354: Charles Dowding

Charlsea Dowding's latest book, Veg Journal - Expert No-Dig Advice, Month by Month  - published by Frances Lincoln, dropped on Peter Donegan's desk about 3 or 4 weeks ago, fresh off the printing press.A fellow member of the Garden Media Guild, on this weeks episode of the garden podcast Peter and Charles chat pretty much everything that is a cliché, a something you don't know why you garden that way but you do.We talk Charles latest book, his popularity, where it all began and of horticultural methods - how views and our knowledge of why we should do things a certain way have changed over the decades and the centuries, though not for everyone.The Sodshow is available every Friday in Spotify, all good podcast stores and www.sodshow.com  Twitter: @sodshowfacebook: The Sodshow instagram: sodshowCharles is a lead innovator of organic and especially no dig gardening, since 1983. In addition, he pioneers and publicises new methods of growing/picking/marketing salad leaves.He has created and cropped four no dig, organic market gardens, on stony, silt and clay soils. In the 1980s his garden covered 7.5 acres (3ha) of no dig beds and was less intensive than now. His growing methods are as applicable in small areas as in large ones.Currently he crops an intensive 0.25 acres/1000 square metres in Somerset, SW England, for local sales of salad leaves and vegetables.He has written nine books, runs a You Tube channel, writes for national gardening magazines, appears on BBC gardening programmes and gives talks/courses at home and abroad.web: charlesdowding.co.uktwitter: @charlesdowdingYT: Charles Dowding