No-Dig Gardening for Beginners: Step-by-Step Guide with Cardboard and Compost

I've been putting down a mixture of compost & fertilizer before the cardboard, as the soil is quite depleted. Then making a small hole in the cardboard where I put the plant. I cover this with more compost & a generous amount of mulch and then bird netting.
It's a bit different to your method but I'm building up the soil. I absolutely have to use netting. It holds down the mulch and covers the plants so the birds can't dig them up - which they do if there's no netting.

Can I use wooden shavings from my local timber merchants instead of prepackaged woodchip to mulch with after adding top soil as per your video

After watching this video a few times I'm finally making my own mini no dig bed. thank you Charles ❤

Oh I wish that I had known these things when I had my allotment years ago: we had couche grass and it was awful........

How do you feel about bokashi

We just bought property next door that is cleared and I want to try to grow a friendly renewing carbon garden bed...I live by the Ocean in Washington, State. Mostly forested lands but in our little city we have small garden beds. But I miss growing in nature with the natural effects of plant life from natural plants and detreating material. Thank you for this class for my growing, I am 76 going on 77 and been gardening since I was 11. Came from Farming families that settled this country.

What about sawdust in place of wood chip for paths…

It really does not work if you have mares tail or bindweed. Or deep taproots of nettles etc. tried this and it’s utter rubbish.

Greetings. I want to start a few beds follow-through no dig method. Question.....I have horse manure mixed with the ground soil and I wanted to mix that with equal parts ..planting soil
????? Would that be a good soil?

Thank you for showing how.easy it can be. I'm.currently struggling finding enough materials to.layer m6 lasagna garden. If I had all my compost ready this.would be ideal. By next year I'll be ready though. Thank you!

One of my favourite things to say to kids/adults is clean soil is the best to play in!
I lived in the heart of a big city, and loved taking my kids out to the countryside and let them get dirty and play. I know that smell of clean fresh dirt was so healthy! 💛
I love your vlogs thank you, now I live in the countryside and growing real food the no dig way thank you 💛

Thank you for this because we actually get to see how much compost is needed in order to to your planting.

Well done video thank you

A co ze ślimakami nagimi?
One rozmnażają się pod takimi kartonami,kamieniami i wszystkim co się da.

I'm just starting this project extensively preparing for Spring 2024 on a yard covered in weeds. I found that car auto-body shops have huge amounts of the best big sheets of clean cardboard

❤

Trying my luck at sharing something you might not know, Charles.
The dandelion is completely edible.roots, leaves, younger are not chewy & flowers.
Off grid with Doug & Stacy.
Taught me that.
😀

Interesting video, a couple of questions though : 1) Re potato growing, how do the roots grow down if they are on a bed of cardboard and 2, re using compost, other gardeners say that doing so just burns the plant roots.

Can we use black cow manure and compost on top of cardboard which i will put on 1 yr old raised garden bed. Thank you

Hello Charles, love your video's! I have two questions maybe you can answer. After a few years of waiting i finally got an allotment. A quite big one also i might say (320 m2). On 2 parts there is a lot of couch grass growing. Long white roots that go quite deep. Since i don't have acces to big amounts of compost at the moment i tried digging it out but as you mentioned that is nog working quite that well :)

Question one: Besides making your own i see you bring in external compost. Our city gives out free compost twice a year but it contains a lot of plastic and apparently (was in the news last year) also heavy metals, PFAS and other harmfull stuff. How do you check the quality of your compost?

Question two: In our allotment it's all old school diggers. They don't use cardboard in their compost coz they say the glue it contains is a chemical one. Plus it's made of recycled paper which also contains ink and other substances. How do you feel about that, since you use it a lot?

I'd love to be self sustaining, but can't make enough compost myself as of now.
Sorry.. lot of tekst..

Hey Charles, what type of boots are you wearing there? I’m looking for a more barefoot style gum boot and yours looks like they don’t have a heal which is a good thing 👍

My soil has no worms. Lots of cedar trees not sure what to do

Please show a no dig for a steep sloping back yard please! Thank you in advance!

Just try this. Once you get the hang of it you'll not want to go back. Start small.
For me the tricky part is getting clean mulch in enough quantity to do the job.
I get huge cardboard sheets FREE from body shops. (They get giant pieces shipped to them when they order car doors, tailgates, etc. )

Thank you for really demonstrating th why and how of no dig. I now feel a little foolish for digging my garden for so long.
The one bit of information I have been unable to find. How to deal with my very well dug 15 year old beds. I was thinking of walking on the soil to push it down but iam worried that I will do more harm. I have lots of worms which come for the sugar cane mulch we use to protect the soil. I am in southern Australia and have hot summer and cool winter.

Thank you for actually making a bed for us! If I’m planting a perennial bed do you just make the hole through the cardboard? I would not be planting seeds or small plants so the root ball will be larger

Hey Charles! Thank you so much for your wonderful channel - I find your videos so helpful and you are a delight :) I would love to get a no-dig veg garden going in a flat plot that's about 150m2, in Puglia, southern Italy. I'd like to make it as simple as possible, but we get some pretty heavy monsoon-like rain storms here and I was wondering...if the no dig plots don't have borders around them to contain the compost, won't the compost be washed away? Also, would borderless plots work if I wanted to put irrigation pipes in?

Keep in mind this is not organic .

Can i plant flowers rather than veg etc? thank you :)

I’m so glad I met this channel. Super guy, immensely knowledgeable.

Great video !! Should I also add wood chips on seedlings planted like carrots, beets, and Scallions??

Any advice on stopping morning glory from strangling my plants, please? Thank you.

my issue is dealing with kukuyu, kweek and knee high weeds, currently have it covered with black plastic to try get it down. Would it be better to cover it with green garden waste and then cardboard?

Thank you so much, Charles!

We have raised beds in our community garden. Would you say it is better not to use them?

Two words... Thank you 😊

Another Golden Video. Thank you.

Just discovered you through Richard Vogues channel. As a thankyou, heres a little tip for getting up single weeds. Leave the trowel behind and use an old, 2 pronged meat fork. Works wonders. (y)

I stay in the city of Cape Town, I only have concrete outside my apartment. Would it be possible for me to lay cardboard down on concrete and do this?

will cardboard keep blackberries from coming back up?

Hi Charles! Your videos are great! A question - do you think you could put fresh wood chip over cardboard around plots? I have grass in between my beds and I would prefer not to! Thanks 😊

If I used cardboard and over top put a mulch of blk bark it's a attempt to get rid of my weenie grass. I would not plant anything this year. Grass needs a good watering to keep it looking good. Then mowing. TOOO MUCH, TOO MUCH. Guess I'm not a fan of mowing. Would this be good?

SAVE SOIL!!!

I would only use carpet for the paths & in areas where I'm making an ornamental garden. Carpet decomposes quite slowly & is definitely not food-safe, being full of chemicals & plastics, tho I suppose a jute rug might be OK. I had about 2000 square feet of carpet pulled up & cut in strips to place around the perimeter of my house---makes mowing much easier. It does sort of rot & tear eventually &, as I didn't put compost or wood chips over it, the weeds grew thru very quickly---it is more porous than cardboard. However, it was quite easy to pull them out. I am planning to use this method to kill weeds & make a flower garden---got to do something with all those Amazon boxes!

Hi Charles, thank you for your videos. I have a small garden allotment and I am hoping to use some land that has been neglected for years. I have cut back various brambles, nettles etc and have been contemplating what to do next. Do you think this approach would be suitable over cut back brambles etc? Or am I best to try another approach? Thank you so much.

Does anyone know if no dig works in areas with a lot of termites? The cardboards would be gone in 3 days where I live as they happen to be very aggressive.

I have a no dip organic garden. I’m bless

New to your channel Charles. I've had an allotment for a few years now .weeding is such a time consuming way ...i.will start small as I remove produce.i can..take the weeds out.. add card board .making my own compost.....I'm in north london..cheers..x

the unknown king charles :D

Im trying the no dig methode gardening for the first time this year with 2 layers of potatoes. Its a succes, they all came up, its an easy and effective methode safing me time, effort and space..!