour cette visite de votre domaine tellement beau et choyé, c'est toujours passionnant. Je suis attentivement vos expérimentations ex. plantations dans le broyat, plantation dans le sol travaillé et à côté, un sol non travaillé etc... Ici, sécheresse et très grosses chaleurs, avec limitation des arrosages et nous ne sommes qu'au 20 mai. Bon jardinage.
On n'a pas la sécheresse et très grosses chaleurs, et j'espère que no dig vous aide 💚
Thankyou for the tour. I'm interested in hearing about the rye and seeing how the pond works out. I do a lot of growing in lasagne beds, the slugs generally eat the lasagne instead to the plants.
Nice
Thank you for the great tour, brother Charles ! Nice to see all the flowers, but how about some more? Many more :) Besides those that you mentioned and the other ones that were visible during the tour.
Especially, flowers that are appropriate for companion planting and very attractive to bees and other pollinators: starflowers (Borago), nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus), pot marigolds (calendula)
its my second year and second veg garden. i did no diggin this time. your videos are so helpful. i enjoy listening :) thank u for sharing
Great and thanks
Thank you so much for the tour Charles and nice camera work from? Really enjoyed the Farm Garden. And big thanks for all the tips.
Glad you enjoyed it
Hi Charles love your videos I was so pleased to see your pond very interesting I wondered how it was going glad it’s fine lv Irene 😘 xx
Thanks Irene 👍
Thank you for the video. I acquired an allotment in September and it is looking beautiful. However, your comment amount managing failures and dealing with pests in previous videos is a lesson I am learning the hard way! Lost all my gooseberries to Mr Blackbird!
Like you I love to see my plants but I am having to protect everything!!
Ah damn!! Yes it is easy to feed birds...! Well done otherwise :)
enjoyable video charles
Fantastic tour, your gardens are always so beautiful and I always learn something new to put into use in my own gardens. Thank you for sharing and have a great week. 🌼Shary🌸
You are so welcome Shary
I've had a few problems with pests this year, mice getting into the greenhouse and eating seeds, slugs and now black fly on my broad beans. Its only my first year so am learning alot along the way. Thank you for all the information you share with us 👍
See my video Pest Prevention and good luck ua-cam.com/video/Nbf7D80j5os/v-deo.html
Saludos señor dowding ♥️
I just discovered slugs in my garden here in Fl. which was quite a shock, seeing that my poor excuse for soil, getting better, thanks to your advice and as much compost as I can make etc. refuses to hold water, I didn't even know we had slugs here.
Best of luck!
I can't seem to focus on the plants this time. Your little white bracelet is so beautiful 😁😁
Dream garden as always, Charles. Thanks for sharing the updates.
How nice, it's jade and see more goodies on Julia's website (she's a friend) joodaboo.com
@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you for the link. I'll surely look it up 😊 Have a wonderful day.
Thank you for sharing, love to learn step by step from you and all people with soo important lessons and all the information makes the different. Bless you 🌱
Great thanks!
Hola Charles, para mi es un deleite ver tu hermoso jardín y agradesco toda tu enseñanza, aquí en mi país estamos a fines de otoño con muchas heladas y muy seco, gracias por tu lindo video 🤗🇨🇱🌷
Es un placer, y ¡oh, eso suena frío! ¡Creo que el clima se está enfriando y no calentando!
Hermoso video, muchas gracias por los subtitulos, porque de
esa manera podemos aprender mucho más, gracias y saludos cordiales desde chile!!
Gracias!
You just hit on another thing i am getting ready to try, Thank you!! I have found that some brands of Oil Dry are made from that clay, thinking of using it to help hold water in my soil and Iv'e read that it seems to be beneficial to plants also, more so than cat litter, which is another form of granulated clay Iv'e been adding for the same reason.
Yes Clive, it could definitely help your soil to hold moisture
Thank you for the tour of your lovely gardens. I'm trying potatoes for the first time this year, just 20 plants. I'll dedicate one of my tall Birdies raised beds to the potatoes. I have 5 varieties so this should be fun!
Nice start and thanks!
Always a pleasure to see a new video, especially a nice long tour video! Thank you!
Thank you Charles for this incredible update as always, no dig just makes so much sense, this year i've started to really concentrate of flowers as well, especially if they are pollinator friendly and this morning ive started to notice an increase albeit small in the variety of just a few different pollinators about the plot. So exciting. Have a great week!!!
Lovely to hear Neil, thanks
Neil - I'm like you with flowers/pollinators the past three years. I've discovered that chives, lupins and phacelia are all incredible attractors of bees in spring-time - obviously the phacelia gets harvested (I use it to cover my squash beds in spring before planting out late May), but the chives and wild lupin come back each year. The three I mention are seriously easy to grow from seed (phacelia you just rake it into the top soil and away it goes) too.
Thank you for these garden tours! I love long videos from Sir Charles Thanks for all the extra time and effort and for the rehearsal with Mr Slug himself lol!
😂
Thank you for the walkthrough Charles! I love this time of year in NY. The early plants that went in about a month ago are starting to take hold. Your garden looks very nice!
Thanks and sounds great Ken!
👏👏👏maravillosa huerta...gracias Charles por compartir 💚💚💚
Loved the tour!!! Hello from Michigan ❤️
Agreed it’s helpful to learn along with the tour :D Cheers
My favourite videos are these tours!
Thanks and more to come!
CD what a great tour! I always learn from and get so inspired by your videos! ❤ Linda in Vancouver 🇨🇦
So glad Linda
@@CharlesDowding1nodig did you check out Hollis and Nancy's Homestead channel on UA-cam? ❤
May 22, 2022
Froze again last night.
I expect a heat wave when it does warm up!
Really enjoyed this latest video Charles....
Garden on!!!
Fingers crossed Connie.
This is so helpful. Thank you. I am following the advice in Skills for Growing and having an exciting spring watching my veg beds grow. Trying to find the space for seedlings I have raised is getting challenging but now I know where to put the celeriac!
😀 great
Garden is looking well. Hope your pond settles up and holds water.
Thank you for another tour.😀😀😀🇦🇺
I have just finished you audiobook Charles, great listen as always!
Thanks for feedback, great!
we alwqays put the cucumbers on a little mound of soil so that it would have drainage.
One year ago but my garden still nothing, I wish will grow fast
For the life of me I can't seem to get cabbage to grow in my gardens in Salt Lake City, Utah. every year I change my tactic and it still fails. This year I planted 9 in a 4x4ft plot and 7 died within a few weeks. The last two are now getting attacked hard by something. I've got a shade cloth over the last two right now but they still seem to struggle. It's planted in a 50/50 mix of homemade compost that has been amazing for my other plants and top soil.
I would try something radical such as Redmond sea salt which I'm experimenting with here. It sounds like something missing, not a big thing but like a 'key' which will unlock the fertility for your cabbage
Good morning. Weeding? Be sure crab grass isn't one's Corn, sprouting. But I quickly replanted the corn, watered it well. It's okay, so far.
If only more days in the Homeacres clime looked like that I might be tempted to move to your area, but, alas, I'm not fooled -- I already know your skies are gray more days of the year than my preachers' tresses.
Charles -- I'd love to see your take on some sort of animals. Veg takes more time; animals are much less hassle, but require space. Now that you got a bit more of that, I'd love to see your take on some kind of small, profitable critter (hens and sheep come to mind). I know this might come off a bit like asking a woodworker to try a round of welding/metalworking, but I'm honest in it. As always, very grateful for your contribution here 🙏
P.s. what I mean is, others are out there teaching healthy meat-growing, but on a scale like yours, and with your decades-long commitment to healthy veg-growing, plus the fact that you'd be new to it (I'm assuming), I really thing you of all people are in a unique situation to make a formidable and positive influence. Just my 2-pence. I'll stop now ---- bless you.
Cheers Ted, I appreciate this.
I have done it on a small farm in France in the 1990s where we kept every kind of farm animal. Ultimately my heart was not in it, I am much happier looking after and eating plants, than animals. Plus, I don't find that plants need more time than animals, for a given and healthy amount of food.
Our family loves watching your channel, and our children even more, although it is difficult for them to understand it due to the language barrier, it would be very helpful if it had subtitles.
Thanks for sharing. We pay for Spanish subtitles, click on gear icon then Subtitles, and hello to your children 💚
Wow that little building in England has big air conditioners! Hah- I mistook your rain barrels for air-con. Best wishes for the growing season
Thanks 👍
Thanks for the tour.
Here is southern Tasmanian, I’ve just finished converting another patch of grass in our backyard to a raised no dig bed - roughly 10m x 1.2m. A layer of bicycle box cardboard - nice and big and thick! - followed by very old decomposed wood chip and alpaca poo, topped with about 10cm of, sadly, very poor quality brought in veggie bed soil. But I bought 7 cubic metres and I need to use it up. 🤷🏼♀️ I’m hoping the decomposed wood chip - which was full of worms and mycelium - along with the alpaca poo and a good dousing with diluted worm wee will inoculate and improve the poor soil.
Anyway, it’s and experiment and I’ll probably just fill it with not very hungry alliums - mostly onions - this first season. It’s late autumn here so about to go allium crazy.
Thanks for all your wonderful, informative videos.
Nice to see this Melissa, great job.
Your decomposed wood chip sounds excellent. I would use some on top as well as underneath, in fact more on top.
If you harvest broad beans small, you actually can have a lot to eat - because you can eat them pod and all at that stage. I like to use both types of harvest for variety - small as green beans, and large as beans beans.
Love all your work, thank you 😊
in the future, you can use wild rocket stalks to make a delicious soup!
Thanks Guus
Lovely video Charles. Here in Colorado in the US it's gone from the last month or more being eighties and nineties to snow, yeah. Yes it is after the freeze date. I have layers of fleece on and hoping my garden is going to do OK. Hagd.
Oh dear Lisa, that is a huge challenge and I wish you well over the next night or two, not to mention the days!
@@CharlesDowding1nodig tyvm!
I often drop sacrificial leaves about as a trap for slugs, find this works quite well - lettuce, rhubarb kale and cabbage any large leaves the the hens get them
Phew, you can really see the mild climate in effect in this video! I planted out broad beans on 1st of March. Haven't had much frost actually, but kind of cool nights + very dry. They are only just now flowering, for us its more of a late june harvest rather than late May :)
Inspirational video as always. I can't wait to get more space for a bigger garden!
Yes we are fortunate, but these beans were direct sown mid November. Your winters may be too cold for that
I used to be a well driller if you use well grade bentonite it will hold in water very impressively
That is helpful thanks
Прекрасный краствый сад. Большое удовольствие смотреть...
Thanks so much!
Tour of the orchard please
Grate combination spicy mustash and you👍cant waith for the video
😀
I'm also finding alot of woodlouse and slug damage this year compared to last year thankfully Mr Lissie (hedgehog) named by my 6 year old son has appeared again and work's hard side by side with me in the garden
How wonderful!
I can vouch for what you say around 18:12 about narrow vs wider beds. In the past I used 2.5 ft wide beds, following the "market gardening" approach. At my new place I opted for the 4 foot beds, and I really enjoy them much more. Im not putting down the former approach at all, in fact I learned quite a bit from it about healthy growing. But the wider beds are certainly more efficient. Can add that to the less edge less slug reasoning.
Fascinating to hear of your comparison, thanks for sharing Ted
The plant at 15:15 is Honey Garlic , we have some in our front garden.
We love what you do Charles!
Thanks Tim!
I wonder if the wood chips regrind
Absolutely love your tours!! Thank you! 😎
So glad!
Pot noodle or similar pots, filled with beer and buried so that they are flush with the soil make excellent slug traps, and what a way to go. My uncle Archie fell into a vat of beer at a brewery and died. The guy who worked there said it wouldn't have been so bad, but he got out three times to go to the toilet. Seriously though beer traps are great.
BTW, there's a hen blackie comes every day to one of my slug traps for a drink of slug flavoured beer. MMMMMMM
Thanks Ian and I love your sense of humour! It is a good idea 😀
Another great video Charles. Articulated very well 👌 I can’t wait to see the garden in the flesh soon.
Ah that's nice, thanks
Charles, I'm curious, how long are the hoops you use to hold up the netting. It seems it would need to be quite long to be stable enough to hold all the netting. I found some heavy wire that looks about the size you are using although it was a bit expensive so I want to make sure I don't waste any as I cut it to size.
Yes sure, and each piece is 2.5m long, 4 mm high tensile galvanised
Brilliant as always. Moved to Southern Ireland from Isle of Wight. Do you think I can achieve a no dig system in this wet sluggy county Mayo. Have started some beds
Yes for sure and there may be some dusk patrols you need to do in the first summer to reduce slug population. Drainage will be good with no dig
Dear Charles, amazing view of home acres as usual. I have noticed, purely by accident, that white butterflies do not lay eggs on my romensco planted next to onions but are laying eggs on some romensco planted elsewhere next to grapes. I am just wondering if this onions maybe a natural deterrent and removes the need to cover some brassicas.... have you ever noticed something similar or is it still too early for the white butterfly to do damage?
Hard to say from one observation, it may be a coincidence, perhaps also because the grapes are giving some shelter from the wind, to the butterflies. The caterpillars may cause some damage, hopefully not a lot, yet!
Thank you so much for your tour Charles. How do you manage your rabbit population. I have just discovered that my brassica’s have been completely destroyed by a rabbit or rabbits in my tunnel. Grown in the garden and no damage but in my tunnel total devastation. I’ve used fleece in the tunnel and they still got in and ate all the centre growth. Dreading planting up my runner beans. Any suggestions please
Good question Judith and last year we had a lot of rabbits and used mesh covers mostly over beds with susceptible plantings. That worked here but it depends how persistent you rabbits are. I can't offer 100% effective advice I'm afraid
Thank you for this! Thank you for sharing!
You are welcome
Hi Charles. Love your videos, I find them comforting and exciting at the same time.
The alium by a brocollibed with those hanging flowers is nectaroscordum Siculum, I think. Loosely translated from Dutch as a Bulgarian Onion. Probably someone has already posted this, (but more then 200 comments is a lot to read.)
Greetings from the Netherlands!
Glad you like the videos Iilke.
You are right that two people posted that already and you all agree with each other!
Very interesting tour - learnt a lot! PS - The colour of your shirt - that's your colour.
Thank you Alison and that is lovely feedback, I need to get more red clothes!
Hi Charles, we have been incorporating no-dig into our garden. We are nearly at a point where we do not have to ever buy vegetables. One problem is some rural stray cats. They love to use our beds as litter boxes. Sprinkling coffee grounds has not been too successful. Do you face this issue at Homeacres and/or do you have any advice on deterring the cats?
Sounds great, and yes I do when they are bare, cover with bird or any netting is my best solution. I don't mind the odd poo and compost it
@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you! The growth and methods are all thanks to you.
I will put some netting on the beds right away. It does not help that I have a soft spot for the cats and feed them occasionally. At times, back garden is like an open-air cat shelter. 😅
Same here. Have always heard not to compost cat poo. Charles are you saying that composting cat poo being unsafe is a myth as well?
@@johndyer9232 I read the same and have not yet thrown any cat litter in my compost bin.
I have heard that white pepper sprinkled on the grounds deter cats but we have not tried it as we don't have that problem.
the main thing i learned from this video...I need a bigger yard...cheers
😂 good luck
Pests are avoidable though. The method is easy, but applying it for all your veggies is hard. If you look at this fascinating web conference : "Why insects do not (and cannot) attack healthy plants | Dr. Thomas Dykstra" on John Kempf's channel, you'll understand that insects only come if your plant is weak. And that weakness usually comes from issues in your soil, which means issues in your gardening methods. Plant health is easy : it's mostly diversity. If you got diverse plant families in the garden, they connect through mycorrhizae (unless you use mineral fertilizers like ammonia, urine, nitrates, rock dust etc... in that case they can't form a rhizosphere anymore) and exchange nutrients. Some plants are good at phosphorus, some at nitrogen. And they exchange it through fungi, the conductors of this little orchestra. But when we do a veggie patch, we often do big blocks of the same thing. We also rarely have diverse hedges or flower beds right next to them, or even trees. And we also grow under a greenhouse, which often is made out of a UV filtering material. And plants need those UVs to be healthy. You can easily measure if your plant are healthy with the leaf Brix. Not the fruit or root brix, the leaf Brix, so you can compare plant to plant. If you got less than 12, Thomas Dykstra proved you'll likely have insects attacking your plants. It's great coz it's quite neat : all plants seem healthy above 12 and won't get attacked. If it's really bad, around 6, you'll have sucking insects like aphids attacking. This is why you often see aphids on fava beans at the end of their production : they're about to die, so aphids attack. Sometimes it's because it's fragile hybrids, like those weird roses you can buy, that'll always get attacked it seems, because they've been selected for flowers rather than health. And often aphids attack because of nitrogen excess, through fertilizing (I suspect it's the same with slugs but Thomas doesn't mention them). So any time you got an insect coming, you should ask yourself "what did I do wrong ? Not enough diversity here ? Too much manure ? Not enough light ? Too densely planted ? Not enough water ? Too much ? Is my soil too poor ? Too compacted ?" and then it becomes so much simpler... Coz instead of fighting the symptom (the insect attacking), you're fighting the cause (not providing the right growing conditions for your plant).
Lovely video, Charles!
(the cabbage looks like Berns - the leaves of Eersteling and Filderkraut are more pointed)
Thanks, it's Nagels Fruhweiss
@@CharlesDowding1nodig - ah, brilliant! Would be interested to know how happy you are with it. Haven‘t tried that particular one before.