Harvests continue to be abundant and there is plenty replanted for autumn. The dry, sunny weather means that watering is especially important this year.
This small no dig garden measures just 25 square metres (270 square feet), yet it continues to provide abundant harvests through high summer. In this tour I show what we are picking now, including cucumbers, herbs and beetroot, together with new plantings of salads, chicories and endives for autumn harvests.
This year has been exceptionally dry and sunny, so watering has become an important part of keeping crops productive. I share how I prioritise watering, succession plant between existing crops, and keep a small space producing food over many months.
You can join this channel to support our work and receive exclusive monthly videos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
#nodig #smallgarden #vegetablegarden #kitchengarden #growyourown #successionplanting
00:00 Introduction - watering and weather
00:41 Cucumbers La Diva
01:14 Flowers and herbs
01:36 Tomatoes on new structure - dropping plants, pinching out tops
02:49 Leeks - watering in lines
03:33 French beans interplanted with lettuce, Slenderette
04:08 Dry soil from neighbouring trees, water little and often
04:45 Dahlias
05:00 Barrel growing - watering method
05:27 Strawberries – cutting back and planting runners
06:39 Greek basil, jostaberry and tayberry
07:16 Beetroot with fleece over - cropping from multisown clump
08:24 Salads transplanted after peas
08:59 Chicory 506TT, and transplanting endive into dibbed holes
11:11 Transplanting lettuce Maravilla di Verona
12:14 Strawberry runners - watering
This small no dig garden measures just 25 square metres (270 square feet), yet it continues to provide abundant harvests through high summer. In this tour I show what we are picking now, including cucumbers, herbs and beetroot, together with new plantings of salads, chicories and endives for autumn harvests.
This year has been exceptionally dry and sunny, so watering has become an important part of keeping crops productive. I share how I prioritise watering, succession plant between existing crops, and keep a small space producing food over many months.
You can join this channel to support our work and receive exclusive monthly videos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
#nodig #smallgarden #vegetablegarden #kitchengarden #growyourown #successionplanting
00:00 Introduction - watering and weather
00:41 Cucumbers La Diva
01:14 Flowers and herbs
01:36 Tomatoes on new structure - dropping plants, pinching out tops
02:49 Leeks - watering in lines
03:33 French beans interplanted with lettuce, Slenderette
04:08 Dry soil from neighbouring trees, water little and often
04:45 Dahlias
05:00 Barrel growing - watering method
05:27 Strawberries – cutting back and planting runners
06:39 Greek basil, jostaberry and tayberry
07:16 Beetroot with fleece over - cropping from multisown clump
08:24 Salads transplanted after peas
08:59 Chicory 506TT, and transplanting endive into dibbed holes
11:11 Transplanting lettuce Maravilla di Verona
12:14 Strawberry runners - watering
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:11Hi Summer, how much food can you get from a small space? This is 25 square meters, 270 square feet,
00:17and we're cropping quite a bit of some things all the time. It doesn't all come at once, but I'm
00:22showing you here what we're picking at the moment and also what we're planting in the middle of
00:26summer and watering as well. There's been quite a bit of watering this year. It's much drier than
00:31usual and more sunny actually. Sun is great if you've got the water that you can apply to the
00:36roots because more sunlight means more photosynthesis and higher output of crops like
00:41the cucumbers here. They're really motoring now and I've been picking quite a few and you can see
00:47they're coming ready all the time. You've got a choice of what size you harvest them at. I'm
00:55a variety called La Diva. There's another one there. I would say on average they're yielding
01:00one of these per day for two plants in that much space is what we're getting, occasionally more.
01:07But these cucumbers do need quite a bit of moisture to thrive, so I water these most days.
01:14And the flowers in front is Malapi vulcan trifida, a particularly lovely one that just keeps going.
01:20I do like to dot the flowers around in zinnias and dahlias you'll see. Well at this end we have
01:26some
01:26herbs, so there's chives there. They certainly need watering if you want to keep them going. And a
01:32small bay tree in a pot which gives quite a few leaves quite enough actually. And then the tomatoes
01:37here, they're growing on a structure that I was given this spring. I'd never tried it before and
01:43didn't know how it would do and at first I thought wow this is quite flimsy. But actually it's
01:48it stood the test of quite a bit of wind and this is washing line. So it's plastic which won't
01:55rot.
01:55Someone was throwing it out. The guy who brought it, he'd salvaged that from somebody's refuse.
02:00And the poles are two feet 60 centimeters into the ground, so it is pretty secure. And there's a really
02:08clever way of changing the height of the plant. So by unclipping these blue clips you can
02:14let out more of the thin wire and push the clip back. And if you need to drop the plants
02:22because
02:23they're going up to the top, which incredibly doesn't happen much in our climate normally.
02:29They've put on more growth than normal this year. And one thing I'm going to do, within about two
02:34weeks I'll be pinching out the tops. It feels a shame to do that, but when you stop all growth,
02:40no more growth at all from early August. And that puts more energy of the plant into existing fruit.
02:47You're more likely to get all the fruit right. Here the leeks went in after cabbage and kohlrabi
02:54and broccoli. So they were cropping in the spring. And we planted these about two weeks ago.
03:00So these leeks were sown in April. That's a good time for main crop leeks, any time in April,
03:08in my small module cells and then potted on into seven centimeter pots, which went in the ground
03:13from the pot. So they've got a good head start. They're about three months old when they actually
03:18go in the ground. And we're watering them as well. But having them laid out in lines saves on water,
03:24because you can just run out a hose or watering can along each line until they get bigger anyway.
03:30And that saves water at the moment. And same with the French beans. So these are so direct between
03:37lettuce. So the lettuce was still cropping, taking off the outer leaves regularly. And I pop the seed in
03:44just amongst the lettuce, basically. And they've all come up. It's a pleasant surprise. That's a variety
03:51called Slenderet. And we'll see how they do. But potentially that's going to give French beans
03:57through into autumn. I find here they crop really well in September, almost better than in the summer.
04:03So I'm looking forward to them because we're having a bit of trouble getting good beans at the moment.
04:08But this end of the garden is very dry because of the trees behind the fence in my neighbor's garden
04:15taking quite a bit of moisture. We did cut a trench along there two winters ago,
04:20but you can never get the deeper roots. So we reduced some of the rooting into the garden.
04:25But it just means more watering and more often watering, because the tree roots are always there.
04:31So if you give a big dose of water, you're giving a lot to the trees. But if you give
04:36little and often
04:37rather than a lot and seldom, more of it will go to the vegetables. And I just make sure I
04:43keep these
04:44watered. And it was a similar story for the dahlias, because there were three dahlias here.
04:48And the middle one never really looked happy and it was always wilting. So actually, I took it out.
04:54And well, I'm just keeping them watered enough to keep them going. Dahlias do like quite a bit of water.
05:00Well, here, this is an interesting way to grow things in terms of watering, because you can only
05:05really get water in the top. So for maybe a minute or a minute and a half, about every two
05:11or three days,
05:12so that there's enough moisture to drift down. This chilli plant tells me how I'm doing on that,
05:17because it will wilt if I haven't given enough water. And plants wilting doesn't mean they're
05:22dying, but they're not happy. And they'll grow more if you can give them moisture. And it's helped
05:27the chilli that the strawberries have been cut back. So when they finish fruiting, I cut all strawberries,
05:33not right back, but close to the smallest growing leaf. And also, I cut the runners off because in
05:39this context here, I mean, that needs to come off because they can't really root anywhere. So it's
05:46basically taking energy from the plant. Whereas over there on those strawberries, they've just finished
05:53fruiting. That's a variety called Florence. At the end of fruiting time, I cut the leaves off. But in this
05:59case, I took a bit more time and trouble over it, because I wanted to keep the runners.
06:04And then I watered as well, so that they'll make new plants, which I'm going to plant elsewhere,
06:10because that bed of strawberries there is three years old. And this year, it was not as good as
06:17last year. We still had loads of strawberries, but I can see that it's given of its best. So those
06:21plants
06:22will come out once the runners have rooted, and then I'll need to plant them somewhere else.
06:27Well, these plants, it's their first year, so all the leaf they make now will feed into next year's
06:35crop, all being well, if I just keep them watered. This lovely basil here, that's Greek basil,
06:42which we cut far enough that you can get new growth coming out the sides. So that carries on cropping.
06:48The josterberry here, I think it's suffered from being too close to tree and edge. It has not
06:54given fantastic fruit, and the birds did get quite a few. It kind of wasn't worth covering it really,
06:59and I never got around to it. Whereas the tabree on the wall gave a lot, and we had fantastic
07:04crop
07:04off that. Now we've cut out the old stems and trained in the new ones. That's the classic thing
07:10you do with most of those raspberry, blackberry crosses. Here there's an interesting thing happened,
07:18which wasn't planned. We planted beetroot here in June about five weeks ago when it was still cool,
07:27and I was afraid of rabbits eating the leaves, so I put fleece over. It was all done in a
07:31bit of a rush,
07:31and I couldn't lay my hands on mesh, which I would have used normally. And I've normally thought the
07:37fleece gets a bit too hot in the summer, but actually these beetroot are doing all right.
07:42And I gave them a bit of water last night through the fleece, but you can see they're looking strong.
07:49And they're multi-sown, same as the leeks, so there's a few together in a clump. When you look at
07:54a
07:55multi-sown clump, you'll notice often there's one bigger than the others. And if you twist it like
08:00that rather than pull, that will enable you to remove it without disturbing the others,
08:05which can then grow on. So this variety is called Flaming Barrel, and it's really beautiful. It has
08:12lovely orange and yellow rings on the inside and a great flavour. It's really sweet. I like to eat it
08:18raw,
08:20and that's going to give harvest right the way through the autumn. And lastly, I want to do a bit
08:25of new planting of salads for the autumn. So this area was fantastic early summer peas,
08:34and it was peas the last time we were here in the small garden. And we just cleared them by
08:39cutting
08:40their stalks. You can still see the remains of the pea plant and its roots. Just cut them near ground
08:45level, take them away to compost. And it's actually been empty for a while waiting for these salads.
08:50And all of the salads I'm planting here were sown about three and a half weeks ago. But you could
08:57still sow them now. In the case of chicory, just if you want them for radicchio. So this is a
09:04variety called 506 TT. And it's in my range on Premier Seeds Direct. I do recommend this variety
09:12particularly because it makes a beautiful head, a beautiful coloured head. And they come to crop,
09:22say through late September, October, when lettuce is not really doing so much. It's not a lettuce,
09:30but it's a kind of lettuce relative, you might say. Chicory endive lettuce are all the same family of
09:35plants. And you can actually save seed from all of them quite easily if you want to. And this endive
09:42is actually from home saved seed last year. And it's a plant that was a volunteer just growing
09:48actually near the wormery. And I just let it grow and flower and we saved seed from it. And here
09:54they
09:54are. And I must say with the home saved seed like this, they're really vigorous plants. So I'm putting
10:11them into the holes which I dipped already. So dipping I found is quick, easy way to make many
10:19planting holes and enables you really to pop in plants very quickly. As you can see, because the
10:29hole is just the right size for these modules, module root balls. And I'm giving a firm push down
10:37on the root ball, enabling it to have good contact with the soil and compost around it. And I'm going
10:45then to give a good watering to these plants because unless it was going to rain, which is definitely
10:53not going to, the water helps to make good contact between the roots and the soil and compost
11:02around them. So a little bit deep that just helps to hold the moisture. And I'm putting endive on this
11:08side, which is a bit more shady from the shed. And on the slightly brighter side, I'm putting these
11:15lettuce and they are Maravilla de Verona. Again, it's one of my recommended ones from Premier Seeds
11:23Direct. And again, I'm putting them in pretty deep. Sometimes it feels like, wow, that's deeper than
11:30is going to work with lettuce because they don't have a long stem. But I've always found that this is
11:36a brilliant way to plant them. And usually we'd be putting these lettuce in quite a bit smaller than
11:44this. These have been sitting in a tray for nearly four weeks now, which in the summer is quite long.
11:49We planted some last week of the same sowing. And at that point, they were 17 days old. So that's
11:59to give you an idea. You don't have to wait very long between raising your plants and popping them in
12:04the ground. And once I finish this, they're going to have a really good dose of water on top. And
12:11then
12:11I'll water them probably every second day after that. And while I'm here, I shall also water the
12:18strawberries because I want these runners. So there's a strawberry runner that I just pushed in the ground
12:25yesterday evening. It's not rooted yet, but it's got the potential to make roots and make a new plant
12:31as long as I keep that area water. So this is the main watering priority at the moment, together with
12:37the cucumbers and to a less extent, the tomatoes and leeks. So watering is a big thing going forward.
12:43And then these will start harvesting outer leaves sometime in a month or so. Chicories will make a
12:49heart in about two and a half months. So there's lots of food coming up here in the small garden.
12:54We'll come back here sometime in the autumn.
12:57So
12:58we'll see you next time.
12:58We'll see you next time.
12:58We'll see you next time.
12:59Bye.
13:02Bye.
13:08Bye.
13:13Bye.
13:14Bye.
Comments