Add weeks to your growing season! Combine the early life of one planting with the almost-finished part of another. I show you some combinations of old and new vegetables which grow well in overlap.
The essential knowledge is that new seedlings do not need much light, moisture or nutrients. They just need somewhere to start developing their roots.
This can even happen more strongly when other more mature plants are around them. In fact, it's how plants start to grow in nature!
The golden rule is to find vegetables that will finish their cropping life within four weeks approximately. Then you need to find sufficient space for new transplants, or seeds.
With the cucumbers, for example, we cut off leaves with mildew and those going yellow. This opened enough space between the cucumber stems for popping in transplants of Florence fennel in mid-August. This solved the problem of finding space!
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Interplants of chervil between lettuce, variety Maravilla de Verona - I pick some outer leaves
01:48 Pak choi and winter radish under mesh
02:08 Spinach interplanted between lettuce
02:43 Watering new plantings
03:37 Fennel planted amongst ridge cucumbers
04:20 Seedlings in the greenhouse - kale and spinach
05:13 In the Small Garden - I transplant spinach at the base of cordon tomatoes
06:44 Dealing with slugs
08:52 Using dibber to create drills for directly sowing seeds of lamb’s lettuce around strawberry plants
10:41 Watering the newly transplanted spinach
11:22 Finding information in my books
Info on where to buy my long-handled dibber: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/shop/gardening-products/
My books and calendar: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product-category/books/
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 #growyourownfood #sowingseeds #growyourownveggies #nodiggardening
The essential knowledge is that new seedlings do not need much light, moisture or nutrients. They just need somewhere to start developing their roots.
This can even happen more strongly when other more mature plants are around them. In fact, it's how plants start to grow in nature!
The golden rule is to find vegetables that will finish their cropping life within four weeks approximately. Then you need to find sufficient space for new transplants, or seeds.
With the cucumbers, for example, we cut off leaves with mildew and those going yellow. This opened enough space between the cucumber stems for popping in transplants of Florence fennel in mid-August. This solved the problem of finding space!
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Interplants of chervil between lettuce, variety Maravilla de Verona - I pick some outer leaves
01:48 Pak choi and winter radish under mesh
02:08 Spinach interplanted between lettuce
02:43 Watering new plantings
03:37 Fennel planted amongst ridge cucumbers
04:20 Seedlings in the greenhouse - kale and spinach
05:13 In the Small Garden - I transplant spinach at the base of cordon tomatoes
06:44 Dealing with slugs
08:52 Using dibber to create drills for directly sowing seeds of lamb’s lettuce around strawberry plants
10:41 Watering the newly transplanted spinach
11:22 Finding information in my books
Info on where to buy my long-handled dibber: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/shop/gardening-products/
My books and calendar: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product-category/books/
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 #growyourownfood #sowingseeds #growyourownveggies #nodiggardening
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:01What do you do if your garden does not have enough space for new plantings?
00:06We're in early September now. And so, well,
00:10summer's coming to an end. Actually, not today. It's 30 degrees, unusually.
00:15But there's still time to sow and plant quite a few things which will keep you picking through the autumn
00:22and winter.
00:23And I'm giving you some examples and also how to fit them in when you don't have enough space.
00:27Like here. So I wanted to plant chervil ten days ago.
00:32So that's module raised chervil plants and didn't have any literally empty space.
00:38So we pop them in between these lettuce.
00:41These lettuce are leaf lettuce that we've been picking already actually for six weeks.
00:46This variety is Maravilla de Verona and it crops for a long time.
00:53There's a dead leaf. But you can see how the leaves are really good.
00:58And I'm picking them in with such a way that the plant keeps growing. I picked the rest of them
01:02this morning. Got a whole crate of leaves.
01:04And that was from a week of growth. And
01:07each time you pick them, that opens up the space a bit so that the chervil can grow some more.
01:12And in about four weeks, the lettuce will be finally rising up.
01:16And then the chervil by then will be really big and we'll be picking it probably within about three weeks
01:21from what you're seeing here.
01:22So the chervil was actually sown a month ago in early August.
01:26Timings are pretty important for all of these things.
01:30And that's why you need to keep on it during the summer to remember to sow things even when it's
01:38really hot and dry.
01:39Well, maybe so a bit later if you're in particularly hot and dry climates.
01:44We're temperate maritime oceanic here.
01:48So you can see, for example, there's Pak Choi there, which I transplanted less than three weeks ago, actually.
01:57And I know just over three weeks and three days.
02:00Winter radish as well.
02:01The mesh covers really help. So that's more for the brassica plantings because of all the insects that they suffer.
02:09But for spinach like here, so we have spinach between lettuce and we put these in just five days ago.
02:17And it so happens we picked these lettuce this morning.
02:20So this is weekly pick of the lettuce and then we'll come back next week and pick the lettuce again.
02:25It'll be the same as with the chervil. The spinach will gradually become the dominant partner, actually, amazingly.
02:31When you look at it now, it seems hard to believe.
02:34So that spinach was sown around the 11th of August and the lettuce had been sown in early June, just
02:42so you know.
02:43And because we've had a damp summer, we've hardly watered.
02:47But we are watering now a little bit just to help these spinach get established.
02:50So new plantings generally are water a bit until I see that they're looking really strong.
02:58We're going to have a look now at something very different.
03:02In terms of interplanting, you can see on the way how full the garden is, which is brilliant.
03:08It's what you want at this time of year.
03:12Ah, Minty loves the bare ground.
03:15This has only been bare since this morning.
03:17This was sweet corn that we just cleared.
03:20That's gone on the compost heap all chopped up.
03:22And I'm going to plant maybe salad rocket, something like that.
03:28Salads, again, is the main option.
03:31Whereas here is something that happened a little bit earlier.
03:37So three weeks ago, Dan, who was staying here, popped in these fennel plants.
03:42So transplants, plug plants, they were sown late July.
03:45So they're a bit older than what we've been looking at so far between these cucumbers.
03:50So rich cucumbers, as we come towards the end of summer, start to die off from mildew.
03:55Except this summer, they haven't because it's been so, such perfect conditions for them, actually.
04:00This time last year, we were just clearing these whole cucumber plants, just lifting them up.
04:04There's only two.
04:05Just cut the roots at the base, lift them up, and you've got fennel ready to grow big by, say,
04:10late October.
04:12We'll see what happens this year.
04:13I think I might have to cut short the cucumber harvest in order for the fennel to really grow.
04:20Now I can show you actually doing it, so you can see more clearly what's involved.
04:28And this is seedlings all ready to go.
04:33So, well, not ready, but sown.
04:35Actually, only recently, those went in a week ago, roughly, 29th of August.
04:41And we're the 5th of September today.
04:43So, yeah, it's like, crikey.
04:46The recent warmth has made everything grow faster.
04:48This is some kale, which actually I'm going to plant in a polytunnel for winter, picking.
04:52And a lot of what's in here is this spinach.
04:54So that's what I want to show you that we can transplant.
05:00So transplanting is when you've got a module-raised plant.
05:03These are about three and a half weeks old.
05:05There's two different varieties here, actually.
05:07There's a red one and a normal green one or red stem, to be precise.
05:12And now we're in the small garden where we've had, as you can see, an abundant summer.
05:20Really good tomatoes, a blight-resistant variety or varieties.
05:25And what I've done before the video, just to speed it up, actually, I'll start on the other side,
05:32is using my long-handled dibber.
05:34This is a really useful tool.
05:37You can buy it in the UK from Garden Imports and in the US from all about the garden.
05:42And it gives you leverage enough to make a hole in ground that's quite firm.
05:49It's firm, it's not the same as compact.
05:50This is no-dig.
05:52And so no-dig is brilliant for this because ground's always ready for receiving new plants.
05:57So let's have a go.
05:59I'm literally doing that.
06:06Transplanting is very quick when you pre-dib the holes and your plug plants are not big.
06:13So there's no need to use a trowel.
06:15And the actual method of planting is literally drop them in and push down on the root ball,
06:26which ensures contact.
06:27I'm going to water them just at the end, which I'll show you as well.
06:30So that was the red ones.
06:32This is a variety called Medania, which is home saved.
06:36And the ground was firm under these tomatoes, which is totally fine.
06:40I've done this several times now, so I know it works.
06:43Perhaps the one thing to watch out for or be aware of is slugs.
06:48And in the small garden here, there are a few snails.
06:51And what I'll do is come out here tonight with a torch.
06:57And the accessory to the torch is your call.
07:00But I'll probably have a knife on me to be honest and cut them in half and leave them for
07:05birds to eat.
07:06But you could just collect them in a bucket and dispose how you want.
07:10But what I'm looking to do at this point is just to make sure there might be none.
07:15Yeah, it might be fine, but I just want to be sure.
07:19And it's very easy to lose a whole planting when seedlings are this small.
07:25And it wouldn't actually be much different if I'd waited to let these plug plants get bigger by another, say,
07:32a couple of weeks.
07:34I'd have had to pop them on, though, put them into bigger module cells.
07:37The whole benefit of doing it this way is speed of getting plants ready for planting.
07:47You don't need so much space in your propagating area because these trays have 60 cells in each.
07:53And look at this. So there's average two spinach per plug.
07:59And that one was not quite pushed in enough.
08:03So here we go. Last one.
08:08So what will happen here is the tomatoes finish cropping in about two, three, four weeks, depending on variety and
08:16weather.
08:18And then I'll cut them right at ground level so that the root system stays in there.
08:26We do this with no-dig all the time.
08:27You're not trying to rip out all the roots.
08:30And if we did, obviously, that would disturb these spinach.
08:33But by then the spinach will actually be quite strongly growing.
08:36And it's just very feasible. It works really well.
08:39And so within about four weeks, we'll have strong spinach plants, no more tomatoes.
08:44And probably within five or six weeks, say middle of October, we'll be picking spinach here, even though the tomatoes
08:50have only recently finished.
08:52And finally, let me show you sowing.
08:56I actually don't have the seeds here, but that doesn't matter because it's just the principle of it.
09:01Again, I'm using the Dibber to make lines in the surface, which is compost-y soil.
09:09You know, with no-dig, you always have a nice soft surface.
09:11Not that you've recently applied compost necessarily, but because when you do put compost on it, it's on the surface
09:18and not dug in.
09:19It leaves the surface in this beautiful soft condition.
09:26And it's this simple.
09:27You know, there are other ways of doing this.
09:30These strawberries, by the way, were a present from a friend, James, and they're called Florence.
09:36And they've been in cold storage. That's why they've only been in the ground for six weeks.
09:41And they're giving an autumn crop.
09:42And what's even stranger, actually, is that nothing's eating them.
09:46It's slightly worrying me.
09:47Where are the birds and the things that normally eat strawberries?
09:51Anyway, so what I would do here is just drop seeds in.
09:54This would be lamb's lettuce I'm going to do.
09:56I'll leave these open and I'll come out and do a sowing quietly later on.
10:02Then just fill over like that.
10:05Tamp it down, perhaps, with your hand and give it water.
10:09And that's lamb's lettuce sown.
10:10So strawberries go somewhat dormant in the winter.
10:13The foliage is not strong.
10:16So there'll be room to crop the lamb's lettuce, which will finish, say, February, maybe.
10:22Only March at the latest.
10:23And that's when the strawberries really start to grow.
10:27So again, it says just working out overlaps.
10:30And I'm just looking for my can.
10:32Oh, I've left it up here.
10:33Damn.
10:41I did want to finish with watering because I think sometimes it worries some of my viewers.
10:51You know, like how much water can you apply to small seedlings without flooding them or damaging them?
10:57Surface watering is totally fine like this.
11:00I'll do it until I see the little hole which is still there because I didn't fill in the holes.
11:06And not filling in the holes means that you've got more chance of the water going where you want it
11:12around the little roots.
11:13You can see those holes are filling up nicely.
11:17So you can also see actually how quickly the water is soaking in with no dig.
11:22You can find all of these tips in any of my books.
11:26Like for example, recently the no dig book, my skills for growing book, children's no dig gardening.
11:32Have a look at that one.
11:33A lot of kids are getting into this now.
11:35And you can find the sewing dates which make all this really successful in my new calendar for 2024.
11:42We'll put links to this video in the description.
11:45Sat오що Maybe it is in the description.
11:46I just wondered how quickly it will look later for you to finish this.
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