First frosts are approaching | Here are ideas for being ready || Charles Dowding
Autumn has a few boundary points between summer lingering, and the winter approaching. Before this occurs to the extent of resulting in frost, there are harvests to make. Plus I show the simple soil preparation for winter and next spring, when growing no dig.
We look at a range of seasonal jobs. Firstly clearing tomatoes in the polytunnel, with tips on ripening the green ones.
Then outside I show you harvesting the butternut squash. With tips on other frost sensitive vegetables.
Finally I plant garlic and spread compost. It's homemade compost and I spread it on all beds before winter, until we run out. Then I spread some bought-in composts too, all mulching at a depth of around one inch, 2.5cm.
00:00 Introduction
00:55 In the polytunnel - clearing plants, and tomatoes at three stages of ripeness
03:19 I demonstrate clearing a tomato plant (with some late blight)
07:06 Cucumber plants, with some diseased leaves - not a problem
07:38 Peppers
07:44 Loofa plant
07:53 Marigolds, anti-aphid, and their seeds
08:49 Outside - which plants are susceptible to frost
09:07 Squash - butternut, how ripe are they?
10:21 Courgettes - harvest before frost
10:43 Chillies, aubergines and peppers - all frost sensitive
11:24 Fennel and celery, and allow for your microclimate
12:23 More vegetables that are affected frost, incl. beetroot
13:07 Mulching the ground to prepare soil for winter
13:22 Planting garlic before spreading the compost
14:33 Seasonal jobs - my perennial diary, and calendar LINK
15:46 Spacing of the garlic, and what could follow in the spring
16:15 Spreading the compost over the garlic
17:50 Outro
Filmed 10th October at Homeacres no dig market and teaching garden, by Edward Dowding. The climate is temperate oceanic, zone 8, location is Somerset, UK.
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
#nodig #harvest #soilpreparation #garlic #compost
Autumn has a few boundary points between summer lingering, and the winter approaching. Before this occurs to the extent of resulting in frost, there are harvests to make. Plus I show the simple soil preparation for winter and next spring, when growing no dig.
We look at a range of seasonal jobs. Firstly clearing tomatoes in the polytunnel, with tips on ripening the green ones.
Then outside I show you harvesting the butternut squash. With tips on other frost sensitive vegetables.
Finally I plant garlic and spread compost. It's homemade compost and I spread it on all beds before winter, until we run out. Then I spread some bought-in composts too, all mulching at a depth of around one inch, 2.5cm.
00:00 Introduction
00:55 In the polytunnel - clearing plants, and tomatoes at three stages of ripeness
03:19 I demonstrate clearing a tomato plant (with some late blight)
07:06 Cucumber plants, with some diseased leaves - not a problem
07:38 Peppers
07:44 Loofa plant
07:53 Marigolds, anti-aphid, and their seeds
08:49 Outside - which plants are susceptible to frost
09:07 Squash - butternut, how ripe are they?
10:21 Courgettes - harvest before frost
10:43 Chillies, aubergines and peppers - all frost sensitive
11:24 Fennel and celery, and allow for your microclimate
12:23 More vegetables that are affected frost, incl. beetroot
13:07 Mulching the ground to prepare soil for winter
13:22 Planting garlic before spreading the compost
14:33 Seasonal jobs - my perennial diary, and calendar LINK
15:46 Spacing of the garlic, and what could follow in the spring
16:15 Spreading the compost over the garlic
17:50 Outro
Filmed 10th October at Homeacres no dig market and teaching garden, by Edward Dowding. The climate is temperate oceanic, zone 8, location is Somerset, UK.
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
#nodig #harvest #soilpreparation #garlic #compost
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LifestyleTranscript
00:12Welcome to Homeacres Mid-Autumn and summer's been lingering.
00:16We had a course here at the weekend, still got the chairs out, lunch in the sunshine,
00:20but it's not long before the coin flips and we're into winter mode already.
00:25The days are a lot shorter.
00:26So, this is about giving you some tips on what to do for winter preparation.
00:32And actually, with no dig, there's not too much.
00:34The main thing is clearing ground, spreading some compost.
00:36We'll differentiate here in crops that you really need to harvest before a frost
00:40and some that have some more frost resistance, some even more again.
00:44And things you can still plant, like garlic, and how to prepare your garden for winter.
00:54So, we're going in the polytunnel to look at how you can clear summer fruiting plants,
01:03which are going to need clearing very soon.
01:06We're coming up to have a frost.
01:08And also, we've kind of programmed them to finish now by taking out the tops of the tomatoes,
01:14for example, so they don't grow too much more new leaf.
01:17And I actually haven't watered in here for nearly four weeks now.
01:21So, the soil is quite dry.
01:24And that's good because that's encouraging the plant to ripen the fruits that are here.
01:30How many fruits can you pick?
01:31Well, we've got three stages of ripeness here.
01:36There's super ripe, really good and ready to go.
01:40And that's a burner rose tomato.
01:44A little bit inclined to split, but for home consumption, that's totally fine.
01:48And flavor's really good.
01:50And they've been cropping for since mid-July.
01:52That's three months.
01:54Really, really recommend that tomato.
01:56You can save your own seeds.
01:58Here, by comparison, we have a half ripe one.
02:02And that, if you keep that in your house, say, where it's probably a little warmer,
02:07especially at night, that will ripen within four or five days.
02:11Still be good within a week.
02:12And then up here, we have another stage of ripening.
02:17Even though the tomato looks mostly green,
02:21if I can pick it with the calyx on.
02:23Now, that's interesting.
02:24Sometimes beef tomatoes don't come off easily with their calyx.
02:29And you definitely want the calyx on at this point.
02:33That means this little green bit here because the stalk.
02:37That way, you haven't caused a wound,
02:40an opening at the top of the tomato itself.
02:43And you can see on this one, it has got a little bit of color there on the bottom.
02:49And that tells you the fruit has finished growing.
02:53It just needs to ripen.
02:54And tomatoes like that, you can ripen successfully over a period of a month,
02:59even six weeks, just at ambient temperature in the house, not in sunshine, actually.
03:04Studies on that one have shown that they ripen better out of sunlight.
03:07It's not sunlight that makes fruit ripen.
03:10It's the growth from the plant getting into the fruit and enabling the process,
03:16which is underway now, which is helping it to finish.
03:19So, when clearing the plant, this is interesting because
03:23we have some blight here, late blight.
03:25That's this browning graying of the leaf.
03:28And you can see they go sort of translucent,
03:31spores coming off, little bits that look like dust.
03:34Now, I'm not too worried about that.
03:37I haven't been wetting the leaves.
03:38It's probably come from condensation of the plastic.
03:41And we're going to put all of that on the compost heap.
03:44That's totally fine.
03:45Blight spores do not survive in soil and compost.
03:48Then I'm just loosening, actually, this string to get the...
03:56I had to tie it up because the plant had overgrown.
04:02I should have dropped the string.
04:04We've been dropping the strings here sometimes.
04:08So now this is the original string,
04:11which is going right down to the soil where the roots are on top of it in the soil.
04:16And you can see, using this method of supporting by string,
04:20which you can quite quickly unravel from around the plant,
04:23you've got access to the plant, which you can then chop up.
04:30And I must say, it's very nice having that little bit of knowledge about
04:34late blight not being a problem because it saves so much time.
04:42You don't have to separate anything before composting.
04:46One thing I just want to show you is
04:49doing a diagonal slice like that through the stem
04:52is much easier than cutting across all the fibers.
04:55The knife goes in more easily.
04:57And what that does is, if you can even get a long one like that,
05:00you're opening up more of the surface of the stem
05:05to bacteria and decomposing organisms in the compost heap.
05:10And then at the bottom of the plant,
05:14this state was just to keep the main stem in place while we walk past.
05:20So we have a lot of roots here and I can use a trowel.
05:25If you have a sharp trowel, you can cut through them like that.
05:30Another option would be the knife.
05:33I'm actually looking to leave most of these roots in the ground.
05:38So you can see, I mean, look at this, the tomato roots are amazing.
05:44I could just follow that one back out of interest and you can see how surface it is.
05:48Look at that.
05:49It's going all that way, a long way from the parent plant
05:53or where the stem is coming out the ground.
05:55But you know, I could have left that one in the ground,
05:58as long as it's not physically in the way of subsequent plantings.
06:02Oh God, these are amazing.
06:05Burn a rose.
06:06Yeah, really good tomato.
06:07That's a sign of good vigor.
06:08So we're leaving all of that in the ground.
06:11And then I will just do this, actually, just level it off a bit.
06:14If you disturb the soil a bit, this is no dig.
06:18So I don't want to make it all loose and fluffy.
06:21And later I'll come back.
06:22You can see how the, we put a knot on the end of the string.
06:26And that was, that's all that was holding the string in,
06:29was the roots growing around it.
06:31And it's a very simple process because then you can just pull that out
06:35and you've got your string.
06:36And then you've got the plant stem to cut for compost.
06:40So we're going to be busy clearing all of these plants,
06:43picking all the fruits.
06:45There's one slightly different category of ripeness.
06:48If you've got a tomato that's still bright green,
06:51as opposed to showing a bit of color.
06:54And those, in my experience, don't really ripen.
06:59They're still trying to grow a bit.
07:01You could make green tomato chutney or put them in the compost.
07:07So we'll, we'll be doing the same thing here with cucumbers
07:10and taking all of them down there.
07:12They're still growing a little, but actually not much.
07:14When it comes to equinox time, the daylight levels get suddenly much lower.
07:20We're losing four minutes of daylight every day at that time of year.
07:24We're three weeks beyond that now.
07:26So, you know, I'm afraid we're not far from winter levels of light.
07:30Cucumbers don't like that.
07:31And they've got disease on the leaves.
07:33Totally normal.
07:34Nothing to worry about.
07:35Same as the blight on tomatoes.
07:36It's just a feature of the season.
07:38And I'll be clearing peppers too, taking off all the fruit.
07:41Some of it's ripe, some of it's not.
07:43Green peppers you can still eat.
07:44There's even a luffa plant up there, which has produced quite a few actually.
07:48And that's been an enjoyable feature, a non-edible feature of the polytunnel.
07:53We'll clear all the marigolds.
07:55And I'll just quickly mention, actually, with the marigolds,
08:00these are officially they're anti-aphid.
08:04They secrete limonene, which deters aphids.
08:06You can keep the seeds.
08:08I grow them mainly because they're just very beautiful.
08:10But if you get really dry husks like this, that's all marigold seeds in here,
08:17those little black and white long things.
08:19Amazing.
08:19So we've actually harvested quite a few already.
08:22We've got enough.
08:23And the best time to sow them is early April next year to transplant in here.
08:28Again, just a nice colorful line.
08:31And we're now going to look at how we clear outdoor vegetables,
08:37which have some degree of frost sensitivity.
08:40And there's quite a few of them.
08:49Outdoors, there's quite a much bigger range of vegetables to
08:55at least have an understanding about which ones are susceptible to frost.
09:02And that you actually need to harvest before it might freeze even a little.
09:06And that includes squash.
09:10So here we have butternut squash.
09:13So the rest of this bed actually was squash and they've finished already.
09:17So they're safely harvested and staying warm in my house.
09:22Marina Zichogia and Crown Prince and Oregon Sweet Homestead and the cheeky curry.
09:28The butternut are always the last.
09:30And it's then question of how ripe are they?
09:35The stalk on that one is a little more green.
09:39I'm going to cut it because we're coming to the point where it's not going to actually grow much more.
09:44Secateurs are useful actually because that one wasn't too stiff,
09:48but you'll see in a minute the stalk here on this one.
09:52So you see the difference in color as well.
09:56How much more mature this one is and the stalk will be really woody on this.
10:01Which is actually how you want them to be when you harvest them.
10:05Because that will be sweet.
10:07And this one probably won't get very sweet.
10:12But if it's going to freeze, you may as well harvest all of them.
10:16And it can be a nice surprise.
10:18I mean, look at this.
10:18There's actually quite a few here.
10:21So while I'm harvesting these, I'll mention one or two others that you want to look out for,
10:28like courgettes.
10:29So squash family, they just collapse at the first hint of ice.
10:37So do make sure you just harvest your last courgettes or marrows before it might freeze.
10:44And if you've got any chillies outside, like in pots, for example, they're good to...
10:51Well, you could bring the pots under cover, actually, it would be one way.
10:56There are aubergines, peppers.
10:57So all of those frost sensitive, are they?
11:02Yeah, look at this.
11:03Actually, these are quite prolific in the end.
11:06You can't really tell because their leaves don't die back very much.
11:09And actually, even one like that, although it's got a split skin,
11:14the... it's made a sort of secondary, quite hard skin.
11:17I would eat that one before the others, but there's lots of good squash there.
11:21In the end, I'm pretty pleased with this harvest.
11:25And then there's other vegetables to consider before frost, are fennel and celery.
11:31They will both stand a little bit of freezing, but not too much.
11:37So pay attention to the forecast and see what they're predicting.
11:41And allow for your microclimate as well.
11:44Like here, I noticed at the weekend, one night we were forecast 12 minimum,
11:48and it actually went down to nine.
11:50We're often three degrees below the actual forecast because we're in a quiet, low-lying...
11:56It's not exactly a frost over, but it kind of is.
11:59And then add that knowledge to what they're forecasting,
12:02and that will make sure you don't get caught out.
12:05So fennel and celery, I wouldn't necessarily harvest them before a slight frost.
12:10If it's not going to go below maybe minus two, minus three Celsius, that's high 20s Fahrenheit.
12:16But if, just in case, I'll put a fleece over them before a frosty night, because you just can't be
12:22sure.
12:23And then you've got a whole raft of other vegetables, which are...
12:29Would be damaged by, say, a frost of minus five, minus six.
12:33That's low 20s Fahrenheit.
12:35And that's beetroot and celeriac, maybe more beetroot, actually.
12:39So those we won't harvest yet in terms of storage.
12:43We're looking probably at another month.
12:45Usually here, I reckon, late November, early December.
12:48And now we're just going to look at the one or two more possible sowings that you can make at
12:53this time of year.
13:06A big job for us at this time of year is mulching the ground.
13:11That means spreading compost on top.
13:13Very simple.
13:14And it's preparing soil for winter and spring and summer and the following autumn, because we do it just once
13:21a year.
13:22And in this case, before I put it on, I'm going to plant some garlic.
13:27So I've separated some of this year's harvest of garlic into cloves.
13:33It's pretty much the main planting, even sowing, you could say, in October.
13:40And the way I do it with the dibber is I just draw out lines along the edge of the
13:44bed on either side.
13:46And then I can see where I'm planting to.
13:49And then I'm going to make a little line there that draws the line across where our dibber hole.
13:56Pop in the clove.
13:58That's quite dry.
14:00We haven't actually had a lot of rain.
14:02So it's quite handy that I'm going to put the compost on top because that means that the
14:08Clothes don't need to go in quite so deep.
14:11They're going in around five inches, maybe
14:1612 centimeters apart.
14:18Make sure you get them that way up with the little spiky bit on top.
14:21That's the way, the same sense in which they grew.
14:26And once I've got a few of these in, I'll spread compost on top.
14:31And this is all about seasonality.
14:34So this is classic autumn jobs that you wouldn't do at other times of year.
14:40It's one of the joys of gardening that, you know, it's never the same.
14:44You're going with the seasons all the time.
14:46And there's something I write about a lot in my diary book, which is it's a perennial diary.
14:52It's not like the calendar, which is specific dates for the following year based somewhat on the moon and
15:00my latest thoughts about what's worked well and what will give you better results.
15:06And you can buy the diary online anywhere actually, and we sell signed copies from my website.
15:11I've got a special offer with the calendar and that something like that, you know, you just,
15:18it's good to help you keep abreast.
15:21As you get more experience, you'll find that you sort of do these things almost automatically.
15:25I find I wake up in the morning.
15:27It's like, oh, it's October.
15:29God, I need to plant garlic and clear the polytunnel in.
15:33And certain weeks are more specific than other weeks.
15:37And yeah, it's building up that long-term pattern.
15:39When you get jobs done in the best season, everything flows from that.
15:46And this row, by the way, that's about 30 centimeters apart, sometimes 35.
15:51I'm not too particular on garlic spacing.
15:53It's good if you have, I do it in rows because then in the spring,
15:58we've got a line there that we can draw to say sow some carrots in May before the garlic finish.
16:05Garlic are good for that because they don't shade the ground too much
16:07and they give you the opportunity.
16:09Or we could plant lettuce or sow some beetroot, many options there.
16:13And this is the final application.
16:15So with no dig, it's beautiful.
16:20Like we've got this compost here.
16:21This is 10, 11 months old now.
16:24There's a lump.
16:25Look at this, how it just breaks apart and knock it with a fork a bit.
16:30So never sieve your compost before you put it on the ground.
16:33And we're putting on, on average, around, I quote it as an inch, two and a half centimeters.
16:43That is a difficult measurement to quantify because when you first put it on, it looks more.
16:52And then if you look at it a week later after it's rained a bit and everything, it's settled down.
16:58So what you can see, I'll give you an idea just by what you can see me putting on there.
17:05And sometimes seeing helps to sort of get the measure of it.
17:09That's about what we put on.
17:12And that's fertility in the broadest sense of the word.
17:16That's enabling feeding of the soil life, which is the key to fertility, as I see it,
17:22where the nutrients is not about the nutrients that are in the compost so much as the compost
17:28enabling the nutrients that are in the soil to become available through increasing the soil life.
17:34And it's the soil life that does the precious work for us.
17:37And that is now ready for winter.
17:40The garlic will slowly germinate.
17:42It might not appear until January sometimes, especially when it gets cold.
17:47But I know that the soil is in good condition, thanks to the compost.
17:50And there you are.
17:52That's one of the many things you can be doing at this time of year.
17:56And I hope you've enjoyed having a little seasonal look around.
18:14But I think about this video.
18:14This is the only thing you can do when it makes it remarkable for years.
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