Harvests, plantings and weeding on a September tour

Charles Dowding

In mid-September so much is possible. I show you sowings  to make, after any harvests that leave ground empty. Or sow / plant between plants that will finish soon.  2027 Sowing Calendar: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/products/charles-dowding-s-calendar-of-vegetable-sowing-dates-2027?variant=54757919490371  00:00 Introduction  00:23 In the greenhouse - plants finishing 01:03 Salad plants for home use 01:19 Cabbages - flea beetle damage 02:05 Kale, chicory and other salad leaves 02:35 Chinese cabbage 03:17 Brussels sprouts 03:46 Experimenting with bokashi pickle 04:45 Celeriac interplanted with lamb’s lettuce 05:50 Parsnips, Gladiator variety 06:17 Tomatoes, and swedes - unhealthy leaves 07:03 Turnip and spinach  07:57 Leeks  08:21 Watering methods 08:33 Bees in the polytunnel 09:00 Tomatoes and cucumbers 09:35 Weeds - California poppies and marigolds on bed of lamb’s lettuce 10:20 Using a hoe to weed 11:19 More Chinese cabbage, and bindweed 11:56 High-value crop, and chard 12:12 Celeriac and dahlias 12:26 Lamb’s lettuce seed 13:07 The pyramid - tomatoes and watermelon 13:48 Broccoli and collards, with bird netting 14:31 Carrots, with mesh over 14:57 Beds empty after squash harvest  15:35 New planting of spring/salad onions, with mesh against allium leaf miner 16:25 New plantings of mustards 16:49 Salad rocket, time of harvest 17:30 Butternut squash, and pumpkin for seed 18;03 Fennel, chicory, and rocket under fleece 18:50 White sprouting broccoli - Burbank, and Romanesco cauliflower

Transcript

00:00Season of abundance look at this and I also want to show you

00:04Wonderful things you can still be sowing and planting at this time of year

00:07There's going to be a lot of that through the video and also fascinating difference between different types of cabbage

00:13Some growing much faster than others

00:15Which this year has been quite a factor because of all the flea beetle damage. So we're going to take

00:19it

00:20Most of the garden in this video and there's so much to see

00:23In here we're finishing in the next within the next month actually the tomatoes sadly and this is

00:30Just after mid-September it will be early October soon and here already we've cleared watermelons and melons

00:35And just watered that this morning took out the marigolds as well because they wouldn't survive the winter

00:40I kind of plant chard and kale which are the first

00:44Plants to go in for the winter. So

00:47It's a bit like spring and we got some pricking out there

00:50Lettuce actually that was sown four days ago and Caroline's here sieving out some homemade compost

00:55Which is going to be mixed with grow worm compost and I use that 50 50 roughly for potting

01:02And then here there's

01:05It's just as this is for house use really not market garden garden

01:08A bit of coriander and odd bits and pieces of spring onions and spinach just for salad and it's handy

01:14to have this

01:16Not in the distant part of the garden

01:19Whereas here these cabbage are intriguing because they they struggle there's so much flea beetle

01:26This is golden acre. I mean just look at that that's flea beetle damaged there still

01:30But it's residual and the newer leaves are more healthy as you can see

01:35But still not not abundant and I don't think these red cabbage for example are going to make it they've

01:42only got

01:43two months maximum to grow in and after

01:47Christmas after new year, they're thinking more of making seeds and going up to seeds. So

01:53Yeah, the only ones that might make it of the cabbage here is these savoyes

01:59Because savoy cabbage generally depends a bit on the variety, but they heart up later

02:04We'll see

02:05In fact, there's some kale here as well that

02:08That has been doing better now. You can see that the new leaves are more healthy

02:13And so we will get a small harvest from the kale but nothing much compared to what it should have

02:18been

02:18compared to chicories, which

02:21Like lettuce as well. Yeah, they don't get flea beetle. Thank goodness. Um, we have this morning

02:26We've picked a lot of salad leaf. We picked over 30 kilos of lettuce this morning and sorry chicory and

02:31then do salad leaves even the first rocket

02:34And then those cabbage if you compare them to the chinese cabbage over there

02:41Those were sown in the greenhouse on the 50

02:4712 days later in late august and that's only

02:5220 days ago

02:54So that gives you an idea how chinese cabbage can grow really fast

02:59Whether it's still possible to sow now. Well, you could just but you wouldn't get a big head or heart

03:05But because what i'm hoping with those is they have time just to make something solid for

03:12Late autumn even winter use they store really well or you can make kim tree and many things you can

03:16do with them

03:17These brussels sprouts have really taken off. We have had

03:22The drought here broke on the 27th of august and we've had in that time around

03:2945 millimeters of rain just under two inches

03:32Which is still below average, but it was enough at least to really get things going

03:37And we'll see i'm i'm worried actually still because it's the outlook is not for a lot of rain and

03:42I'm still watering. Yes, like it goes on i'm trying things here too. It's like so this is

03:48You see that really that mess on the surface is bokashi

03:53Pickle as opposed to bokashi corn. It's not really compost but that's food waste. That's that's over a month old

03:59And i was looking at it yesterday actually and really interested how you can see

04:03You can still see the the kernels on some of the cobs of corn that kind of thing

04:08So it pickles or ferments the food and and then it's it can compost

04:13Normally i'd put that in my compost heap, but

04:15Like this first time i've done this i thought i'm curious to see what happens if i put it on

04:18the top

04:19Will it break down and go and will it help the brussels to grow more

04:23Conserve moisture as well or

04:25What you classically do is you dig it in which i don't want to do

04:28But i did yesterday pull back some of the soil and compost on the surface and put the bokashi

04:35Food pickle down there it's still there now, but it's underneath a bit of soil

04:39So that's another option um, we'll see how the two do and how they compare

04:45And then on that side we have some celeriac which we've just sewed lamb's lettuce between and then you can

04:53see just

04:56On top of the lamb's lettuce just to point it out

05:00What it meant was that we de-leafed the

05:03Celeriac in order to make it possible to do that sowing so it's in a line on the diagonal

05:12You've got more space so

05:16The garden is full but you can still be sowing you know if you do things like that

05:23Whereas with something like to say the brussels sprouts i wouldn't even though there's space there

05:28It's not really feasible to get seed in and the brussels themselves are rooting so strongly now in grabbing all

05:34the moisture

05:35because

05:37Winter brassicas you know they really need it i'm really glad to have a lot of brussels this year because

05:42The cabbage have not been brilliant and yeah, we're going to be short of food i'm afraid at this rate

05:46Don't want to scare you but it's like where's it coming from?

05:51Parsnips are going to be really valuable and i've got a good germination here because they came up between lettuce

05:57So we had lettuce here that was cropping nicely

06:00And on 29th of may we sowed these again in diagonals between

06:04I just pulled one this morning just to show you that that's one of the little ones

06:08I was just thinning to see but you can see this there's some nice parsnips developing here

06:13That's a variety called gladiator

06:17And we got the transition between summer and winter nicely illustrated here so

06:24Tomatoes which I need to pick i've got to work out what to do

06:28I'm getting a deep freeze in about three weeks and i'm thinking i might try and freeze some i haven't

06:33really got time to make a sauce but

06:35The swedes here is brilliant winter food because you don't need to store that that can just sit in the

06:40ground

06:41But i've never seen such unhealthy leaves on my swedes as these again for the flea beetle and mildew as

06:46well

06:47Which is from current dryness as much as anything you just see some healthy leaf in the middle and a

06:52little swede at the bottom

06:53So they're showing promise you know, I think we could have a actually a worthwhile harvest there of swede which

06:59is a dense food

07:00It's great for the winter

07:03Compared to turnip which is a much more watery

07:06Vegetable uh, these are tokyo cross

07:09Sown late august trans sorry so mid august transplanted late august and

07:14Again, they've a little bit damaged, but I think they'll make it

07:18And for autumn leaves as opposed to roots we've got brilliant spinach here

07:24Which was so direct in lines across the bed

07:27On the 18th of august

07:30So that's only a month ago and

07:33We've already had a worthwhile harvest by

07:36Taking like adam did this morning cutting out

07:39And then cutting off the leaves to go in the salad at this stage nice salad leaves the baby spinach

07:45And that will then go on to make nice spinach as we go

07:49Through the winter hopefully those these plants have every chance I reckon of surviving until next may

07:56And similar to the leaks actually these are for next spring. These are not even winter leaks so much because

08:02we got them in so late

08:05So late may transplanted early July is quite small leak plants just with my wooden dibber making a hole pop

08:11in the modules

08:12Very easy and quick

08:15You know with summer so busy you you just want jobs that can go quickly and not take too long

08:21And then watering just quick as well just watering lines across the bed because all the watering i'm doing here

08:26is

08:27Is by hand it's with a hose except for in here. I've got spray lines you can see up there

08:32As well as the bees we just since yesterday all these bees arrived

08:36What is this?

08:38And it's kind of like they're swarming, but there's not a swarm. There's just loads of bees and

08:43What's going on?

08:45It's funny

08:46I'm going to contact the local beam and see some of you might have an idea

08:50Actually, I should mention at this point. I'm afraid that I've been so busy lately. I've not had time to

08:55reply to comments

08:56So it's very unusual for me

08:58So apologies if I if you've asked a question I haven't replied but these tomatoes

09:02Will finish within three weeks and the soil in there is now getting really dry because I haven't watered for

09:0910 days and they're not going to get any more water until we take them out in early october

09:15And we've been getting fantastic harvests of the beef tomatoes and the sun golden

09:20Sakura red cherry and the cucumbers at the other end cucumbers i'm watering because they they still need it

09:27And I did put up a video about this last week if you didn't see it about growing tomatoes without

09:32feed or fertilizer

09:33Yeah, you know with no dig this is all no dig

09:36Just one dose of compost a year and the soil gets really active and hurt fertile

09:44And normally it doesn't grow many wheat

09:46We don't spend a lot of time weeding but unless this happens. So I had a sculpture

09:54California poppy flowering and that's what all these are

09:58And I also had some poppies for bread seed. That's a poppy there

10:03And marigolds flowering that's young marigold seedling

10:07And what's the actual crop here? Well, it's smaller. Unfortunately, it's lamb's lettuce

10:12And that's a seed that you can so now you can still sow lamb's lettuce

10:15But it's easier if you can not have too many weeds seeds nearby

10:20So what i'm doing is that this is

10:22Oscillating or swivel hoe

10:25Very easy to run that between the lines as long as you can see lines like this

10:30Within the line you you need to do a bit of hand weeding. So there's another poppy and

10:35California poppy and then you can see we got we're pretty clear. There's another California where you kind of

10:41Just want to get your eye in about what's a weed and what's the plant that you've actually sown

10:46So we'll be doing this very soon

10:49And you can run quite close to the lines once you're confident that you can see them. You can see

10:53how nicely this hoe works

10:55And do that on a dry day

10:58These weeds are still small enough

11:01I sowed these in haste two weeks ago and

11:04Didn't have time to properly clean the bed before I sowed them. So that's one reason why there's quite a

11:09lot there

11:11But yeah

11:13When you're on top of things, you know everything gets easier and that was just one example where I wasn't

11:17quite on top of it

11:19Here we have more chinese cabbage

11:21And again, actually you can see quite a few

11:24Weeds of different kinds. I'm not even sure what that one is. There's a lot of marigolds

11:27I'm not too worried about marigolds because they'll be killed by frost

11:30but basically

11:32These are now too thick to hoe between so this is a hand weeding job and there's a little bit

11:36of bindweed

11:37I had a group of dutch gardeners here on monday and they were helping to remove some of the bindweed

11:43that's field bindweed

11:45And I like to get a decent bit of root out and that weakens it over time. I put that

11:50on the compost heap

11:51You can put all weeds on compost heap

11:53They will break down

11:55So i'm excited about these and these iron watering because this is high value crop fast growing whereas those

12:02Have hardly ever had any water that's charred is just actually really tough plant

12:07It's good value chard in the summer. I do chard in the summer spinach in the winter

12:12These solaria have been brilliant. They've cropping steadily again. There's a little bit of binary there

12:18So i'm just going to be on that with a trial

12:21While here these dahlias

12:24Are grown from seed this year. I sowed them in april transplanted them late may

12:31After lamb's lettuce which had gone seed because that's how I get my lamb's lettuce seed. I find the homegrown

12:36seeds

12:37It's so good and so vigorous

12:39So much so that where and where I grew it and before

12:43We took the plants out to collect the seed

12:46Let me just look at this

12:47tons

12:48So what I did was run the hoe between just to make it into a line

12:52And not have quite so many thin them out and then we'll need to do a bit of hand thinning

12:57Or maybe with the hoe as well if there's more dry weather

13:01Dry weather does have a lot of advantages one being sunshine

13:04So it's not all bad news

13:07The pyramid has been amazing

13:09The tomatoes have really really got going

13:12Even though they're running out of time a bit

13:14And again, I'm not watering you can see there's an amazing watermelon over there which actually

13:19Needs harvesting because all the leaves are done

13:21I was just eating a bit of watermelon actually before this video and noticed how the

13:25Inside it's growing a bit a bit soft

13:28And one thing I notice is if I come in here

13:31She nearly always comes in. You just like it in here, don't you? Hey, yeah

13:37She's really happy. I like to come in here and have a quick nap and um

13:41Get an energy boost. So yeah, it's proving an interesting structure

13:48Here we have um broccoli for next spring

13:52And again, we've managed to just about keep ahead of the insects and the recent rain helped whereas these collards

13:58Which were only sown in the middle of august and went in here

14:04Right, right. Uh, no, it's early september with these went in the ground 4th of september. That's right. They were

14:09transplanted

14:11And

14:12Already they're looking good. That looks good to me

14:15Because they're for winter cropping. So they start picking a few outer leaves in november

14:19And right the way through them and because they're shorter than kale they're much easier to protect in this case

14:24We got that. That's a bird netting but it's against rabbits just in case the rabbits came and had a

14:30nibble

14:30And we had similarly a mesh over these these

14:35rabbit off

14:37Germinate except some came up about

14:40One-third what you can see there and then when we had some rain finally these are the ones that

14:44germinated

14:46After it was moist enough

14:48But are they going to make it? I don't think so

14:51So again, not so many carrots as normal this winter

14:56And here we have a lot of empty beds coming up

14:59And that's because we took the squash harvest up there

15:02This looking

15:04fantastic actually we had just over 90 squashes from

15:0936 plants that were in this space there were roughly six along each bed

15:16And we didn't water at all

15:18So for me that was really worthwhile

15:21Quick and simple and not much resource just the compost at the beginning about that much, you know

15:27Three centimeters at the most two or three centimeters. That's and that's how much we'll be putting on in november

15:32december

15:33No feeds fertilizers

15:35And here we're now sowing and planting these beds

15:39As we can find time and that spring onions, salad onions to crop

15:44Well, it could be next february even maybe we'll see how it goes the mesh cover though is key to

15:50this here

15:51Because we've got allium leaf miner which love spring onions because they come at the right time that allium leaf

15:56miner

15:57here anyway starts flying mid-october or even before and

16:03If I can keep it out

16:04I'm not sure it's 100% sure

16:07We'll get some good spring onion

16:09Here yesterday. So yesterday we transplanted spring onion and we sowed direct claytonia or winter purslane

16:15So nothing to see there yet, but there's five lines. They're very small seeds. They're not easy to sow direct

16:22With any precision so be a bit of thinning there

16:25Whereas these yes in a way it's a lot easier to raise transplants if you've if you've got the kit

16:31These are masters that were sewn in module cells transplanted

16:37only six days ago

16:40Very small and then watered

16:44And I don't think I need to cover these i'm touching wood a bit there and a bit of spinach

16:48at the end

16:49Whereas here we sowed also exactly one week ago

16:53This is the beauty of summer brassicas

16:56One week ago we sowed those those and that is solid rocket

17:00Again do with a bit of thinning but you can see there there's not much weed and that's my normal

17:05Didn't have any crazy flowers here. There is a bit of marigold there and there's

17:09Uh, yeah a bit of looping from a looping that's flowering

17:13Um and next to the rocket so this rocket at this stage obviously it's still very small and went past

17:20mid september so

17:22What's it going to crop?

17:23Probably late october in this climate you can have fantastic rocket harvest in november outside

17:30And look at the butternut squash as well. So there

17:32So

17:33They were sown late october transplanted late may

17:37And

17:39Often in the

17:40The summers can be not hot enough for butternut to be really worthwhile but this year they're really happy

17:46There's a huge number there and they're getting really ripe so i'm happy with that

17:50We didn't get anything like the big number of pumpkins there the yellow ones but their special pumpkin called retzer

17:57gold

17:58Which is for pumpkin seeds they have green seeds in

18:02And in this last bed we have some fennel which has taken a while to get going the

18:08There was a badger made a bit of a mess in there. That's why there's a hole in the middle,

18:11but that's

18:13sown

18:1420th july roughly and transplanted mid-august

18:17And beyond it is some sugarloaf chicory and under here we have some nice rockets. This is from an earlier

18:22sewing of rocket

18:24Which was yeah, look at that

18:27Good actually

18:29And pleasingly clear of flea beetle damage so fleece has done the job

18:35And actually it's difficult. I find it with the wind for it not to blow away when it's on hoops,

18:40but

18:42That's looking a lot better. We were picking some flea beetle this morning, which had the fleece directly on top

18:47of it and

18:48The flea beetles packed through the fleece

18:50So and just to finish something more

18:54Cheerful is you know in the whole brassica thing for winter has been

18:57Pretty difficult this year, but look at these white sprouting plants

19:02Variety called burbank it's an f1

19:06So vigorous so healthy and strong

19:09Compared to so many other winter brassicas these were sown

19:12Around the solstice time and grown in nine centimeter pots transplanted early august

19:19And here we also have

19:21Quote sown at the same time

19:23Beautiful cauliflower. These are romanesco cauliflowers

19:26Which will crop sometime in the autumn. I hope

19:30Do check out for all these times you might have got the

19:33Notice in this video how much i'm talking about timings and our

19:382027 calendar is just out

19:41And we'll put a link in the description. It's on my website

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