No Dig Gardening: Grow More, Work Less - A Simple Guide to No Till Gardening

The soil is the source of food and life for all land dwellers including us humans. But for the soil to provide for life, the soil itself should also be "alive" having good bio-diversity and nutrients. Unfortunately, as evolution had it, agriculture too became "industrialized and commercialized". For hundreds of years, we humans made the mistake of tilling and digging to grow only specific crops/plants. Little did we know, we were actually killing the soil, the source of life. On top of tilling and digging, we also introduced harmful pesticides and herbicides for what we wrongly thought were bad weeds. By so doing, we end up with dead soil or just plain dirt without ability to provide life. This excellent book is a perfect follow through for the authors previous books; Small Sale Permaculture and Soil Science. In this book, Richard Bray explains further the importance of healthy, living soil and how to bring life and biodiversity back to dead soil (although slowly). But if you enjoy gardening or even small scale farming, this book will get you up and started right away with detailed instructions on checking your soil, revitalizing it and easy setups you can begin right away. Very clear and easy to follow instructions also included on lasagna farming, straw bale farming and "hugelculture" popular in Eastern Europe. So I suggest to read this book (along with Small Sale Permaculture and Soil Science also from Richard Bray) and stop breaking your back while getting better results!

I found the book to be resourceful. It starts out explaining the reasons why we should not dig or till a garden. Then chapter 2 gives a checklist on why it is beneficial to incorporate a no dig garden. Next is the section that talks about soil which goes into great detail. You will find more information about weeds, composting and what you can do to create your no dig garden and maintain it. It continues on to talk about gardening and companion planting. Although the companion planting section is broken up in two different sections and the chart repeats itself on page 72 and 104. I think those sections would have been better merged together. On page 11, the section on How to use nature as a model for no dig gardening, No. 1 and No. 2 paragraphs are repeated. Not sure if that was a intended or a typo. The book is easy to read and written in black and white so there are no eye popping pages, but maybe that doesn't matter to some people. In conclusion, I found this book to have a lot of helpful information. If you are looking to incorporate a no dig gardening method, you will find this book to be very resourceful with a lot of extra information for gardening. It's worth the purchase.

Every time I read a new Richard Bray book, I gain additional garden knowledge. I started reading this book right around the time I started planting my cold weather plants. I spent more time on developing a planting plan that included crop rotation and complimentary planting. I had one area of the garden which had a very robust weed. I did my best to disturb the soil as little as possible. This will be the first year of using the no till method. It was great learning more about weeds and how to deal with them. It was also great to learn that I should leave more of the debris like the cut weeds to decompose in the beds instead of taking them out of the garden. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to start or improve their gardening experience.

The book “No Dig Gardening” by Richard Bray is a brief and to the point guidebook on how to use no dig gardening to maximize your yield in small spaces and get even not so good soil to yield vegetables and flowers with less work than traditional gardening. The author does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the newer method of gardening and the book is split up into a logical order of chapters, starting a basic introduction and then covering benefits of no-dig gardening, such as soil improvement, and then providing tips on how to establish and then maintain the garden. In a little bit over 100 pages, the reader will get a comprehensive overview that should enable the reader to start a no dig garden and reap the benefits of letting the garden improve without tilling and disturbing the soil on a regular basis. The author stresses that soil left alone will improve overtime and even weeds are not an issue if covered by mulch and compost. The soil will improve with earthworms contributing to the better soil and enabling all kinds of plants to grow, even in soil that started off being a relatively poor soil. Benefits of no dig gardening besides less work involved, include less water needed, less or no need to purchase expensive plant food, fertilizer and overall, thereby reducing the environmental impact of establishing and maintaining your garden. Composting and mulch are important in improving the soil and if you dare, you can also increase the presence of earthworm, which also contribute to a better soil. To get the reader started with composting, which is not that difficult to do and helps with reducing waste in landfills, the author has included a nice write up on the various way to compost. Once you are ready to plant, the author has also a nice graphic to show which plants do well if planted together and which combinations should be avoided. In addition to many graphics, one table stood out to me; the author included a table to show in which growth zone which plants are suitable to block weeds or best for erosion controls. The information in one such table is incredibly helpful for any gardener and shows the research the author has done to make this book suitable to a variety of readers. Overall, this book is a nice introduction to no dig gardening with many helpful tips but does not overload the novice no dig gardener with too much information. A very helpful book that I can recommend.

Bought as a Christmas Gift, looks a good read.

It's an easy read with basic information that is generally correct but not always. There are no references. The Planting Calendar offers by month suggestions but lacks climate zone information and/or frost dates. This is a generic introduction to the concept of no-dig gardening. Suitable for a beginning gardener.

Good book great ideas

Good read,

Richard Bray has been writing about how to create and maintain small scale, sustainable, permaculture gardens for a long time. He consistently champions the importance of soil health and this book is another great example of this. He coherently explains the why's and wherefores of a no dig gardening approach through careful explanation and practical guidance. It's an approach that I have been wanting to try for quite a while but have been lost as to how to start building it into my gardening. I really liked the way that this book gives me all the knowledge and tips that I need to start the approach myself. I can give no higher praise than to say that I am going to focus on the approach this growing season and would not have done so were it not for this book. So, a big thank you and I look forward to seeing the results.