How to Create a New Vegetable Garden: Producing a Beautiful and Fruitful Garden from Scratch

Charles Dowding

UIT Cambridge, Feb 12, 2015 - Gardening - 256 pages

Charles Dowding draws on his years of experience, to show how easy it is to start a new vegetable garden. Any plot - whether a building site, overgrown with weeds or unwanted lawn - can be turned into a beautiful and productive vegetable area. Charles's no-nonsense and straightforward advice is the perfect starting point for the beginner or experienced gardener.

The book takes you step-by-step through:

* Planning and early stages
* Clearing the ground
* Mulch - what, why, how?
* Minimizing digging
* Sowing and planting across the seasons
* Growing in polytunnels and greenhouses

It is filled with labour-saving ideas and the techniques that Charles uses to garden so successfully and is illustrated throughout with photos and tales from Charles's first year in his new vegetable garden.

About the author

Charles Dowding is an internationally recognized organic gardening expert, and a former winner of the Garden Media Guild Practical Journalist of the Year award. He contributes articles to many magazines, including Gardeners' World, Gardens Illustrated and Grow It! He talks on radio and television, and runs courses and advises on best practice, including for the National Trust in the UK.

He is a veteran organic grower, having practised no-dig gardening for many years. In his gardens he has conducted experiments to compare differences in growth between vegetables on dug and undug soil, showing that the dug beds have slightly lower yields, and more weeds and slugs. He established a new garden from scratch, to illustrate no-dig practice and form the basis for further experimentation.

He says: "I have always been interested in looking 'behind the scenes' and asking why things are as they are, questioning practices that are taken for granted. This led me to grow organically, at a time when the chemical approach was rarely challenged."

His books for Green Books are:

• Organic Gardening: the natural, no-dig way
• Grow Organic Salad Leaves and Greens
• How to Grow Winter Vegetables
• Gardening Myths and Misconceptions
• How to Create a New Vegetable Garden

Find out more at www.charlesdowding.co.uk.

Bibliographic information

• Title: How to Create a New Vegetable Garden: Producing a Beautiful and Fruitful Garden from Scratch
• Author: Charles Dowding
• Illustrated by: Charles Dowding
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: UIT Cambridge, 2015
• ISBN: 0857842447, 9780857842442
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Gardening / Organic; Gardening / Vegetables