Welcome to the home page of Charles Dowding
Charles Dowding
This site has information and pointers to growing higher quality vegetables and fruit, over longer periods, and with a different approach to handling your soil, see NO DIG. I have grown vegetables without soil tillage for two and a half decades. The continual success of this approach leads me to explain it more fully for those who seek a less weedy garden and more abundant harvests.
My first book, "Organic Gardening the Natural, No Dig Way" explains some fundamentals and has much information on vegetable growing that is often overlooked. This is because I have more experience of growing than most other writers and at the same time, in my passion to experiment and find better methods, I have tested the limits more!
My work of producing salad leaves for sale in this part of Somerset has also led me to a keen appreciation of the qualities of different salad plants and how to achieve the best and most continuous harvests. A second book "Salad Leaves For All Seasons" is one result of this process.
In between days in the garden, I still write and give talks and run day courses here.
From Jane Powers, Irish Times gardening correspondent:
“I bought both of your books a couple of weeks ago, and I love them. I am so cheered by your account of things such as individual lettuce plants that have been cropped for months. I've been using this method here for ages, but had never actually calculated the ages of the plants. Our Victorian town soil is so dry and poor (despite tons of compost et alia) that nothing likes to bulk up anyway, so leaf-picking makes far more sense. And I love your no-dig records and experiments. Thanks for sharing your research.”
Salad Leaves For All Seasons is chosen as one of the year's top ten gardening books!
Click here to read some of the panel's comments...
Taming an overgrown allotment...
Allotments are big, too big for most people to dig over and clear in a weekend. Start by clearing a manageable part at first, even just a tenth, maybe also see if a friend would like to share both the work and the produce with you. A small area well-tended is more productive and fun than a larger, weedy and half empty space.
Read more...
From Nigel Slater's food column, Observer magazine, April 20th 2008.
“A little book came this week that will ensure I exploit every leafy possibility throughout the year. Salad Leaves for All Seasons (£10.95, Green Books) is Charles Dowding’s must-have for those besotted with young green leaves. He tells us how to grow lettuce in a window box and beetroot in a pot, and how to plant for leaves to harvest on the coldest days of the year. For the gardener there are planting plans and sowing instructions and hints to planting by the moon. As well as salads for window boxes, allotments and gardens, there is also much for the cook, which is why I mention it. Dowding’s unpretentious little book includes a guide to the flavour of each and every salad leaf. The only letdown is that even a man who picks salad leaves 365 days a year still hasn’t found the perfect slug deterrent.”
Radio 4's The Long View
Charles Dowding appeared on Radio 4 's The Long View in November as historian for The Peckham Centre,
established in 1935 to discover better ways of achieving and maintaining lasting good health in it's
1,000+ members of the working population in SE London. The opportunities created by it's two founding doctors
for families to enjoy regular exercise, socialise actively with other members and purchase both
organic vegetables and unpasteurised milk, achieved striking results that were only diluted by closure of
the centre for World War 2 and subsequent financial difficulties.
See "The Peckham Experiment" by Innes H Pearse and Lucy H Crocker,
published 1943 & more recently in 1985 by Scottish Academic Press.
Also click here for further information about the Peckham Experiment.
Salad Leaves for all Seasons - Organic Growing from Pot to Plot
How to grow healthy, tasty salad leaves all year round.
Small is beautiful, less is more; a salad a day - but not the supermarket way. This compendium of practical methods for growing a wide variety of salads throughout the year, will inspire you to grow your own, whether on a windowsill, in your garden or on the allotment.
Here is all the information you need for productive, healthy and tasty salads. Learn the subtleties of salad seasons and virtues of different leaves throughout the year. And when your table is groaning with the abundance of your harvests, there are delicious and imaginative recipes from Susie, Charles' wife, exploiting the fantastic flavours, colour and vitality of home-grown salad leaves
Read more..."This is the book I have been waiting for - fascinating for the gardener, essential for the cook".
Nigel Slater
Available NOW from Green Books.
www.greenbooks.co.uk
"Foliar Feeding" RHS article from The Garden, September 2007
In the fourth part of her series on taste, Christine McFadden samples a mouthwatering medley of salad
leaves, from subtle to spicy.
Photography by Tim Sandall
We tend to take salad for granted, throwing a few lettuce leaves into a bowl or, if feeling more adventurous, buying a bagged salad. Convenient though these packs may be, their ubiquitous presence lulls many of us into forgetting the fresh, bright flavours of home-grown leaves.
The enormous variety of seeds now available can provide us with a year-round supply of leaves.They can be grown in small quantities in a limited space, ready for picking as needed. Most are troublefreeand can be harvested gratifyingly soon after sowing.Their flavour will be far better than bagged equivalents.
Unlike strawberries and tomatoes (see The Garden,July, pp482-485 and August, pp542-545), salad leaves do not divulge many clues as to how they will taste; they lack the seductive aromas that get the mouth watering for other produce.They do,however,have qualities that give them their own particular allure - sprightly crispness, refreshing colours and a range of complex and appetising flavours.
I investigated these qualities last September when I joined the third in a series of tastings led by Raymond Blanc, Chef Patron of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, Oxfordshire. This time we sampled an impressive selection of leaves grown by panel member Charles Dowding (see box, p605) in his Somerset garden, and were intent on exploring the qualities that make a salad leaf outstanding.
Read the full article...
