7 Vegetables to Sow in Late Summer for Autumn & Winter

Charles Dowding

There are many best vegetables to sow at this time of year! August is a top time to sow spinach, salad rocket, turnips, endives, chicories, broccoli for next spring, collards and Chinese cabbage. I explain these ones in this video.  Also you can sow mizuna, pak choi and chard. And herbs such as dill, coriander and parsley.  My father, a dairy farmer, used to call August the "second spring". It's when he sowed grass seeds for autumn and the following year.  Use all gaps that appear after clearing remains of first harvests. With no dig, you don't need to worry about rotation, because soil is so fertile and healthy.  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  Filmed by Carly Dutton-Edwards on 24th July at Homeacres no dig garden, Somerset UK. 🎵 Music: Rory Dunwoodie, @rorydinwoodiemusic IG: rorydinwoodiemusic Thumb photo by Ianthe Alexander, 29th July.  00:00 Introduction to the seven vegetables 01:17 Sowing collards in module tray with own mix of potting compost 02:23 Turnip, Tokyo Cross - multisowing 03:05 Spinach - multisowing 03:39 Rocket - multisowing  04:33 Broccoli for spring harvests 05:07 Endive - escarole and frizzy, Wallone variety 06:33 Chinese cabbage - two varieties 07:47 Collards, and how to water seeds in trays  10:14 Escarole endive sown in tray - pricking out  11:41 Timing of transplanting  12:06 Collards outside, with mesh against flea beetle - picking outer leaves 14:11 Outro - succession planting

Transcript

00:00Early August season ending? No, you can still sow a lot of great vegetables at this time.

00:07And here is a selection of seven, which I've experimented with a lot over the years. The

00:13seven vegetables are turnip, which excels in the autumn. There's less pests around for it,

00:19and it's not going to go to flower. You've got a long time to take your harvest.

00:24Spinach is a real winner at this time. August is actually the best time to sow spinach.

00:30Rocket, as in salad rocket, not wild rocket. I actually sow wild rocket in September, but salad

00:36rocket, arugula, is really good in early August, or through August as well. Purple sprouting broccoli,

00:44there's just time. It's a little bit late. You often sow it in July or June, but now it's still

00:48possible. I succeeded really well last year, sowing it early August. And then end eve. It's prime time

00:55for end eve because they crop so well in the autumn, more than lettuce even. And as long as you

01:01don't

01:01mind a bit of bitterness in the leaves, they're a real star of the autumn. Chinese cabbage. I know you

01:08can sow Chinese cabbage all through the year, but very early August, they really excel to get your

01:13lovely heart by October. And finally collards. I'm sowing some of them to show you now. And you can even

01:19see outside some collards that are still cropping now that were sown last August. So they're a very

01:26versatile vegetable. I'm sowing just a few of each, more than anything to show you the sowing method.

01:33But before that, I've remembered I need to make some holes in my tray. So I've filled a tray

01:39pretty full and firmly with potting mix, which is my own mix. It has 50% worm cast in it

01:45and 50%

01:47grow worm proprietary mix, which is the one I found to be the most reliable. That one also has some

01:52worm cast. It would do on its own, but I find that adding my own mix to it really gives

01:58it a lift,

01:59gives some extra fertility. So this device we call a dip popper, and it means you get nice,

02:05even holes right the way across. I've not watered the compost at this point because I

02:10don't want it too wet. That doesn't work if it's too wet. You get water on your hands when you're

02:15handling seeds and everything. It's moist enough that it will hold its shape for long enough for me

02:21to pop these seeds in. So here's the turnip. Tokyo Cross is a hybrid, and I have found it much

02:32more

02:32consistent and reliable and tasty, actually, compared to many of the older varieties, although it was

02:39bred in Japan quite a while ago. And I'm doing multi-sowing, so that means roughly four seeds per

02:46cell. Three or four is good, actually even five. You know, it just depends on on the germination,

02:54because often there's one maybe that don't come up. Like 80% would be a good rate to expect for

03:02seeds

03:02that you buy germination. Spinach, I'm also going to multi-sow, but that I wouldn't put so many seeds.

03:09They tend to come up pretty evenly, and I find for picking larger leaves of spinach,

03:16even just one plant is enough. So that was three. They're not always easy to sow exactly right.

03:22I'm aiming to put two in each cell. The rest of these packets I'm going to sow later, in case

03:29you're

03:29wondering, because I maybe wouldn't put seed back in the packet if it has been on my slightly sweaty hand.

03:38Then we have here the rocket. So these are seeds from my range with Premier Seeds Direct.

03:46They're basically varieties or types of seed that I found very reliable over the years. And

03:54multi-sowing these, again, it depends what you want. If you want just a few large leaves, I would do

04:00no

04:00more than two. If you want lots of small leaves, it could be three. I'll do two or three. And

04:08we'll see

04:09what happens. There's a bit of room for manoeuvre. So multi-sow means you can put all the seeds in

04:15the

04:16same little hole. You don't have to space them out at this point. And as they grow, they push one

04:22another

04:22apart. It's a really wonderful and miraculous way of using less space and less potting mix to grow

04:31a lot of seeds. Now this one is a broccoli for cropping next spring. So it's lucky that I don't

04:40want too many seeds because that is all there is in that packet. Some of the F1 hybrids are quite

04:48expensive seeds. So since I've got them all out, I'm going to sow them all here. Oh, damn, I put

04:55it

04:55in the previous one. That's going to be interesting. We're going to have broccoli with rocket. I can work

05:01that one out, I reckon. And now we are going on to endive. And there are two types of endive

05:12I like to

05:13So one is called a scaroll and it has broader, larger leaves, probably not so well known as the frizzy

05:25endive. And this is home safe seed. So they're a little bit not so even as many commercial seeds.

05:36I'm going to put two in a hole actually. Because with many seeds, if you only want one, I only

05:42want

05:43one plants here per cell. If they all come up, then you just take out one. Or sometimes you get

05:48a weak

05:48one and a strong one, you can just leave the strong one and thin out the weak one. So yeah,

05:53this is Wallone,

05:57which is the frizzy endive. And I've tried a few of these over the years, and I must say,

06:02well-earned. It really is my favorite. So the depth of these holes is about four millimeters.

06:17It's often said that you sow seeds as deep as the width of a seed. That's almost impossible because

06:25many seeds are very narrow. And in fact, you can see I'm putting them all in here at the same

06:31depth,

06:31even when they're different seeds. So this is some Chinese cabbage from last year, which I found

06:38really good. And I'm going to see how it grows this year just out of interest. So again, two seeds

06:45per

06:45cell. Often we would grow these in a tray for pricking out. And I'll show you that in a minute.

06:57Many brassica seeds, you know, this is a brassica, are quite large. And that does make it easier to

07:03sow them. I also have here from King Seeds, some Yuki. And I thought this would make an interesting

07:12comparison as well, because Yuki is a variety I've grown for a long time. And I want to see how

07:18it

07:19compares with the Cuesta. Yuki, if anything, is slightly smaller. So the idea with these Chinese

07:25cabbages is that they will make a really tight heart that stands for quite a long time through

07:31mid to late autumn, when crispy fresh leaves are really welcome, because by then lettuce are not

07:37really producing. And we put them in the salad bags, actually. Just a few of the smaller Chinese cabbage

07:43leaves. And finally, we have collards. Collards is something I'm ashamed to say I've not grown until

07:51last year. I don't know how I missed it. I'm going to put two seeds again. That's another brassica.

07:56And I've been blown away by its wonderful low growth, low meaning that you can easily cover it against

08:03pigeons in the winter, which is the problem we have here. While if you grow kale, which is probably

08:11its closest relative in terms of leaves it produces, you can't easily cover them because the plants are

08:16quite tall by winter. And just last winter, it kept on cropping pretty much right through the winter.

08:21So we often had just a few beautiful tender leaves of collards. And those plants are still cropping

08:27outside even now. So then I just cover over gently. I don't disturb the seeds at this point.

08:37And I shall then give some water. And I'll just show you the watering because it's a little bit

08:45it could go wrong at this point, putting on water. I know it sounds an obvious thing, you know,

08:50giving water to plants. What's there to learn about that? Well, it's actually quite a lot. Because if the

08:59seed is near the surface, which these are, and the compost is quite dry, if you put a lot of

09:10water on

09:10it one go, you can float the seeds out. So I do it like that. That's not fully wet yet.

09:16But the water's

09:17just started to soak in. And it's one of the ironies of watering that dry materials, dry soil compost,

09:26don't soak up so much water initially, as compost or soil that's already moist.

09:31So I get it nice and damp. And then perhaps two more, a bit more thorough or longer lasting waterings.

09:42And before watering, I made a note of the weight of this tray. This is one way to find out.

09:48Actually, it's still not as heavy as I know they are when they're fully moist. So that's still not

09:52fully moist. I do like to get these trays fully moist at this point, because then you kind of know

09:59where

09:59you are going forwards. And from now on, it will be at this time of year in summer, watering once,

10:07even twice a day, if it's really sunny. In our climate normally, yeah, that's feeling good and heavy now.

10:14So that's the sewing into trays direct. But you can also sew like this.

10:21None of these are what, oh, yeah, there's some that we're filming now,

10:24the endive that we've already pricked out, actually.

10:27That is Scarol endive diva, which I sewed four days ago, to give you an idea of the speed.

10:36And Sam, who was here yesterday, pricked them out. And from just that little space,

10:42she pricked out 90 endive plants. So basically I sewed too thick, but it's also the incredible

10:48vigour of home safe seeds. That was very successful. And pricking out means just this. This is all you do.

10:56You need to just lift a few seedlings so that you can get hold of it. And at this stage,

11:03it's very, very viable because you can easily that's working out if I can find the space here.

11:09It's a bit risky, but let's try that. You just make a hole that's quite deep. And then you can

11:15push it in.

11:17That's a bit difficult on camera. Try not to get in the way. But basically, I want to push it

11:22in

11:24so that the stem is buried and the leaves are at the surface. Seedlings from this tray are

11:31very even. This is the advantage of pricking out. If you've got poor germination, you lose it in there,

11:37so to speak. It doesn't take up space in the module tray. You end up with a very full module

11:42tray

11:43of plants that are going to all be ready to transplant at the same time, which in this case

11:47will be in about two and a half weeks. So because of the time of year, early August, it's very

11:52warm.

11:53And the seeds we're sowing, a lot of brascas tend to be very quick. Probably the slowest is spinach,

11:57actually. But sowing that tray from now, we could well be planting out around the 15th, 20th of August.

12:06These collard plants, we sowed them actually middle of August last year, planted them here mid-September,

12:13as what we call seedlings, between French beans, actually, which were still cropping.

12:17And they didn't shoot away and then suddenly got going nicely by October. And we started picking in

12:25November. And the mesh, which I've had over them, just sitting on top at the moment like that,

12:33I think it probably helps a little bit with flea beetle, although these plants are quite strong by

12:38now and they can resist it to some extent. But if you look at a leaf like this, you can

12:43see

12:44the flea beetle damages around the edge, which is where it's touching the mesh because of how the

12:52flea beetles lay through the mesh. But the rest of the leaf is good. This one's quite tough in the

12:59stalk.

12:59So if I'm cooking that, I would cut out maybe the middle section because of the time of year, more

13:04than anything, and a shortage of water really in the soil. So they're not as lush or tender as they

13:09are in the winter. And I'm actually not too clear yet how perennialized they are either, whether this

13:17plant, because you can see it's making now quite a cabbage heart, but this is how we've been picking

13:22all the time, taking leaves off from the outside. And I picked these six days ago, so it's almost

13:29a leaf a day. And you could pick that one as well. I mean, the more you go into the

13:35middle here, the

13:35more tender and delicious they become. We'll see what happens if I just pick one or two more even.

13:42You know, you can still do this as well. You can do this with lettuce in a similar way,

13:47taking off the outer leaves, even when they're hearting a bit. And that can slow down

13:53the hearting. It kind of keeps them as teenagers, you might say. So we'll see. But we've had basically

14:0010 months of cropping from one sowing of very tasty green leaves all through a time, winter,

14:05early spring, when there's not much fresh green leaf. So I do warmly recommend collards.

14:10I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction. It's giving you ideas of seeds to sow now,

14:18to keep your beds, your garden as full as possible through autumn, even into winter. And if it's

14:24otherwise wasted space, that's so valuable. You can find out more information in my books,

14:29for example, No Dig Skills book. I've written a lot of books about gardening, which cover these

14:33topics and the whole thing of succession sowing and succession planting, which effectively this is,

14:38because by late August through September, October, our beds are starting to come empty. And if you've got

14:43plants always ready to pop in, like we put these collards in between the French beans in September

14:48last year, that can give you amazing results. Have fun with that.

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