- 2 days ago
To celebrate No Dig Day, I'm publishing this as a Premiere on 3rd November. It's a tour of Homeacres on 27th October, one week earlier, in weather which continues mild and without frost.
As autumn draws on, you can see how the garden is still incredibly full, and how we are giving soil its annual mulch of compost underneath plants and before new plantings such as garlic.
00:00 Introducing No Dig Day
00:38 Introducing the garden tour
00:57 Spreading compost at this time of year
01:13 Brussels sprouts, and an effect of planting near trees
01:42 A no-rotation trial with leeks following potatoes, and cabbages following broad beans
02:08 Hoeing tiny weeds
02:54 Calabrese (broccoli) following kohlrabi and fennel
03:40 My main compost heap
04:19 An example of compost spreading on beds after celery harvest
05:02 Something different - garlic and mustard (after borlotti beans)
06:29 Green Luobo winter radish
07:06 Spring cabbage
07:45 Tokyo Cross turnips, with cabbage root fly
09:03 A look at another compost bay
10:38 Chinese cabbage
11:!3 Tomatoes ripening in the store, plus onions and garlic, and hay for the compost loo
12:15 A bed spread with compost and planted with garlic, shop-bought and homesaved
12:47 Celeriac
13:24 Purple sprouting broccoli, following beetroot, recently deleafed and compost then spread underneath
13:59 Savoy cabbage
14:22 More mustard and garlic
14:42 Salads and some kale, after potatoes and leeks
15:08 Multisown leeks
15:17 Recently planted multisown spring onions, which followed rye grain for bread
15:56 Fennel (bulb)
16:06 An area that was weeds and pasture eight months previously, now with mustard and rye (following squash and potatoes), plus some info on wireworms
17:37 Cabbages Savoy and Filderkraut, following a not very successful potato harvest
18:34 Asparagus Ariane F1, two plantings
19:08 Fennel planted around the asparagus
19:33 Chicories - radicchio 506TT
19:56 Chard
20:08 Spinach from homesaved seed
21:12 In the polytunnel – more homesaved seed of Grenoble Red lettuce, plus more lettuce, mustards, endive and salad rocket
21:34 Leaf damage from wood lice, as a result of woody homemade compost
22:32 Chard and coriander
22:48 Newly cleaned polytunnel plastic!
23:44 Oca, and when to harvest
24:19 Kuri squash
24:53 Beautiful flowers outside the polytunnel - echinacea, helichrysum (straw flowers), dahlias, marigolds, self-sown phacelia, small-flowered sunflower
25:57 Chervil
26:32 Zinnias, and more sunflowers and dahlias
27:18 The greenhouse - rye seedlings (with tops eaten)
28:34 Perennial kale propagated from a stem, and tomatoes propagated from side shoot
29:48 Chillies Apache
29:59 A suggestion for No Dig Day celebrations
Full details of No Dig Day on this page of my website: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/3rd-november-2022-no-dig-day/
And see this video about No Dig Day: https://youtu.be/JW89BBji2U4
Filmed by Nicola Smith on 27th October 2022, SW England 51N, zone 8 climate.
October's average temperature was 18
As autumn draws on, you can see how the garden is still incredibly full, and how we are giving soil its annual mulch of compost underneath plants and before new plantings such as garlic.
00:00 Introducing No Dig Day
00:38 Introducing the garden tour
00:57 Spreading compost at this time of year
01:13 Brussels sprouts, and an effect of planting near trees
01:42 A no-rotation trial with leeks following potatoes, and cabbages following broad beans
02:08 Hoeing tiny weeds
02:54 Calabrese (broccoli) following kohlrabi and fennel
03:40 My main compost heap
04:19 An example of compost spreading on beds after celery harvest
05:02 Something different - garlic and mustard (after borlotti beans)
06:29 Green Luobo winter radish
07:06 Spring cabbage
07:45 Tokyo Cross turnips, with cabbage root fly
09:03 A look at another compost bay
10:38 Chinese cabbage
11:!3 Tomatoes ripening in the store, plus onions and garlic, and hay for the compost loo
12:15 A bed spread with compost and planted with garlic, shop-bought and homesaved
12:47 Celeriac
13:24 Purple sprouting broccoli, following beetroot, recently deleafed and compost then spread underneath
13:59 Savoy cabbage
14:22 More mustard and garlic
14:42 Salads and some kale, after potatoes and leeks
15:08 Multisown leeks
15:17 Recently planted multisown spring onions, which followed rye grain for bread
15:56 Fennel (bulb)
16:06 An area that was weeds and pasture eight months previously, now with mustard and rye (following squash and potatoes), plus some info on wireworms
17:37 Cabbages Savoy and Filderkraut, following a not very successful potato harvest
18:34 Asparagus Ariane F1, two plantings
19:08 Fennel planted around the asparagus
19:33 Chicories - radicchio 506TT
19:56 Chard
20:08 Spinach from homesaved seed
21:12 In the polytunnel – more homesaved seed of Grenoble Red lettuce, plus more lettuce, mustards, endive and salad rocket
21:34 Leaf damage from wood lice, as a result of woody homemade compost
22:32 Chard and coriander
22:48 Newly cleaned polytunnel plastic!
23:44 Oca, and when to harvest
24:19 Kuri squash
24:53 Beautiful flowers outside the polytunnel - echinacea, helichrysum (straw flowers), dahlias, marigolds, self-sown phacelia, small-flowered sunflower
25:57 Chervil
26:32 Zinnias, and more sunflowers and dahlias
27:18 The greenhouse - rye seedlings (with tops eaten)
28:34 Perennial kale propagated from a stem, and tomatoes propagated from side shoot
29:48 Chillies Apache
29:59 A suggestion for No Dig Day celebrations
Full details of No Dig Day on this page of my website: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/3rd-november-2022-no-dig-day/
And see this video about No Dig Day: https://youtu.be/JW89BBji2U4
Filmed by Nicola Smith on 27th October 2022, SW England 51N, zone 8 climate.
October's average temperature was 18
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Welcome to my premiere video at Homeacres No-Dig Garden on
00:06No-Dig Day, the first ever
00:10We're holding them every year. Thanks for joining and it's a celebration of all the beauty beautiful things about No
00:16-Dig
00:17And you can find out more actually on a video we posted a week ago. It's got things like caption
00:21competition
00:22We put up a silly photo on my website. Have a look on the page there No-Dig Day
00:26You'll see it and send us the funniest caption you can think of
00:30You could win a prize a book and there's a competition for children and there's free gifts as well just
00:36on this one day
00:38So it is now actually the very end of October because we're filming this a little bit early in order
00:45to have everything ready
00:46I wouldn't have time on No-Dig Day
00:48to do this because I want to show you all the beautiful food at Homeacres that's growing now and
00:54We're ready for winter as you can see with Brussels sprouts and we've also thinking ahead to next year with
00:59No-Dig
00:59It's a good time of year to be spreading compost
01:02This is actually homemade compost and
01:05We put it on just this week
01:07Having delete the sprouts a bit so you can see there's room to get underneath
01:12The sprouts are a bit small actually the plants because it's been very dry this summer
01:16They struggled a bit and also this trees a bit close if you've got vegetables close to trees
01:20It can take a lot of moisture in the summer
01:24Everything here though is a second planting and we have watered them
01:28All of these plants a lot in the summer. We're not anymore. Thank goodness. We've just had actually
01:34Quite a lot of rain in the last week around three inches
01:3770 millimeters or so so that's fantastic. We really needed it and
01:42This is where I'm doing a no rotation trial. This is the eighth year in a row of leaks in
01:47the same bed and
01:49And next to it we have eighth year in a row of cabbages in the same bed same saw
01:55They're following broad beans every year. It's broad beans cabbage
01:59And that's every year potatoes leaks and we had this year fantastic potatoes 58 kilos
02:08Here I want to show you something a little bit
02:12Useful I did mention it in my last video the September tour and it's
02:19Hoeing tiny weeds. They're so small. I'm actually struggling a bit to see them
02:24Yes, there they are. So
02:27Don't know if you can see I hope you can let
02:29What I'm emphasizing here is that the size of the weeds they're so small you can literally see them
02:34The old saying is how your weeds before you see them and I use a hoe like this just to
02:38run through so even at this time of year
02:41in
02:42late October you can still do this in November
02:45If you have a dry afternoon such as we have at the moment, it's rain
02:49But now it's just dried enough that you can disturb those tiny weeds
02:53And we have a beautiful planting behind them this
02:57Calabrese we we call it Calabrese although it's broccoli is another word for it
03:02This I sewed on June the 12th. We planted it on July the 12th
03:06Following kohlrabi and fennel
03:08I'm not doing rotation here as you might have noticed so you're free with no dig solid so healthy. You're
03:13free to plant
03:16Pretty much anything at any time. It's more about timing and look what this Calabrese has done. It gave a
03:21lovely big head there
03:23I cut the top off and
03:25It sent up a side shoot which has made another big head. It's quite unusual that actually
03:31It's just celebrating life, but we've had unusual warm weather this October. It's really helped
03:36Late plantings like that. So we're enjoying super harvest and
03:41Here is the current compost heap where
03:44I've got different composting bays on the go. This is the main one
03:47We can make up to two tons of compost in one of these and it takes about six weeks for
03:51us to fill it
03:52So you can see we've got mix of green and brown brown includes even roots with a bit of soil
03:57or compost on
03:58Paper and cardboard that kind of thing and we've put in quite a bit of soil and wood
04:02The wood holds the structure and air in the heat
04:05Because we've got a roof on to keep most of the rain out makes nice compost
04:09We'll turn them once that can be up to two tons there. So
04:12Maybe making as much as 10 tons of compost
04:14um
04:15In there this year, but that's helped by wood chip we bring in
04:19Then there's asparagus here, which is now in its 10th year
04:23And you can see the
04:25Tops are going a bit yellow
04:27Which is a sign that won't live for much longer. Actually they're later than usual because of the warm weather
04:32We've had only one slight frost. We'll cut those down to the base in about two weeks time
04:43In the main garden here, there's a nice example of again of compost spreading where celery finished there and
04:52After removing the main top of the root not all the roots just put the compost on top that bed's
04:58now ready for cropping next year
05:02And here i'm trying something different
05:06I have no idea how this will work yet, but it I think there's a good chance. So it was
05:10bolotti beans we had
05:12In this area where you can see this
05:15Mustard it's called synapsis alba. It's a white mustard
05:18Quite a thick sowing. It was only sown three weeks ago and
05:2310 days ago
05:25We planted garlic. So that's home-saved garlic. Actually, there's a mix of garlic some garlic from the garlic farm
05:32Who do great seed garlic?
05:35It's not cheap, but it's really good quality and you can actually save your own seed from that
05:40That area to give you an idea that gave five and a half kilos of dry beans. That was the
05:44bolotti beans
05:46And they're now in store in the house and the idea with the garlic is that
05:51You know garlic doesn't need
05:54Space and light at the moment. It just needs a bit of soil to get its roots down which it's
05:57got there
05:58The mustard will grow up in the winter enriching the soil and keeping it really lively
06:02and then
06:04Either the mustard will be killed by frost if we get a frost like a minus 4 25 fahrenheit frost
06:10Or we'll just pull it out. It gets quite weak by the end of the winter and then all being
06:14well
06:14You'll have to check out on the next the spring tour in february march. We'll see some garlic there looking
06:20vibrant
06:20I'm worried about rust. We've had a lot of rust on garlic like a lot of you have and
06:25You know, I'm thinking maybe this will help
06:29Look at these beauties here. This is
06:31green luobo winter radish
06:34And the amazing thing about them is they have not been in the ground for very long though
06:39So in 29th july and transplanted there four weeks after that around the 23rd of august
06:47So that's not much more than two months ago
06:50But the nice thing about them is they're
06:53A much more fruity flavor than like normal radish. They're not just hot and pungent. They've got really good taste
07:00A shout out to
07:02Suzanne Walsh there actually who gave me the seed
07:07Fantastic spring cabbage which i'm a little bit worried about because they're so big
07:11They only went in the ground
07:14six weeks ago and
07:18You can actually see them as tiny seedlings on a video we posted
07:21Shortly after i planted them actually got the seed tray in my hand in that video
07:25The idea with these is that they don't get too big before winter and then they do their final major
07:31growth in the early spring
07:32Late winter early spring when they'll be really precious
07:34So I don't want them to grow much more but because we're having this really warm water
07:39And sometimes, you know, you don't know the weather ahead and
07:43Doesn't always go to plan but they could still be okay
07:46Here i've got a pest that I want to show you
07:49See this lovely turnip these are beautiful these turnips it's
07:53Tokyo cross f1 hybrid that was developed by the japanese after world war 2 when there were food shortages
08:00And they grow really fast. So these again have been in the ground multi-sown as you can see transplanted.
08:06I've taken one out already
08:07We aim for four and they look good, but they've got a pest problem and there is that's cabbage root
08:13fly
08:14So i'm showing you this just as a
08:16Warning and you see how that it's eaten even in there. It's a bit like carrot root fly, you know,
08:22they burrow into the root that we want to eat
08:26And there i've got most of that so that would be all edible and actually these turnips you you can
08:31eat them raw like this
08:32I don't know if you can see how beautifully dense and firm that texture is a little bit of a
08:37tough skin sometimes
08:38I'll take that off actually but that now
08:44I wish I could convey that flavor to you. It's really sweet not like a normal turnip
08:49That's why I grow them. I actually don't like normal turnips
08:53I like swedes
08:55But these tokyo cross work worth a try fast and sweet
09:02Now the compost this is different composting here and again like you can see this on a video
09:09We put up about six weeks ago
09:12Very simple method. We've put quite a bit of stuff in recently and that's helped the temperature go up
09:17But it's not that hot actually. It's not enough. That's not enough heat to kill the weed seeds
09:23However, we're not putting many wheaties in there. So i'm i'm happy we're making beautiful compost here
09:28And it takes between four and six months to be finished
09:32Again, you can see a mix of green and brown. It's quite a few tree leaves actually because
09:37Trees around the edge of home acres and when adam's mowing he they just collected in the lawnmower. This is
09:42really handy
09:42You've got a nice mix
09:44Heaps lined with cardboard keep the warmth in
09:47And moisture and that's the result there
09:49We've been spreading this this week. There was a good ton of compost in there
09:53From both heaps on either side
09:55And that's what's left which will be going out very soon
10:00And that will free up the space because we need to turn
10:03This heap
10:05Into there because this one finished six weeks ago
10:09We often turn them between four and six weeks after finishing
10:12That one will be turned into there and then this one also in about six weeks time will be turned
10:17into there
10:17And then we'll have two bays in one lots of lovely compost for spreading probably
10:22late winter early spring
10:25Mostly i'm looking to get the compost on
10:27before christmas
10:29But it's absolutely not written in stone. You know, you can spread compost at any time of year if your
10:34soul needs it
10:34But it fits very nicely with the natural cycle. Oh, I must mention these chinese cabbage
10:40uh, just look at these beauties the
10:44Um outer leaves get very eaten on them. So
10:47We went through a couple of days ago and removed most of them. You can see how there you've got
10:51a very eaten outer leaf and
10:53The heart well, I hope there's nothing in there actually. Yeah, the heart's looking good beautiful and dense tight hearts
11:01Not an easy vegetable to grow if you succeed with chinese cabbage you're doing well
11:05They were sown on the 4th of august
11:07In our climate, that's a very good time for sowing the first week of august
11:13In the store here
11:15We have these beautiful tomatoes which
11:18Came from plants that we cleared
11:20Ah two weeks ago just before planting the salads and the polytunnel
11:25Just over two weeks ago actually two and a half weeks. So they've been in here. It's not too warm
11:30And you can see underneath there's some less right ones
11:34Which still have a good chance of ripening
11:37The dark one in case you're wondering that's and that's actually quite right. That's called sergeant peppers
11:42And it's pretty good flavor too. There's a beautiful indigo top
11:46And red red flesh
11:48And onions as well keeping nicely in here
11:50So they were harvested in july and the bed where they were growing is now salad rocket for example in
11:56mustard salads for the autumn
11:58There's garlic in here as well and everything and behind me at the back is
12:02There's hay which we scythed from the meadow in june
12:08And that's for putting in the compost loo on the side where we where we do the pea
12:14Here you can see more compost spread and that's got garlic in
12:20And it's really interesting how
12:23What's going on here? It's like this two rows
12:26That's garlic that came from a local store
12:29Just to see i've no idea what the variety is
12:32So it's it's shop bought garlic and wow it's fast
12:37Compared to the garlic which is actually from my home. So
12:42bulbs further up
12:44We'll see how that survives the winter it could well be really good the celeriac
12:49Has been very good this year in the end. It's had a difficult summer. We didn't water the celeriac very
12:53much
12:54I was a bit worried about it
12:56In early august and then we did start watering around the middle of august
13:00And a lot of yellow leaves small bulbs, but they're really still swelling and you can see that's helped by
13:05the leaves being very green still
13:07It's an amazing vegetable if you get an open autumn
13:11It can put on a lot of weight at this time of year if your leaves stay healthy
13:14There is a disease that we do get on some celeries
13:16celeriac sorry
13:18Which is called septoria but luckily none there
13:22And look at the growth of these because
13:26They amaze me
13:28This is purple sprouting broccoli which
13:31went in after beetroot
13:34And they've not been in the ground more than three and a half months actually
13:38They've transplanted around the middle of july
13:42And we've just delete the bottom as you can see take off the lower bottom leaves and then again spread
13:47compost
13:48On there. There's a bit of mushroom compost on top
13:51I'd buy a small amount of compost as well to use sometimes
13:54I can't make enough for everything I need here
13:58the savoy cabbage we interplanted between onions
14:03and they
14:04They should crop sometime in the winter. I love them because they're so frost hardy
14:09We might need to put a netting over them against pigeons
14:12But they resist all the weather and they can give you lovely food in really cold weather much colder climates
14:19than here
14:22This is more mustard than garlic
14:24This mustard was sown about 10 days after the the what we saw down there's not so rapid as a
14:30result
14:31But that's fine
14:33We've passed the time when you could sow mustard like this. I'm not doing any more sowing of cover crops
14:38There's just one little thing you can do we'll see right at the end of the video
14:42Here we had potatoes
14:45And they're now all in
14:46The shed as I call them which actually the brick lean to next to my house in sacks
14:50They keep for quite a while and we harvested them around 20th july and then
14:56transplanted leek straight away in really hot weather a lot of hand watering and then the salads a bit after
15:00that with a bit of kale
15:01So we're picking those salads every week. They go in my salad bags that we're selling
15:07The leeks are multi-sown and we've picked quite a few already. That's a very nice way to grow leeks
15:12You don't get monsters, but you get lots of medium ones
15:16And this area where you can see quite recently planted spring onions
15:23Which was sown early september multi-sown and transplanted here
15:28Probably about the first of october
15:30Four weeks ago five weeks
15:32This grew my rye grain so from this area that you can see with the
15:36Spring onions that was six loaves big loaves of rye bread
15:41And to find out more about that we've made a video again. You can see
15:45And how i've thrashed it out and baked the bread i'm going to do another video actually about with a
15:50bit more detail about
15:51Making the bread and starting how to start a sourdough starter
15:55Up there also there's some very nice fennel and that was sown
15:59Late july transplanted about a month after that really good time for bulb fennel
16:07This area was all weeds and pasture
16:10Eight months ago
16:12And then we spread seven centimeters three inch compost put black polythene on top transplanted
16:19Three months later when it was warm enough butternut squash and crown print squash and a few potatoes in
16:26Now again, there's more of that mustard
16:28And here we have rye
16:30This is my rye area of expanding and becoming a cereal farmer
16:35Not just like oh this has been so much work already because for some reason well not for some reason
16:41I think it's wire worms love rye. This is what we've really noticed that
16:45There's no wire worms under that mustard that we've been able to find but there's loads here hundreds
16:50And actually this afternoon again
16:52Adam and Taryn were lifting
16:54The rye actually lifting them out pulling out all the wire worms
16:59and
16:59uh
17:00Getting rid of them pouring boiling water on them actually
17:03I don't like those fellas
17:05And then replanting the rye. We'll see how it goes
17:08I'm new to growing grain and what we've done is put potatoes in as kind of traps for the wire
17:13worm
17:14Which you can then
17:16Shake out or dig out however, and
17:19I need to get rid of them. We'll see what happens because
17:21You know, they could be coming in from all the surrounding pastures. It's really hard to tell
17:26for me
17:29When it comes to vegetables, I feel I know what I'm doing. It's fascinating though to try new things
17:37So yeah cabbages
17:39This is where we actually we had a bit of a hiccup the potatoes in this area were not brilliant
17:44And we had a small harvest there was a lot of wood chip that didn't work
17:48So we ended up taking off the wood chip and put down
17:52Two inches of green waste compost the lovely black stuff and then popped in these cabbage and
17:59They're doing all right. They went in very late
18:01And that's a f1 hybrid savoy which as you can see is much more fast at hearting than the ones
18:07we saw just now
18:08And this is filderkrout
18:10The wonderful german sauerkraut cabbage, which is still soft and that's because it went in the ground very late
18:17Around three weeks after the ones we saw before which are really big and strong, but they'll be fine
18:22I'm because of the weather the weather's on our side here
18:25And we're going to get nice like
18:29Cabbage to harvest which you can store actually as well
18:32They keep really well in the barn and I must mention the asparagus here
18:39Like these clumps they're grown from seed
18:41So that's seed a variety called ariane f1
18:45Which I sowed in the greenhouse in modules late february with warmth transplanted here after potting on
18:52transplanted there in early june
18:56And yeah, this asparagus went in the year before it's why it's slightly bigger
19:02And we could be picking asparagus here within two or three years
19:08And I like to use the space where possible around it especially at this time of year
19:12So when this asparagus is young we popped in this couple of rows of bulb fennel
19:17On either side
19:19I can see there's a few weeds here a few more than I'm used to we need to
19:23Pay some attention to that but you can see generally it's pretty weed free here and we're not doing much
19:28weeding
19:29And makes gardening very joyful with no dig look at these beautiful
19:34Checkeries this is radicchio
19:37It's the variety that i'd love it's called 506 tt
19:41And very reliable in terms of making a big heart
19:44They're not quite so big but they're nearly all firm and that
19:48Makes such a difference to your eventual harvest
19:51We'll be cropping them you know right up to christmas of very hardy plants
19:56Chard likewise just goes on and on fantastic
20:00That's been in there since june
20:02Was sown in or even may actually sown late april
20:07And this spinach is one of my favorite plants for
20:10Autumn winter and spring from one sowing
20:13Second week of august roughly
20:16These went in the ground then in september
20:20And like to give you an idea we picked this block last week
20:23And we picked it to that size so that that's what was picked today and that's gave around four and
20:29a half kilos
20:29Nearly 10 pounds of spinach leaves and that will just keep growing coming back once it cools down
20:35It'll stop or slow down a lot through winter but also get sweet
20:40And then it should all be well it'll survive the winter and we'll come back next spring
20:43So from one sowing and that's home saved spinach seed which
20:48Again i'm quite new to this saving spinach seed in particular
20:50uh
20:51They got very dark for some reason my this was more the color of the the original spinach and
20:58Most of my home saved has got this very dark color i'm guessing it may be the more dominant gene
21:03than native spinach perhaps is darker
21:06There's so much to learn with vegetables they're really fascinating things
21:12Here we have some more home safe seed which is the lettuce i really like over winter called grenoble red
21:17so
21:18We were in here a couple of months ago on the august tour and they were beautiful tomatoes and everything
21:24And that's all gone two weeks ago. They came out two and a half weeks
21:28So it's lettuce mustards and the salad rocket and there's also something
21:34intriguing going on up here which is
21:38In the middle because of what happened i raked off quite a bit of the wood but if you look
21:42here this this is
21:43homemade compost and
21:45And
21:46It was a particularly woody batch
21:48Which outside I think would not have mattered too much but in here we have got
21:53Damage
21:54I don't know how many of you recognize that but for me that's wood lice and that's a classic wood
21:59lice
22:00tiggywinkle
22:01pill bug
22:02whatever you call them slaters they they just go around the edge of the leaf and
22:08Those spinach will survive that but they're just a bit damaged, but the ones that didn't survive we've replanted and
22:14again
22:15They're still here. So we need to take more of that wood off the surface. It's just a a little
22:20Warning not to have too much wood particularly I find in a polytunnel and particularly in the winter
22:25It wouldn't matter around tomato plants so much
22:28You know generally a bit of wood on the surface is good, but I would say not too much
22:32Here here these went in a little bit earlier than the rest of the plants charred which will put for
22:37big leaves as well as salad and
22:40Coriander coriander is pretty hardy in our climate
22:42That should survive the winter unless we have something extreme
22:47And one more thing in here which has just happened today is the plastic
22:53suddenly really clean because
22:56This morning we got out it was raining a bit
22:59Unusually we've had so much dry weather, but it was raining so we got out the double sheets
23:03And if you have one person either side you can pull against each other and that rubs off a lot
23:07of the top and then
23:09again adam and taryn got a hose and a floor brush and
23:13Did both the inside and the outside and what a difference it's made it feels so much lighter
23:17There was a huge amount of moss
23:20And all sorts of debris that somehow manages to cling to the outside of this really shiny smooth plastic
23:27So we're set up for winter here now. There's no heating in these tunnels. It's all
23:33At just natural temperature those plants are frost hardy
23:37Pretty much everything you've seen is frost hardy because we're at the time now where frost can happen
23:43and
23:45Just two exceptions here is
23:50Ochre oxalis tuberosa
23:52Which once it cools down not yet
23:55The leaves will would be killed by frost, but it needs a day length
23:59Less than 10 hours between sunrise sunset to get a harvest from these
24:03So you don't if you've got ochre don't try and harvest them yet. You've got to wait until in our
24:09Latitude 51 north with mid-november
24:12Will be about the time even end november
24:15So you pull them up and and get lots of lovely tubers
24:18And I just noticed these
24:20There's some squash still here. This is curry squash
24:22One like that if you still got squash this this wouldn't store it's got quite a a green stalk on
24:29it
24:29This would be good to eat now, but I wouldn't try and store it for too long
24:33And it won't be quite as sweet as one like this which you can see the different color
24:37And the stem a bit more dry if you harvest that one now and keep it somewhere warm
24:42It could cure enough and get a dry hard skin and keep well through the winter
24:47We've got a lot of squash that most of them we harvested a month ago
24:53Here we could celebrate the flowers it's just amazing
24:57How they've gone on that's some echinacea sown in april and transplanted late may
25:04These beautiful helichrysum or straw flowers you can
25:10Hear that how dry they are they're ready to harvest so what I do is actually just use my thumbnail
25:15and
25:16There's a harvest and and finish drying them in in the house on a say on a sunny windowsill
25:21And you've got beautiful dried color for as long as you want really
25:27Dahlias they just keep going
25:31Marigolds and a lot of this really shouldn't be here at this time of year, but it's so nice to
25:34be able to enjoy it for a little bit more
25:37And this is self-sown facelia
25:38Which you can grow for green manure actually i'm slightly wishing i'd grown a bit more
25:42But it does self-seed a lot as you can see there look at yourself soon all under the sunflower
25:49And this is a small flowered sunflower very pretty starting to go over now and
25:57In passing i want to mention this chervil
26:01That was sown late august transplanted or mid august transplanted mid-september
26:08So not been in the ground that long and it really grows in the autumn much better than in the
26:13spring in spring
26:14It's thinking of flowering chervil is a herb for
26:18Sowing in late summer to crop in the autumn and through winter. It's very tolerant of cold conditions in our
26:23climate
26:23We're often picking chervil quite in the middle of winter
26:27Always amazes me. It's very low growing that always helps any winter plant
26:32Compare the difference here very tall zinnias, you know, this is a summer plant and we've had to support them
26:36with string a bit
26:38But i'm just again loving every minute of these for the bonus of having them in late autumn
26:46Even here one or two little sunflowers
26:49I mean, isn't that amazing?
26:51And they they've been flowering all summer
26:54So I just keep taking off the the dead ones and we're getting down towards the bottom now the flowers
26:59migrate down the stem
27:00And the dahlias
27:02Again just going on so they were grown from seed. I sowed them april last year transplanted may and then
27:09the bulbs
27:10survived the winter
27:15And we could finish our tour
27:18In the greenhouse like two or three things that are really interesting
27:23Including one of two things that are not meant to happen
27:26This is rye. This is how I grow my rye. I actually start it in these module trays
27:31You can see they're rooting out the bottom very vigorous seeds. These are seeds from this year's harvest. So
27:36Got a nice root ball there
27:38That could go in now
27:40Or it could go in in a week's time, but we will get them in very soon
27:44You can see the difference in size of module tray. This is the one I designed the 60
27:49And this is the 40 for which you need nearly three times as much compost to fill
27:54That tray because of the the volume at the bottom as well goes down fat instead of tapering. I found
27:59plant root growth is good in a tapering cell
28:02And then these though are used for broad beans because the broad bean seeds are so big
28:07Although you can grow broad beans in the smaller cell 60s. They grow
28:11nicer bigger plants here
28:14What we just noticed though was
28:16Something has eaten the tops of these rye
28:20I think it's probably mouse
28:23It's a much cleaner cut than
28:25Say a slug or a snail and so i'm going to put a mousetrap in there. That's how I keep
28:30on top of mice. Sometimes you've got to react
28:33This is perennial kale
28:36This is a nice bit of propagation. That's so simple. So you just take out a stem of the plant
28:42I put it in compost just compost potting compost and it roots and grows
28:49same story for tomatoes
28:51I put a side shoot of tomatoes in around three weeks ago this one
28:56And they look sort of dead for a while and then you suddenly see that
29:00lovely root system
29:02So then okay tomatoes just before winter. How are you going to keep them alive? Well
29:07The the reason i'm doing this is you you can do this for f1 hybrids where you if you keep
29:11the seed they won't grow true
29:14So these tomato side shoots will grow through it's a clone of the plant if you like
29:18All i've just got to work out is how to keep it alive through the winter and it's frosty in
29:23here in in frosty weather
29:24So they'll need to go in the conservatory
29:26If they stay too long in the conservatory with with just window light they get very tall
29:31Then you've got a really strong plant and what you can do in february if you've got a really tall
29:35plant
29:36I'll take out the top so pinch it there cut it there and put that into another small pot of
29:42compost you get a new plant
29:43So there's little things that are fun with propagation
29:47And the chilies too i'll just quickly mention them
29:50Nice note to finish there
29:52A bountiful harvest of late summer that's a variety called apache
29:57So
29:58For nodig day
30:00Do send us some photographs we'd love to see what you've been up to
30:05And just your garden in general actually but
30:08celebration celebration of this lovely method which gives you all the wonderful things you've seen and
30:13With not too much time needed and more time to enjoy them
30:17So maybe you've had a nice meal just send us a photo and we'll put it on the gallery in
30:21the website
30:21You email Nicola who's on the camera at the moment
30:26Email address at admin at charlesdowding.co.uk
30:29And we'll put all those details in the video description
30:35Bye-bye
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