[VintherParticipant]

Hi Colin,

I’ve had the same thoughts, and come to the conclusion that the calendar reflects Charles’ personal work scheme. As a market gardener he needs a lot of plants and properly split them into several batches in order not to have a zillion plants to be sowed, pricked, transplanted and harvested at the same time.

I only sow a particular vegetable the first time it it mentioned in the calendar for the first crop. This is my first season as a ‘Charles Dowding follower’ and my challenge will be to work out from Charles’ calendar if a subsequent sowing recommendation represents the second (autumn/winter) crop, or is one of several first batches.

Does this make sense?

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Peter,

This is my first season of no-dig and Charles’ gardening principles, and I’m following Charles’ 2019 Calendar, so today (Valentine’s day) is the big sowing day for the first set of crops. I’m going to germinate the seeds indoors and prick them out into module trays, and the move them to my electrical hot bed in my unheated greenhouse. My hotbed is 60×120 cm and powered by a 300w heat cable burred in sand. Pretty much the same setup as you have. I’ve added a temperature regulator to my hot bed, as 300w is a bit hefty most of the times, and when the ambient temperature is mild (5-10 Celsius) the heat is only switched on some of the time. Charles’ hotbed is made of fresh horse manure, and I remember correctly the soil temperature in his module trays were about 20 Celsius (at least the day he made his video).

I see you heat cable is 25w, and I suspect this is a bit at the low end. Have you measured your soil temperature?

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Ken,

Basically I can’t see the benifits of growing green manure. My thinking is that the greenry takes out nutrients from the soild when growing, and after decomposing, the same amount of nutrients is returned to the soil, i.e. netto addition of nutrients is zero.

Growing deep-rooted green manure might be beneficial to the soil structure on very compact and heavy soil, but i think applying no-dig and adding an anual mulch of compost will give the same benifits – mayby after a few years.

I could be wrong 🙂

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Wellies,

According to Charles, the nutrients in ripe compost is NOT water soluble, and thus does not get washed out by rain. I use black plastic cover when establishing new beds, on top of the compost mulch and pasture, to block out all light and rain (i’m not really sure why Charles recommend keeping out rain when establishing new beds, but is expect it is beneficial for the decomposition of the compost into readily absorbable nutrients and soil micro life and structure in general (fungi etc)

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Beverly,

Thank you for explaining. Now i understand 🙂

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

@mascon,

My memory may fail me, but as i recall from Charles’ video on compsting, temperatures between 60c and 75c is perfect. Above 60c to kill weed seeds and below 75c to prevent killing off the good micro life in the compost.

Erik

[VintherParticipant]

@Ron,

Of course your input is welcome. Your two beds look really nice. Did you make the beds on top of the lawn or was the grounds clear beforehand? Your open compost heap I expect will produce fine compost as well. I prefer a wooden frame around my compost and covering it inside with cardboard – as you rustic one – to exclude all light.

Erik

[VintherParticipant]

@mascon,

Thanks, I have watched Charles’ video on composting – several times actually. Charles is such a wealth of information and his videos are so informative and inspirational, and I did try to build my compost according to his recommendation. One fact I have overlooked is – as you pointed out – is that the heap cools down after some time, so I hope this is the case with my compost. I only recently acquired a 50 cm soil thermometer so I don’t know what the initial temperature was. Maybe I should turn the heap now that 4-5 weeks have passed?

Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Mascon,

Your message is very interesting. I build a compost heep in early december using alternate layers og green and brown, and i was hoping for a lovely supply of compost in the spring/early summer. However, i just checked the middle temperature yesterday, and it was disapointingly only +10c above ambient temperature (currently 3-5 deg during the day and minus 3-5 in the night). The matarial was moist when i build the compost, so i didn’t add any water. The compost container is only about 75×75+75 so mayby that is the problem. It is made of wooden boards with with air cracks, and i have covered it inside with cardboard to exclude any light, and PE on top to keep the rain out.

When you build you compost, did you mix all the mateials evenly before adding to the compost, or added it in layers?

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hello again,
I’ve etablished four new beds with wooden sides on the lawn with a total area of 16 m2 (not much compared to Homeacres, i know, but compared to the poxy 8 m2 i had, it’s a major expansion :). The amount of required municipal compost for a 15 cm layre in all four beds is 2.25 m3 which would mean a lot of visits to the recycling plant with a car trailor, so i chose the easy way out, and bought 4 m3 ripe horse manure compost, delivered in a two bigbags. I’ve now filled the beds with 15 cm of horse manure compost and only wishing we were entering the first month of spring and not the first month of winter 🙁

The 15 cm compost layer should be enough as a weed killing mulch in itself (i do not have much perennial weeds in my lawn, except a few dandelions here and there), but would it still be beneficial for the soil health to cover the beds with PE until the spring? (I’m not worried about the paths as I’m going to coved them with concrete slabs)

Regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Christine,
If your onion sets are stored in a dry and cool’ish environment, they are good to go for the spring. I haven’t any experience in storing onion sets for more then one season. Regarding your seeds, the germination frequence will always drop over time, and it’s not that it will drop to 0% in one year if stored at room temperature. I’m not and expert, but i think low humidity is more important then temperature. As Charles shows in his videos, broad sowing and subsequent pricking of the seedlings into plugg cells is a very good idea in any case. It’s a very space saving and efficient way of raising plants. I think there are exception like beans and peas, which i don’t think is suitable for pricking. However, Charles are showing us that so many ‘old teachings’ and dogmas just doesn’t hold true or doesn’t apply to no-dig gardening, so he may have another opinion 🙂

regards
Erik

[VintherParticipant]

Thanks Charles

[VintherParticipant]

Perfect, thanks Charles

[VintherParticipant]

Hi Charles, thank you for your answer. Can i just say thank you so much for sharing your immense knowledge and experince and for making it all available to us all in the form of very instructive videos, articles and books (just order some of your books and looking so much forward to getting them)

THANK YOU

Erik

[Author]

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