Myths - what you don’t need to do
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No Dig Gardening

If you learn just one thing from this lesson, may it be to question things which you feel don’t make sense. I call them myths or misunderstandings, and they are common. Worse, they are often perpetrated by people in positions of authority, or those who claim superior knowledge.

Positions of authority do not automatically result in true statements – I am not wishing to be critical of anyone, just saying how it is. I feel that more of us need to ask the questions which our hunches suggest, in order to move forward our understandings and methods.

I received this comment on YouTube from Daniel Foster on 10 February 2019, commenting on my Myths video:

‘I have been gardening/growing/advising for nearly forty years and I wholeheartedly endorse what you say. By coincidence, I also grew an excellent crop of parsnips that season (2016) on ground where I had applied a thick mulch of compost and manure. As you say, the tradition of inventing myths, over-complicating things and making lazy assumptions is also true in other aspects of life. It’s all about disempowering the public, so the “experts” can create an easy role (and career) for themselves. Whereas real experts (like you) actually build peoples’ confidence, encourage them to learn from their own observations and trust in their own instincts.’

I want to build your confidence through understandings that work. This may at first seem odd, because many misunderstandings are deeply rooted, to the point that you may think ‘surely that can’t be wrong’.

We need to search a bit for the origins of established beliefs, to understand the confusions and extra work they cause. Digging is the main myth, and many others are related to it – crop rotation for example.

Myth 1 – Crop rotation in farming
Myth 2 – Crop rotation in gardening
Myth 3 – Feeding plants
Myth 4 – Compost ‘fertility’
Myth 5 – Roots
Myth 6 – Tree planting
Myth 7 – Compost for potting
Myth 8 – Compost heaps
Myth 9 – The three sisters
Myth 10 – Reverence for the Victorians
Myth 11 – Store root vegetables in sand
Myth 12 – Hardening seedlings before planting
Myth 13 – Feeding tomatoes
Myth 14 – Compost holds nutrients
Step 15
Step 15
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Further Reading

More information can be found in my book: ‘Gardening Myths and Misconceptions

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