- 5 weeks ago
- #nodig
- #growyourownfood
- #nodiggardening
You have great flexibility and many options for spacing plants efficiently and effectively. Aiming for the most production of food and foliage from any area, at any time.
Time is a big moving goalposts because some plants mature quickly and vacate space so you can group other parts quite closely towards them. Because you know that they won't be there after a certain time.
This saves space and increases harvests.
It really helps that you grow No Dig because then fertility is stronger and weeds are fewer. This gives you a blank canvas to paste on at any time including by intercropping and overlapping plantings.
#nodig #growyourownfood #nodiggardening
Filmed by Nicola Smith on 12th May 2023, at Homeacres no dig garden.
00:00 Introduction
00:12 Potatoes, with catch crop of turnips between
00:39 Spinach, soon to finish
00:53 Carrots, with a catch crop of radish
01:24 Cabbage, and problems with growing
01:39 The benefits of multisowing, with beetroot as an example
02:26 Lettuce plants, which will be interplanted with carrots, and why no dig helps with interplanting
03:14 Sweetcorn, with wide spacing
03:54 Cumin, planted between garlic
04:11 Multisown chard, and size options when growing
04:52 I demonstrate interplanting chard between garlic
05:36 A look at a small bed, full of plantings to maximise space
06:10 More onion examples – bulb and spring
06:55 Multisown leeks in module trays, soon to be potted on
07:28 A variation on interplanting in the polytunnel – garlic between tomato plants
07:51 Clearing salad plants from the polytunnel, then spreading compost – mushroom on top of horse manure from hotbed
08:18 I explain the garlic interplanting
08:44 Dwarf French marigolds (one eaten by woodlice) – good for filling gaps and the space at ground level
09:21 An example of using over-winter space – a bench over recently cleared salad plants for growing transplants, including strawberry plants
10:05 Melon and pepper, soon to be transplanted – well-spaced
10:38 The importance of leaving enough space between plantings
See my Spacings Knowledge Pack https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/spacing-why-its-important/
My latest growing book https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/no-dig/
More on multisowing, interplanting and spacing in Skills for Growing, available as an online course: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-online-course/
And in the digital version of my book: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-digital-version/
(Print version back in stock soon: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/charles-dowdings-skills-for-growing/)
And multisowing info in this knowledge pack: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/propagation-seeds-sowing-and-multisowing/
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
Time is a big moving goalposts because some plants mature quickly and vacate space so you can group other parts quite closely towards them. Because you know that they won't be there after a certain time.
This saves space and increases harvests.
It really helps that you grow No Dig because then fertility is stronger and weeds are fewer. This gives you a blank canvas to paste on at any time including by intercropping and overlapping plantings.
#nodig #growyourownfood #nodiggardening
Filmed by Nicola Smith on 12th May 2023, at Homeacres no dig garden.
00:00 Introduction
00:12 Potatoes, with catch crop of turnips between
00:39 Spinach, soon to finish
00:53 Carrots, with a catch crop of radish
01:24 Cabbage, and problems with growing
01:39 The benefits of multisowing, with beetroot as an example
02:26 Lettuce plants, which will be interplanted with carrots, and why no dig helps with interplanting
03:14 Sweetcorn, with wide spacing
03:54 Cumin, planted between garlic
04:11 Multisown chard, and size options when growing
04:52 I demonstrate interplanting chard between garlic
05:36 A look at a small bed, full of plantings to maximise space
06:10 More onion examples – bulb and spring
06:55 Multisown leeks in module trays, soon to be potted on
07:28 A variation on interplanting in the polytunnel – garlic between tomato plants
07:51 Clearing salad plants from the polytunnel, then spreading compost – mushroom on top of horse manure from hotbed
08:18 I explain the garlic interplanting
08:44 Dwarf French marigolds (one eaten by woodlice) – good for filling gaps and the space at ground level
09:21 An example of using over-winter space – a bench over recently cleared salad plants for growing transplants, including strawberry plants
10:05 Melon and pepper, soon to be transplanted – well-spaced
10:38 The importance of leaving enough space between plantings
See my Spacings Knowledge Pack https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/spacing-why-its-important/
My latest growing book https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/no-dig/
More on multisowing, interplanting and spacing in Skills for Growing, available as an online course: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-online-course/
And in the digital version of my book: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-digital-version/
(Print version back in stock soon: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/charles-dowdings-skills-for-growing/)
And multisowing info in this knowledge pack: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/propagation-seeds-sowing-and-multisowing/
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
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00How you can make more of your space.
00:02It's the middle of May
00:03and we're busy planting, planting, planting,
00:06but also we've planted a lot within the last two months.
00:09And here's some examples
00:10and to show you how they all fit together.
00:12So like this is potatoes.
00:14It's a 1.5 meter, five foot bed.
00:16And because potatoes take a while to get going,
00:19I've done what's called a catch crop of turnips between them.
00:23And we're just harvesting the last turnips now,
00:25they're multi-sown.
00:26So that's, that's a final harvest.
00:29And then the potatoes will take over
00:31and use all that space.
00:32So four potatoes across each row.
00:34Last year in that amount of space,
00:36we got 13 kilos of potatoes to give you an idea.
00:39And likewise, the spinach won't be here for that much longer.
00:42Spinach tends to flower by early June.
00:44And by then the potatoes also will be doing this.
00:47So you can space things close when you have an idea
00:50of how plants are going to develop.
00:53It's spacing is related to timing
00:54and how plants subsequently grow.
00:57And it's same story here with catch crop.
00:59of radish between carrots.
01:01So we got nice growth of radish.
01:03You see they're growing quite close to the carrots.
01:07And we actually had a failure of the first carrot sowing,
01:10or not total failure,
01:12but you can see the pretty patchy germination.
01:14It's been very difficult spring for carrots
01:15and a lot of slugs eating them and things.
01:17So we did a second sowing of carrots there.
01:20And between the two sowings of carrots,
01:21we're going to have a decent stand, I reckon.
01:23And here, this is an example of a problem.
01:27I lost three cabbages and I'm still not too sure why.
01:29And it's related, I think, to this variety being not good.
01:32It's a not good seed.
01:34But there's also aphids and all sorts of things going wrong.
01:36I'll just mention that in passing.
01:39Then we've got a nice example of using multi-sowing
01:41to increase your amount you can fit in.
01:45Because when you multi-sow, that means you're putting in
01:47quite a few little seedlings together.
01:49They're using space.
01:50You know, a little seedling, if that was one or two onions,
01:52they'd be loads of unused space for quite a long time.
01:54But they fill it out quite quickly,
01:56like this beetroot, for example, also multi-sown.
01:58So that was multi-sown late February.
02:01We're now 10th of May.
02:03So that's two and a half months of growing.
02:05And it won't be long before we have beetroot there.
02:08And the thing about the multi-sowing is
02:09it's like a companionship.
02:11So it's a kind of companion planting.
02:13And that, in a way, is what companion planting is.
02:15It's not about what vegetable likes what other vegetables.
02:17It's more about proximity and using that,
02:21being together to good effect.
02:22You know, plants like, especially seedlings,
02:24like being with their mates together.
02:26Here you can see these beautiful lettuce,
02:28which actually are not spaced as close as I could have.
02:30And there's a reason for that.
02:32We're picking the outer leaves of these lettuce.
02:34And that means after a picking,
02:36after each picking, there's a bit more room.
02:38And in about a month, you can just do it with your finger.
02:41So I'll use my finger like that to draw out a drill.
02:45And I can drop carrot seeds in there.
02:47Carrots come up and germinate,
02:49while the lettuce are still cropping for another month.
02:52So that's another way of making more space
02:54by overlapping different plantings.
02:56It works really well with no dig.
02:59Because with no dig,
03:00you're not messing around the soil at any time.
03:02It's ready to receive new seeds and plants at any time.
03:05You can see how few weeds there are here.
03:07We hardly are weeding to achieve this.
03:09Once you've got your soil clean,
03:10check out my other videos for details about that.
03:14And then this, this is a quite space hungry planting.
03:18I haven't really worked out with this one yet,
03:20how to grow anything between it.
03:22It won't be long though,
03:22before these sweet corns fill out this space.
03:25You know, this mid May now,
03:27they're really going to grow fast.
03:29But I give them, you know,
03:30a good foot 30 centimeters between each one.
03:33This is actually baby corns.
03:34So maybe I've given them a little bit more,
03:36because I hope they'll crop for longer.
03:37We'll see.
03:37And the badger won't be interested to eat these.
03:41Here with the garlic,
03:42what I like to do is to do it in rows across a bed.
03:46So as well as the actual space between plants,
03:48it's how you line them up.
03:49And that means that you can, again,
03:51we can sow or plant between.
03:54I wonder how many of you would know this.
03:56I hardly know it myself.
03:57It's a experiment.
03:59I'm, I've planted cumin between the garlic.
04:02I've done it once before and managed to get,
04:03you get the growth of the leaf in year one,
04:05and it's biennial and then in year two,
04:07it goes to seed and that's the cumin seed for spice.
04:11And I've brought these out of the greenhouse to show you,
04:14to give you an idea.
04:15So this is multi-sown chard.
04:18So actually it was two,
04:20I put two seeds in a cell and chard like beetroot,
04:24you get loads, more than one from one seed.
04:26So you've got options there.
04:28Well, if I was going to grow big chard leaves,
04:30I'd thin them down to two plants by taking out the plants I don't want,
04:35until you've got two, and then put that in.
04:38Or you could leave more in there and,
04:41and have baby chard, say, safer salad leaves more,
04:44and put them in more closely.
04:47And they, you could, you know, you can do this so easily.
04:52Here's a sort of not so red chard, so I'll take that one out.
04:55So this is an example of putting in a chard.
04:58I'd normally use my dibbit, but putting it in like that,
05:02you know, between the garlic.
05:03There were garlic roots there as I was doing that.
05:05That's fine.
05:06So the point being that this garlic is not going to be here
05:09for much longer.
05:10It's five weeks maybe, especially if it gets some rust.
05:14And then we'll harvest that.
05:15And then you've already got your new planting developing
05:18and using that space,
05:20which has been freed up by the garlic harvest.
05:23So it's precious.
05:26You know, this time of year, the space in May, full light,
05:32we want to be packing it in as much as possible.
05:36This little bed here I use as an example where I'm looking to,
05:40you know, again, use every bit of room all the time.
05:43There's three cauliflowers there.
05:44They've got plenty of room to grow on the end.
05:47Carrots will get a little bit crowded, but that's okay.
05:49Be true.
05:50Just again, these need picking.
05:51We're picking them tomorrow.
05:52Lettuce and turnips.
05:54You can see again, multi-sewn turnips there.
05:56Multi-sewn onions, spinach needs picking,
05:58and then peas on the end.
06:00And again, the idea with the spinach is this will be gone,
06:03say within four weeks.
06:04So then that's when the peas will be really going for it
06:07and motoring and can make full use of that.
06:10Here we've got more onion examples.
06:13So different types of onions.
06:15You've got bulb onions.
06:17So these will swell up to make four, say, medium size.
06:21And, you know, assuming they all go all right,
06:24I never take anything for granted,
06:25but we can have a lot of onions here at that spacing.
06:29And for spring onions, we do it slightly differently.
06:32I actually put in more than four.
06:33And here, for example, you can see there's still six or seven there.
06:37And what we've been doing is taking out the bigger ones
06:41and harvesting them for spring onion.
06:44Beautiful.
06:45You know, this is one of my favorite foods at this time of year.
06:48And get loads of spring onions from a small area,
06:51doing it like this.
06:52Yes, they've been in there since September.
06:55And you can use similar method over a longer term for leeks.
06:59So that's multi-sown leeks.
07:03Sown 12th of, I'm reading it, 12th of April.
07:06So that's only four weeks ago and they're looking good.
07:10What we'll need to do with these
07:12is actually keep them going by potting them on,
07:15putting them into a pot of compost to keep them going.
07:17Cause these are going to go in after potatoes.
07:20So sometimes with your transplants, you're working out,
07:23you know, when the space is going to be ready for them
07:26that you can pop them in.
07:28But the, the interplanting is, you know,
07:30this is where you really game with interplanting
07:32cause using that space kind of immediately.
07:36And here's a variation of it where you've got garlic
07:39between in this case tomatoes,
07:41but these tomatoes have only been in here
07:43for less than two weeks actually.
07:44And prior to that, it was salad.
07:48Like you can see on the left-hand bed there.
07:50All winter, this polytunnel has been salad plants
07:53that we've been cropping.
07:56And it's, I don't like taking them out actually,
07:58cause you kind of, they're like friends by the end,
07:59but we twist them out and then spread this compost.
08:02So this is actually a bit of mushroom compost
08:04on top of horse manure.
08:06And the horse manure came from the hotbed,
08:09which you can see is beautiful.
08:11Well, nice mix of compost, basically.
08:13We don't actually mix the compost up.
08:14We put the mushroom on top.
08:15It's a nice weed free capping.
08:17And then I'm not going to feed these tomatoes,
08:21just do the normal side shooting
08:22and train them up the string.
08:24But the garlic was here all the time
08:26between the sallow plants,
08:29rather like you can see it there along the edge.
08:32And this will harvest within about a month.
08:34So then we'll have space for the tomatoes to grow.
08:37So the garlic is just a brilliant way of using space,
08:41kind of for free.
08:42He's not taking up any room.
08:44And the marigolds is a little bit the same.
08:46So these are dwarf French marigolds,
08:48looking tiny at the moment.
08:49And actually also, look at that,
08:51that one's been eaten there.
08:53Wood lice, I think.
08:54Wood lice really like these.
08:55And so what I'm doing with the marigolds
08:57is growing some on in pots,
08:58just to make sure I've got, can fill the gaps.
09:01I'm always expecting to lose a few plants.
09:03So always have spare plants.
09:05I hope you can hear me above the rain,
09:07we're just picking up a shower.
09:09And then the marigolds make a fantastic ground cover
09:14over the bed,
09:16because when the tomatoes grow up,
09:17they're not really using the ground level space.
09:21And just to finish, there's a nice example here
09:23of using over winter space,
09:26because we've had,
09:27we've been cropping salad underneath there,
09:29just took the plants out today, actually.
09:31And that's going to have compost.
09:33And then, oh yeah, I'll show you in a sec, actually.
09:37But using this to grow,
09:39to raise transplants for one thing, like tomatoes,
09:42but also look at these.
09:45So I'm really pleased with that.
09:47This is a way of, you know,
09:48these I've put in as runners
09:50from outdoor strawberry plants last October,
09:53and filled this mushroom crate with compost.
09:55And they've just been in here all winter.
09:59No feeding.
10:00That's just a bit of compost in there.
10:02It's simple.
10:04Yeah, this is just to give you
10:06the final example of spacing.
10:07And, you know, if you've got a new bed like that,
10:11we're going to put compost on it.
10:12So this is what it looks like before the compost.
10:14It's still pretty nice,
10:15but this will have about,
10:17just over an inch of compost, three centimeters.
10:20And there's a melon.
10:22There's a pepper.
10:22Yeah.
10:23So these side beds,
10:24they don't get quite so much value of the space
10:27because you run out of headroom.
10:29But something like the melon,
10:30I did it last year, actually,
10:31and they're very successful.
10:33Train them up a string,
10:35but give them a good 60 centimeters, two feet.
10:39So with summer plantings,
10:40the same with the tomatoes, you know,
10:42I've given them enough room.
10:44I've seen it in many greenhouses,
10:47where people put in too many, just don't do that.
10:49I know they look so small when you put them in,
10:51but you've got to imagine this is a big tomato plant.
10:54I'm on the limit here.
10:55This is quite close for tomatoes, just so you know.
10:58It's probably average.
10:59If you take an average of all the distances,
11:01again, about 60 centimeters,
11:05just under two feet.
11:08And it's the height that we'll get from them.
11:10So there you go.
11:11I hope I've given you some ideas.
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