- 3 days ago
See the beauty of my early autumn garden. It's no dig so there are few weeds, healthy soil means high quality vegetables, and we have sustained good growth in dry conditions with economical watering.
00:00 Introduction
00:46 Cabbages, green Filderkraut, not quite mature, and red Granat
01:15 Asparagus - some grown from seed, and some from crowns (roots)
01:56 A look at an area that was weedy pasture 6 months ago, now recently harvested of winter squash - some with teeth marks from voles
02:51 Bindweed levered out after harvesting the squash
03:16 Plans for next planting in this cleared area - mustards and rye
03:44 Small sunflowers and dahlias with aphid blackfly - I give some info on blackfly
05:11 Beds with multisown leeks, salads and interplanted kale - 2nd plantings after potatoes
05:40 Borlotti beans mostly dry
06:32 Savoy cabbages and calabrese, 2nd plantings after onions
06:52 Purple sprouting broccoli, 2nd planting after beetroot
07:04 A look at one of the harvested Boltardy beetroot from homesaved seed - large but not woody
08:04 Red cabbage Granat, and green Filderkraut, which we shall use to make Sauerkraut
08:54 Chinese cabbages, Yuki
09:30 Spring cabbage, Wintergreen
10:04 Chervil - garlic soon to be grown in-between
10:49 Apple tree, Kidd’s Orange Red - some apples with insect damage
11:42 How to tell if an apple is ripe
12:58 Chicories, Luisa - I cut one open to look inside
14:06 A loofah plant in the polytunnel
14:40 First winter plantings - chard, kale, coriander
15:02 How to ripen tomatoes more quickly
16:01 Snack paprika peppers
16:24 Downy mildew on cucumber leaves
17:30 Helichrysum flowers
17:52 Aubergines, coming to the end of their harvest period
18:29 Weeding, and using a hoe
19:39 The Small Garden - winter cauliflower following squash, multisown leeks, cabbage, swede, parsnips, chicories, spinach under tomatoes
21:03 Squash harvests in the conservatory - Crown Prince
21:48 In the greenhouse are many final sowings - lettuce, endive, spring onions, winter purslane, lamb’s lettuce
22:20 Malabar spinach, an unusual plant
23:12 Rosada F1 tomato plant, and propagating from sideshoots
23:41 Strawberries, and badgers!
24:04 Winter plantings - aubergines, and an agretti plant
25:11 Mizuna after courgettes, which had powdery mildew
25:39 Beautiful dahlias
26:41 Some info on No Dig Day - 3rd November https://charlesdowding.co.uk/3rd-november-2022-no-dig-day/
You can see the other half of my garden in the summer tour of August https://youtu.be/Nmh0r8JaRDM
This playlist has more about autumn gardening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2diCDJb73pY&list=PL7WDfop74y-nSEb7mCPDaONn5iiWXt4nO
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
00:00 Introduction
00:46 Cabbages, green Filderkraut, not quite mature, and red Granat
01:15 Asparagus - some grown from seed, and some from crowns (roots)
01:56 A look at an area that was weedy pasture 6 months ago, now recently harvested of winter squash - some with teeth marks from voles
02:51 Bindweed levered out after harvesting the squash
03:16 Plans for next planting in this cleared area - mustards and rye
03:44 Small sunflowers and dahlias with aphid blackfly - I give some info on blackfly
05:11 Beds with multisown leeks, salads and interplanted kale - 2nd plantings after potatoes
05:40 Borlotti beans mostly dry
06:32 Savoy cabbages and calabrese, 2nd plantings after onions
06:52 Purple sprouting broccoli, 2nd planting after beetroot
07:04 A look at one of the harvested Boltardy beetroot from homesaved seed - large but not woody
08:04 Red cabbage Granat, and green Filderkraut, which we shall use to make Sauerkraut
08:54 Chinese cabbages, Yuki
09:30 Spring cabbage, Wintergreen
10:04 Chervil - garlic soon to be grown in-between
10:49 Apple tree, Kidd’s Orange Red - some apples with insect damage
11:42 How to tell if an apple is ripe
12:58 Chicories, Luisa - I cut one open to look inside
14:06 A loofah plant in the polytunnel
14:40 First winter plantings - chard, kale, coriander
15:02 How to ripen tomatoes more quickly
16:01 Snack paprika peppers
16:24 Downy mildew on cucumber leaves
17:30 Helichrysum flowers
17:52 Aubergines, coming to the end of their harvest period
18:29 Weeding, and using a hoe
19:39 The Small Garden - winter cauliflower following squash, multisown leeks, cabbage, swede, parsnips, chicories, spinach under tomatoes
21:03 Squash harvests in the conservatory - Crown Prince
21:48 In the greenhouse are many final sowings - lettuce, endive, spring onions, winter purslane, lamb’s lettuce
22:20 Malabar spinach, an unusual plant
23:12 Rosada F1 tomato plant, and propagating from sideshoots
23:41 Strawberries, and badgers!
24:04 Winter plantings - aubergines, and an agretti plant
25:11 Mizuna after courgettes, which had powdery mildew
25:39 Beautiful dahlias
26:41 Some info on No Dig Day - 3rd November https://charlesdowding.co.uk/3rd-november-2022-no-dig-day/
You can see the other half of my garden in the summer tour of August https://youtu.be/Nmh0r8JaRDM
This playlist has more about autumn gardening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2diCDJb73pY&list=PL7WDfop74y-nSEb7mCPDaONn5iiWXt4nO
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:01Welcome to Homeacres No-Dig Garden. It's the September tour. I'm taking you
00:07around to show you the beauty of the vegetables here and give you some tips
00:11about not only what's been going on, but what's to do going forward. And it's the
00:17season of harvest. We're just past the autumn equinox, 22nd September. Look at
00:23this. Adam and Taryn found this beautiful apple this morning. It's an apple and it's
00:29a Jonathan actually from a tree over there. And we're going to see another
00:33really beautiful tree in a minute as part of the tour. It's that season, harvesting
00:39apples, enjoying them and also enjoying the beauty, the beauty of vegetables like this.
00:46These ones are actually not quite mature yet. They're cabbages that went in a bit late.
00:50It's a bit of a long story. We'll come back to in another video, but
00:54I think they'll make it. They're just going to be small heads, but they're
00:58gorgeous green filderkraut and the red cabbage granate.
01:02It's something that strikes me so much now coming out in the garden every day.
01:07It's like a tapestry of beautiful form and color in the vegetables,
01:12let alone the flowers, which are also brilliant.
01:15And then here's a very interesting thing with asparagus.
01:19I sowed some seeds in February in module trays in the greenhouse and transplanted them
01:26late May, early June. So these, these asparagus grew from seed this year. It really surprised me.
01:34And you know, that's a good start for year one from seed, whereas these ones are actually from crowns.
01:41And so they went in as crowns means root of asparagus, one-year-old normally.
01:47So for the next spring, you know, it's an option. Sow some seeds, but early and give them warmth to
01:53get them going.
01:55Last time we were here, this was covered in black plastic because it was mulching
02:03weedy pasture and that's what's behind. So six months ago, it was all like that.
02:08And then this is the result of spreading seven centimeters, three inches compost, black plastic on top,
02:14transplanting winter squash. And we've had a nice harvest of these just yesterday, actually.
02:19Partly because we've had a slight frost actually, believe it or not, which killed most of the leaves, unexpected.
02:26But one thing we found when harvesting these and only on a few, fortunately, is
02:31Adam reckons that's voles. He's a bit of an expert on
02:34teeth marks, among many other things. And
02:39they've gone hard and kind of calloused over. So I think this squash might store, but we've got a lot
02:44that will store. All being well, these should store now for a long time. We're keeping them warm. We'll
02:48see them later on in the video in the house. And something else that we found after removing the
02:55plastic was, actually, this is a bit confusing, because these are squash roots. But what's
03:00also here, normally, these are going to go on the compost heap, but we left them here just to show
03:05you, actually, that's bindweed. So they were using a trowel just to lever out the bindweed root that
03:11they could get. Some of it's still there. And that goes on the compost heap, totally fine to put on
03:15the
03:15compost heap. And we've now got clean ground. And what I'm thinking to grow here is we've actually
03:21sown some mustards already in one part of it for autumn salads and green manure. Most of this rest area,
03:28I'm quite tempted to grow rye, actually, rye for grain. So I'll be multi-sowing in my module trays
03:35and transplanting here around the middle of October. That's the plan. At the moment, it's very dry.
03:40We've gone dry again after having some rain. And the rain really helped the flowers. These sunflowers,
03:47because we haven't watered the flowers much, and they've really been blooming since the rain,
03:51the different types, orange flowers. And these are Helianthus debulus, I think it is. That's a
03:59small sunflower. It grows, third year I've grown it, always makes this beautiful bush by this time of
04:04year. And because it's been dry, they haven't grown quite so tall, which means we haven't needed to
04:08stake them. So that's been a positive. But here's a result of dry conditions. This is on dahlias, which,
04:15again, haven't had water much. Look at those aphids. That's black aphid, black fly. Oh,
04:22dahlias still growing. Okay.
04:26What I'm showing you this, the reason I'm showing you this is to alleviate your worries, I hope,
04:31because basically aphids are very plant specific, and they tend to home in on weak plants, plants that are
04:37stressed, like from lack of water. And if you notice that behind them, there's celeriac, which are super healthy,
04:44and, you know, aphids do not jump from plant to plant, rather like, say, powdery mildew. It, you know,
04:51it only affects certain plants, and often you can relax. You might read information that worries you,
04:58don't believe everything you read. People do over worry about these things, and a bit of knowledge
05:03really helps. So, you know, it's just understanding why you've got certain problems, or what might seem
05:08like a problem. Perhaps it's not, actually. And then here, there's a couple of lovely beds where
05:15we've had potato harvest, which is now in the shed, in store, in sacks, can be eaten any time in
05:22the
05:22winter. And we've got the second plantings in, third week in July, multi-sewn leeks, salads, and some
05:28kale interplanted between. We're picking the salads at the moment. We'll be picking them again tomorrow
05:32morning. There's end-even lettuce there. For example, we take off the outer leaves. A lot of
05:37harvest ongoing. It is really season of harvest. Here's another one, which is borlotti beans.
05:44I did show you these in the last tour, actually, the August tour. So these are pods, which we get
05:50them really dry. And that's the beans now. That's the dry beans. Last time they were a little bit undry.
05:57So these are good to harvest and put in a jar. So here's a jar that, one that we shelled
06:04out just
06:06three, a week ago, and put them in this jar. And that one I store all winter, just anywhere in
06:14the
06:14house. And you can eat them, soak them overnight, and then boil them up for about 40, 60 minutes.
06:21And, you know, so that's winter food. It's a summer plant. It's a summer bean, but it's winter food.
06:28And more goodies for winter here. So this is, that was onions. So again, we've got all the onions in
06:34store. Beautiful crop of onions there. And three weeks before they finished, we dipped holes and
06:40popped in these Savoy cabbage. This end, Calabrese the far end. So a nice overlap there. And the Savoy's
06:47in particular, great winter food. They stand. I might need to protect them from pigeons with bird netting.
06:51We'll see. Same with this purple sprouting broccoli. So these plants have only been in the ground for
06:57about two months. And they followed, that's for cropping in the spring, by the way. They followed
07:03beetroot. And I left this one just as a specimen, just because it's such a nice example of a
07:11non-baby beetroot. It's from my own seed, Boltardi, seed I saved last year. And I'm so pleased with it,
07:17because I actually had one on the open day and I cut it open because people were asking,
07:21wouldn't it be woody when it's that big? And it wasn't at all, actually. It was beautifully tender
07:25and gentle. So if you've got big roots at this time of year, you know, don't worry. You don't have
07:31to
07:31harvest them. You can keep them growing. And big roots store well because they've got less surface area
07:36proportionate to the middle. So it's a good option. Big carrots, big beetroot, big
07:42onions, big everything, big cabbage, you know, they tend to grow. I find that plants, if you get the soil
07:50right, that they'll give so much. And certainly with vegetables, that's where, you know, the compost
07:55that I put on the surface, it's not a huge amount we're putting on about just under three centimeters
08:01an inch or so every year. And here are the results. You know, cabbage, which traditionally they're called
08:07heavy feeders. These have filled the kraut, again, that the red ones are grown out. The pointy ones
08:12have filled the kraut from Germany, an old German variety, for making sauerkraut, actually. And that,
08:18that's a good thing to do, not immediately, but through the autumn to store your food very nicely.
08:24You can find recipes online for that. Really a straightforward, you know, we do it here. I didn't
08:29used to, but we do now. And especially if you can get your cabbages really nice and hard,
08:36like these are ready to go now. If you, that lovely knocking sound, you know, that's, that's a cabbage
08:43head or heart that's, that's fully ripe. That one probably weighs about a kilo and a half, three
08:47pounds or something like that. A lot of food in there. You can also cut them actually to store,
08:52but they will go a bit moldy on the edge. Here's a different type of cabbage, which is Chinese,
08:58and they have been in the ground for just five weeks. They always amaze me with their speed of
09:05growth at this time of year. Summer, planting late summer, even early autumn. It's, it's a joyful thing
09:11because you don't have to wait long to get an amazing result. And these are for making a head or
09:16heart
09:17through October, even into November, of beautiful, crunchy, quite watery heads that can be quite heavy.
09:24That's a variety called Yuki. I will put these names in the video description for you.
09:30And then up there is a, a different type of cabbage. There's spring cabbage called winter green.
09:34I've got the mesh over to keep insects off and that one should crop say between December and February,
09:41true winter cabbage. And beyond that's a bit of spinach. So there are still a lot of vegetables,
09:49preferably as plants that you can transplant. There's not a lot of new sowings you can make.
09:53Now we will see a few in a minute, but mostly it's transplanting and that links back to having
09:58certain things on time in their best time, which is for a lot of plants. Now, the vegetables we've got
10:05putting in the ground is through August into early September, like these chervil.
10:11Chervil is an amazing winter herb because it's, the leaves are so hardy. These went in the ground only today.
10:17Uh, so we did quite deep holes, push them in and then the water tends to fill in the holes.
10:22Uh, this is actually green waste compost. I'm usually mostly using homemade, but this happened to have
10:27green waste compost on and it took quite a lot of wetting to get it wet.
10:31And what I'm going to do here is actually plant garlic in between.
10:34So there's lines between the chervil where the garlic cloves will go in. We'll just dip a hole and pop
10:41them in.
10:42Sometime in the next week, very good time of year to plant garlic in the ground.
10:48And this is, this is the apple I wanted to show you. I mean, just look at this. What a
10:54beautiful tree.
10:56I'm delighted to say this was grafted by Finn, who worked here five years ago.
11:02Uh, he's a bit of a tree, tree man and it's a kid's orange red. Here's one that's looking pretty
11:09tender.
11:10When they come off very easily like that, it's a sign that they're ripe.
11:14But the reason this one is ripe a little bit early is that. And that's, well, what is it?
11:22Probably coddling moth. I could be wrong actually, but I'm just going to cut it open to have a look.
11:26And there's another hole that indicates if you see that it's going to be an apple that doesn't store with
11:31them.
11:31What I find is where you've got insects burrowing into the apples like this, they make, it makes them ripen
11:37early.
11:39Yeah, it looks like there's something gone right in there.
11:42Having said that, if you can tell an apple is ripe and ready to eat by the beautiful yellow between
11:49the, any red or orange there is.
11:51The, it's the yellow of the green. If you look at a less right one, actually there aren't many. There's
11:55one up there. I can see they, they tend to have more green and
11:59They're not quite so ready, but I'm pretty sure this one is going to be really sweet. I'm even going
12:03to have a nibble.
12:04I will just mention this variety name. We'll work and we'll put it in description kids orange red.
12:09This is a great reason to grow your own food. You cannot buy these apples in UK anyway anymore.
12:14They used to be available. Now they're not. They had fallen out of favor in commerce. And so, but you
12:19can grow them.
12:21And you can buy them from specialist nurseries particularly.
12:27Yeah, it's both sweet and lovely acid and flavors, really dense texture.
12:34I've got a helper staying at the moment who, we were preparing some food and she was commenting.
12:40Your vegetables, they store so well, like you cut them.
12:44They don't go brown or yellow so quickly as she's used to buying vegetables from the supermarket.
12:50Yeah, again, what, what not to like. I mean, there's obviously time and effort involved, but you will get it
12:57back so many times.
12:58Look at this, another brilliant example.
13:01These are chicories, which if you get a decent variety, they'll make a beautiful little head or heart.
13:09This is a variety called Lusia. Look at that little point there.
13:12I'm going to twist it out and now I can show you, trim off these outer leaves.
13:18And that takes us into the head or heart there. And you see how the colors come out beautifully the
13:25further in you go.
13:26I just look at this. It's like a sunset. And I'm going to use this. It's not, I'm not wasting
13:33it just by showing you here.
13:35These are too valuable for that. But I'm going to cut it open so that you can see.
13:40We'll put this in our salad bags that we're selling tomorrow. It's just a rainbow, a spectrum.
13:47And the flavor matches the color. So chicory leaves like ND, they're slightly bitter on the outside.
13:54But when you get into the self-folded blanched heart, they get a lot sweeter. So you got bittersweet.
14:00Perfect.
14:05Yeah, there's one extraordinary plant in here, which is the loofah. It's done so well, just on its own.
14:13It's on its own now because it had melons all around it and they have finished.
14:19And that's enabled us actually to put winter salad plants in again. But the loofah will harvest when
14:26these need to go yellow and brown on and then a little bit hard on the outside. And then you
14:33can
14:33take off the skin and you find your loofah inside there. And it's still healthy. So I'm leaving it there
14:38to grow some more. And the plants we put in there, that's chard and kale and coriander for winter.
14:44We're just doing the first winter plantings. It's change over time. You know, we're on the cusp now.
14:51We've had a slight frost, believe it or not. Four mornings ago, I came out here and ice on some
14:56leaves, but not in here. So this was protection from frost for the tomatoes. But what we've done to
15:03help them ripen more quickly is reduce the watering. Well, actually, I haven't watered in here for two
15:08and a half weeks now. And so you can see the surface is quite dusty. That's fine. Actually, there is
15:15storm moisture there. In fact, you can see all the tomato roots. So, you know, these plants are fine.
15:20But if you've got tomatoes growing in soil, just start watering if you haven't already, because that will
15:26trigger the plant into growing less new leaf and or trying to grow less new leaf. Keep side shooting,
15:32removing any new growth. And the energy will go into ripening existing fruits.
15:38It's still quite a few, but actually, I'm confident now we've got, where are we? 22nd September.
15:45We 10th of September for me is cut off point when there's a saying here, the devil spits on the
15:49blackberries, which means there's not enough light anymore to make fruit sweet. But we've got a bit of
15:55time before that. We did a big pick this morning. That's why there's not many looking very ripe,
16:00you know, really a lot. And over there, there's actually some beautiful snack paprika peppers.
16:06They're actually peppers, sweet peppers, those little orange ones, and they're really tasty.
16:11Our climate here is not really hot enough to grow great peppers. That's why I don't grow them very much.
16:15We're warm enough for tomatoes, but we lack the incredible summer heat that something like that
16:21really benefits from. And now we're coming to a time of extraordinary dampness and humidity,
16:28and that's resulting in this. This is downy mildew. And it's a great opportunity to show you this,
16:35because it can easily be confused with mosaic virus, for example, because you can see how its
16:40pattern is like mosaic on the leaves. And if you look underneath, that classic is that browning
16:46that you see. The leaf is gradually dying from the downy mildew.
16:49I'm not worried though. These cucumbers have given fantastic harvest. They've gone up to the top,
16:54and they're coming down again. We've been picking and picking and picking for over three months.
16:58Beautiful cucumbers. You can see there's still some nice cucumbers here. I mean, what not to like about
17:02that? And a week ago, that would have got quite a bit bigger, even by tomorrow, but now I'm picking
17:09them slightly smaller. And within two weeks, they'll be gone, but they've had a good run. And then we're,
17:15we're coming into the time of planting winter salad. And already between them, this is more for autumn
17:20cropping, actually. We've popped in dill there and some coriander at the far end. So making the most
17:26of the space where there's not miracles. Some beautiful little flowers here as well. These,
17:32I really enjoy picking these, uh, statis. No, not statis. Sorry. Helichrysum.
17:39Just like little suns. And so they're dry. They're crispy. They're paper-like petals.
17:46And you can just enjoy them all winter, a burst of color. And the aubergines here also illustrate
17:55the point about summer finishing. You see, the leaves, you know, this is not from dryness. We
18:00have watered them. They just suddenly don't look so full of life. Having said which, you know, there's
18:06still great harvest. So it's just that time. We're winding down. The aubergines are winding down.
18:12They've also been amazing through the hot summer. I don't, I don't see any benefit in trying to keep
18:17these plants going out of season. You know, I wouldn't try and grow any of these plants in here
18:21in the winter. So we've got, you'll see all the new plantings ready for about three weeks time.
18:29Ah, and this is what I want to mention here. So weeding. I don't say much about weeding in these
18:36tours
18:36because we don't have many weeds. And that's the beauty of no dig. Not disturbing the soil. Weeds
18:43just germinate much less. You know, the soil is kind of calm. But if a lot of seeds do drop,
18:49and we found it quite a bit from flowers. There's some pansies and marigolds here. And
18:55if you get a lot of weed seasons, if you've got a lot of weed seedlings for any reason, react
18:59when
18:59they're small, like that size there. That for me is a signal to use the hoe.
19:06Even smaller, but just running it through like that, you've disturbed that
19:12potentially big weed. And it's, it's going to die in situ. It's so quick. You know, when you've got this
19:18lovely soft compost mulch surface, it's very easy and quick to run a hoe through like that. As a thin
19:24bladed hoe, everyone has a favorite hoe, different type. There are many. So find one that works for
19:31you. And, and it's just one of the little jobs you can do that will make a lot of difference.
19:39I'm briefly mentioning the small garden because it'll, we were here about a month ago. You can see
19:43the video. And we won't be here for another few weeks. So there's a lot happening again at this time
19:49of year. But this on Sunday, I got stuck in there, just this little area. There were two squash
19:54plants. And I took the harvest, which was only three squash actually, because they went in late.
20:00And now I've planted these winter cauliflower after spreading one bucket, 120 liter bucket,
20:06to give you an idea of any amount of homemade compost on that area, 20 liters. Yeah, I would say
20:14not excessive. That, that's enough to keep the soil healthy. That's what it's doing. Compost is soil
20:19food, food for soil life. It's not fertilizer, that nutrients don't leach out of it in winter.
20:24And that will grow lovely cauliflower, maybe something else as well. So we're putting on compost
20:28just once a year. You can see lovely multi-sown leeks there. A lot of winter harvest here. The cabbage
20:34behind, they come ready early winter, at least, um, sweet any time in the winter. Parsnips there.
20:41Chicorys for late autumn, spinach that under the tomatoes. So the spinach went in under the tomatoes,
20:47while the tomatoes are still ripening. There's a video coming up about that actually. So do look out for it,
20:52growing outdoor tomatoes. And you don't have to wait for plants to finish before you can put in some new
20:58ones.
21:02Haha, showing you some harvests here. So this is the squash from up in that new area.
21:11The gray ones are crown prints. And they're the ones actually I find store the longest and probably have the
21:19sweetest flavor.
21:21If you keep them warm at this time of year, that helps them to cure or ripen. And this conservatory's
21:29south facing windows mostly gets pretty warm in there. So that's a suitable place. Find the warmest place in
21:36your house better in the house than in a shed or bunk where it can be quite damp in the
21:40morning.
21:42You want to get that skin really dry.
21:48So here's the hub of plant raising.
21:52Well, you can see it's the final, final big one. I've actually used all the trays I've got.
21:58I'm using more trays at the moment. There's more sowings in here than in the spring,
22:02because I'm doing a lot of salads undercover. And that's quite close spacing. So that's lettuce,
22:08end eve. Some of these plants are for outside actually like more spring on as they go out early October.
22:14Then there's lamb's lettuce, winter purslane, more lettuce and end eve.
22:20And there's opportunity here to tell you about a very unusual plant, which is Malabar spinach.
22:27It was one plant given to me by Alessandro, actually spicy mustache. He was down doing some filming and
22:34well, that's only one plant.
22:36So you can eat the leaves there. You cut them up and they're a bit gloopy
22:40with a bit of garlic and butter. Quite nice. It's not spinach though. I think that's the wrong name for
22:44it.
22:45It's a, I don't know what I call it. It's just very different. And then the seeds
22:50here, actually, they're apparently used for coloring. They go purple. If you squash them,
22:54you get very purple skin. It's quite temporary water soluble. And look how invasive that plant is.
23:03Territorially inquisitive. It's climbing up the tomato plants there.
23:08I've been pulling it off actually, because if you're not careful, it would take over.
23:12And again, we've not been watering the tomatoes in here. Actually, I will just mention up the tomato
23:17up that end there is the rosada.
23:20That won't be here next time we visit. And that's the beautiful cherry plum, which has a great flavor.
23:25And you can't buy the seeds anymore. It's a hybrid, so you can't keep the seeds either.
23:29So that one will take side shoots in early October. There's a little short video we put up about that
23:35five or six weeks ago. You just take a side shoot and put it in a pot of compost. It
23:39makes a plant.
23:41And then on the other side, more sewings in the trays. There's some strawberries.
23:47I don't talk a lot about strawberries because we've got a lot of badgers here, and I'm hesitant to plant
23:51strawberries because the badgers then make a mess of the garden looking for the strawberries. Well,
23:55can I give it a go? I've got to work it out somehow. So that's some runners.
23:59I took off the strawberry plants and just put them in compost to grow into new plants to plant out.
24:04more winter plantings, aubergines, and something a little bit unusual here, which is a Gretti. And
24:14this is a plant that was given to Nicola, who's filming when she was doing some book selling at a
24:20fair.
24:21And it's a beautiful summer plant, actually. Salsa La Soda. And it's trying to go to see that. See,
24:30I'm not too sure how viable these seeds will be, but you can still enjoy eating those little shoots.
24:36It's got a spiky flavor. We've still got a few cabbage and cauliflower. You could still plant them outside.
24:45I mean, I would say the outdoor plantings, not sowings, transplanting still to do is anything brassica,
24:51cabbage and cauliflower in particular, if it's the right variety. Also things like chervil and the spring onions.
24:57But everything else in here, which is more of the young seedlings, we're going to put
25:00undercover, which means polytunnel greenhouse could be cold frame. Watch out for slugs in the cold frame.
25:09This was a planting of today. This morning, that bed was
25:15courgettes. And they're quite full of downy mildew. Different, that's different mildew to the
25:21one I mentioned, which is powdery. Sorry, this was powdery mildew. We had downy mildew on the cucumber.
25:28And this is mizuna that we've popped in today. And again, we're going to plant garlic in lines in between
25:34the mizuna very soon. And I'll finish by showing you the beautiful bed here, framed by these gorgeous dahlias.
25:49These dahlias have been just lighting up the garden all summer. And they have a lot of bees on them.
25:56We're nearly always seeing bees on these flowers. And they're from tubers that just stay in the ground
26:02over winter. If we don't have frost below about minus 6, 20 Fahrenheit, they can survive that.
26:11And they go to nothing. You don't see them. And then suddenly they reappear
26:15sometime late April.
26:17So here's hoping. I have a feeling we might have a colder winter this year, but that's for the next
26:22video.
26:22We'll talk about winter more. For the moment, we're really enjoying the no-dig abundance.
26:28So many plants that are good to eat and to harvest this time of year. In the next video,
26:33I'll talk more about harvesting for storing, for example, things like carrots and beetroot.
26:39For now, we're just picking. And I'll mention also no-dig day, which won't be too long.
26:46It's coming up on the 3rd of November. It's International Day to celebrate no-dig.
26:50Have a look on my website. You'll see there's a link to a page there.
Comments