- 2 days ago
Harvests are good but at a price, we've had to water a fair amount in order to achieve that. No dig helps by conserving moisture, and enabling plants to find it more effectively through the undisturbed microbial networks.
Now in mid- October the soil is almost entirely dry, with growth being maintained by fairly frequent but small amounts of rain. At the same time the sunshine is less strong, especially at my 51° latitude, and soon we shall lose most of the light which makes growth possible.
Homeacres is a market garden, selling over £40,000 worth of vegetables each year, to local customers. The cropping area is roughly a half acre or 2000 m².
No Dig Day is 3rd November, see https://charlesdowding.co.uk/pages/no-dig-day
Filmed 14th of October by Nicola Smith.
Now in mid- October the soil is almost entirely dry, with growth being maintained by fairly frequent but small amounts of rain. At the same time the sunshine is less strong, especially at my 51° latitude, and soon we shall lose most of the light which makes growth possible.
Homeacres is a market garden, selling over £40,000 worth of vegetables each year, to local customers. The cropping area is roughly a half acre or 2000 m².
No Dig Day is 3rd November, see https://charlesdowding.co.uk/pages/no-dig-day
Filmed 14th of October by Nicola Smith.
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Look at this
00:03It's a beautiful cauliflower which
00:06I've really struggled with these plants this year because of the flea beetle, but this is now mid-october
00:12It's the mid-october tour of my garden
00:13I want to show you all the amazing results that I'm getting from growing no dig with a simple compost
00:19mulch no feeds or fertilizers and
00:22It makes parts stronger partly no dig and I feel that's why these have rebounded so incredibly from
00:28Very difficult flea beetle damage this summer was chronic and we planted them on the 4th of July 4th of
00:35August
00:35Sorry, they were so late June so you can see the great results and there's other plants. There is broccoli
00:41behind where I was standing and
00:43These are Romanesco cauliflower whether they're gonna make it. I don't know yet
00:48But I am just keeping them tidy by going through and removing
00:52The lowest leaves the ones that are sort of slightly degrading and I put them on the compost heap
00:58Which keeps the heaps going partly and this we've got three heaps here that are working nicely
01:04So that was the current heap this one finished about two weeks ago
01:08Polytheno, we just keep the rain out and keep the warmth in and this one
01:14Just a month ago Adam turned it from there into here. No, sorry from the other one
01:19Look at this. So that's no more than six months old compost
01:23And I would be happy to spread the compost at this stage without any sieving
01:27You don't need to sieve compost when you're putting it on top
01:31If there's any woody bits in there, which there certainly are they don't take the nitrogen from the soil because
01:36they're just sitting on top
01:37See with no dig you've got so much freedom to do many things you didn't think you could do
01:41Like all these second plantings that I'm showing you. It's nearly all succession plantings from a previous crop
01:46I don't worry about rotation. So I'm just looking for spaces as and when they appear like this bed was
01:52sweet corn
01:53And as soon as the sweet corn corn finished, we just cut the
01:58Roots off near the base of the plant leaving all the roots in the ground. So that's something else I
02:03do
02:03You don't need to clear all the roots. It's actually benefit to leave those food for microbes and then we
02:08planted these salad rocket
02:10Right at the end of august actually and I put the cover on again for flea beetle and it's worked
02:15really well
02:15We've had lovely harvests of rocket from that bed already
02:18Here I just started to harvest bulb fennel
02:22Florence fennel variety rondo from premier seeds direct which is
02:26Bulbing nicely. I do find that the f1 varieties
02:30I'm not a great fan of everyone's necessarily, but if they'll give me a nice full advantage, I will use
02:34them
02:35Really works. That was sown mid-july planted early august
02:39Whereas the celeria is it's a whole season crop
02:43Planted 29th of april. You can see the size of them there. They're coming up a kilo each. It's two
02:48pounds or so
02:49And these were interplanted with leeks. So we had leeks already finished that we harvested
02:54About eight kilos of leeks came from there and then we got the celeriac as well
02:58That's in my grow together book many options for
03:03Interplanting this is to give you an idea of how we prepare the ground at the end of the
03:08uh, well in the autumn usually so this bed had butternut squash and this one had squash for seeds ruts
03:16of gold
03:17and
03:18They finished and we're going to plant broad beans here. So before that we spread the annual dose of compost
03:23which
03:24Is about an inch that's a combination of mushroom compost that I buy and homemade compost
03:30And also on there we put a little bit of rock dust. This is not obligatory and we don't do
03:34it every year
03:36But it's a long-term
03:38Amendment that has some trace elements and it's also paramagnetic actually which I feel is worthwhile benefit
03:45The asparagus is starting to go yellow as you can see and that
03:49Won't be long now two three weeks before we cut it down to ground level
03:54Spread a little compost maybe two centimeters just over the whole bed and that will make it really grow next
04:00year
04:00We'll start picking in april and there is one little thing here, which is the
04:06Asparagus seedlings and that's because this is mary washington which does make berries and
04:12It means that the main weed that i'm contending with here is asparagus because if you if I left all
04:18of these to grow
04:19You might think well, that's great, but actually you get so many plants and the spears are tiny and thin
04:24so you want to keep that spacing
04:26These have done beautifully they went in quite late in
04:30About the 8th of august and it's a trevisotype 206tt
04:35And it's really making a firm heart. I was afraid that was a bit later than normal because of the
04:41drought conditions we had this summer
04:42It was very difficult to keep things watered and I delayed and it
04:47We have watered them by hand quite a bit. I don't have irrigation system. It's all by hand
04:52The salad rocket have done beautifully from being sown direct on the 10th of september
04:57It's now the 14th of october. So that's 34 days since they were sown
05:02And we're just starting to do picking and this is the way i'll do it
05:07Just taking the larger leaves by hand
05:11You can do it with two hands as i'm doing here as you can see
05:15The other option would be to cut them
05:18But do you want to cut your plant?
05:21Obviously, that'd be quicker
05:22But if you cut you're cutting into these smaller leaves
05:25Unless you're very adept. I mean picking can be quick actually the advantage of picking is that you get more
05:31regrowth quite quickly
05:33So that nice harvest that we're just about to start harvesting from that bed and the
05:37Mustards have been cropping for
05:40already
05:41Two or three weeks and again same same story
05:44So just picking off these larger leaves and this is home safe mustard seed which was grown in the polytunnel
05:52next to
05:53With a mixture of musters all together. So when they flowered it's cross pollinated as many brassicas do
06:01This is claytonia winter personally looking very small which i'm happy about because that's really for late winter
06:08When it will be most valuable. It's quite winter hardy, but we will cover that probably in december january
06:14Well, these spring onions are staying definitely under the cover because allium leaf miner can destroy them
06:22Last autumn. I didn't cover my new spring onion planting and we lost
06:2695 percent of them. So this year i'm making an effort and i'm really securing the side as well
06:32And that's mesh uh like in veggie mesh
06:35Same as here, but this mesh on the mizuna which I sewed direct about three two and a half weeks
06:41ago
06:42is more against rabbits and
06:45Potential pigeons later on and also wind protection actually it does have a bit of value in that plants grow
06:50more as we come into the winter months
06:54The beetroot here continue to be eaten by leaves by deer sorry their leaves and
07:01I can put up with that because you can see we've got a nice kyogia beetroot there which are doing
07:05all right
07:06But I have got a bed of spinach down there which I am covering
07:10Because yeah, they can really make a mess of spinach beetroot and chard are their favorites
07:16These are covered and they will be covered all winter and that'll be against pigeons later. We don't have pigeons
07:21at the moment
07:22but that spring cabbage
07:24planted
07:25about three weeks ago
07:27And they I don't want them to get too big that's one problem
07:31We're having it now is the warmer autumns, but you don't know in advance. Is it going to be another
07:36warmer autumn?
07:37So i'm sticking mostly to my dates going a bit later
07:40And it is warm as you can see from what i'm wearing today's 19 degrees centigrade 66 fahrenheit
07:47Slightly crazy, but we're forecast actually a frost in two days time
07:52So these chicory they're very hardy to frost and anything i've look all these plants i'm showing you there's none
07:58of them are going to be killed by frost
08:00Small ground frost that's a sugarloaf chicory, which makes folds in to make quite a tight heart
08:05Which is lovely because then it self blanches
08:08And that's why it's called sugarloaf. It's
08:10really
08:11Sweet where it goes tight in on itself
08:15Also, these carrots are sweeter than normal
08:18Because it's been dry so dry that actually not many of them germinated these did and these didn't and then
08:26when it rained a bit in august the
08:31Seeds that have been sitting in the ground all summer actually did come up
08:34I was hoping to get these out actually yeah here we go
08:37To give you an idea of what's growing here
08:40And also how how nicely they grow with no dig
08:46They're looking good aren't they? Norwich f1
08:49but
08:50I pulled a few just three days ago and noticed a bit of root fly and that's
08:55What i'm nervous about but last year we covered the carrots with mesh and they still got root fly. Oh,
08:59yeah, there it is
09:01So that's an example where you see that brown line around the carrot. That's a maggot that's in there from
09:07the root fly
09:08which is
09:09just
09:10Chomping away bit by bit
09:13So i'm thinking to harvest most of the big ones here
09:16maybe leave the little ones and
09:19This could be that they don't have enough root yet that the
09:22Root flower get in there and they could go through the winter and harvest in late march april
09:28The dahlias have been amazing and
09:31We'll see in a minute actually we're going to look at home safe seeds
09:34So these are all from home safe seed which I say last year and it's very variable mix
09:42Last time we were at the pyramid it was full of tomatoes and a few other things and see the
09:48change now
09:49So the tomatoes came out just two days ago actually and then we've been watering
09:53And spreading compost that went in a week ago and those collard plants were planted a week ago
10:00And so i'm hoping they'll give leaves through the winter and i'm going to plant some broccoli and cauliflower in
10:05there
10:06But there are wireworm
10:08In that soil new organic new no-dig soil coming from pasture
10:13It can be a problem
10:15Not always but sometimes
10:18So we're going to look next at a compost trial i'm setting up
10:24Which
10:26Is using bokashi and i'm working with
10:31martin richards from agriton
10:33And we did this just yesterday actually we've got three different bays
10:37I won't say too much about them now, but we're going to put a video up about all the detail
10:41of what we did here
10:42Let's just give you an idea this one
10:46You see the temperature it's
10:48Just over 45 it's
10:51It's going to warm up i'm pretty sure even more than that but what it is it's just interesting mix
10:56because it's a combination of tomatoes
10:59Cucumbers aubergine plants and marigolds as well that we cleared from the polytunnel
11:04Just recently and adam mowed them
11:07The reason being that we wanted it finer so that it would make compost more quickly
11:12because
11:12Because this compost in here we're going to spread it in december so it'll be only two months old
11:18And then we're going to grow lettuce in it next year. It's all part of this ongoing quite complicated trial
11:24which
11:26I'm hoping we'll we'll show some interesting things but you know, it's a true trial. We don't yet know
11:31What kind of results might happen
11:36Look at these strawberries just beautiful
11:39So that's the mara de bois
11:41Which I think we might have seen on an earlier video and even though we're mid-october they're still
11:47Even just that one showing a hint of going red and
11:51I'm gonna
11:53Harvest them if we do get a frost that's something that would
11:56disappear
11:57So we are in a bit of a changeover cusp, but we've been having this warm weather now for quite
12:01a long time and
12:04It still feels like summer oddly even though the days are short
12:09And this looks to me much more familiar we've had very few slugs and snails this year because of the
12:14dry conditions
12:16And yet still the pak choy is getting
12:20Getting hit and it did have a fleece over maybe that didn't help
12:24Um
12:25But yeah, it's I
12:27I found it the most difficult vegetable to grow they're a bit better this end and
12:32You can see the kale beyond
12:34It's perfectly fine
12:36So that's red ration kale for
12:39Salad it's very nice kale to grow if you want to eat raw leaves through the winter you would need
12:44to sow it though
12:44So by early september really and to have worthwhile plants
12:50Well, these were sown on the 20th of july that's cos lettuce and we we've taken many many harvests like
12:56of outer leaves
12:59Every week for about nine weeks actually and they they won't last for much longer, but they've been great
13:06This was beans and we're going to sow plant garlic there after spreading compost
13:12Here there's a few plants i'd love to show you like these look at these chinese cabbage
13:17Just incredible how quickly they grow they've been in the ground for 56 days
13:23As transplants they were 15 days old when they went in
13:28And I reckon they're going to heart up in good time around late october through november we might need to
13:34put fleece over if it got frosty
13:36We'll see
13:39Leaks on the other hand very frost hardy, but it could be the allium leaf miner
13:44I didn't get around to covering these we shall see
13:48While parsnips it's it's been a good year for them in terms of no canker from the soil being too
13:54wet, but
13:55Are they going to make it have they grown enough?
13:58I don't know there's
14:01You can see the
14:02The swelling but i usually i find parsnips when they're doing something good you start to see the shoulder above
14:09the ground and i'm not really seeing that
14:11here
14:12This is uh was sown on the 29th of may between lettuce which did work well because it meant we
14:19could keep the
14:21ground watered while they established
14:26The beetroot here are slowly we're slowly harvesting and then
14:30We had enough space to plant dill
14:33Really nice salad plant and we're still picking a few leaves from it
14:37I just put it in the salad mix I sell to
14:40Just give a little lift and an extra nice flavor
14:44in there
14:48Here's one of my favorite vegetables
14:52Just in the last year and a half I know some of you watching from the states find this funny
14:56because
14:57You've been growing it for a long time, but it's collards. We somehow went out of fashion in the uk
15:02and
15:04You just harvest the outer leaves like this
15:08So I did that about a week ago and i'll take another harvest tomorrow morning actually because
15:14You can see beautiful green leaves really tasty and
15:19These can keep cropping right the way through the winter but smaller leaves and not so many as that if
15:24it's mild
15:25And we'll just keep harvesting them probably until next may or june even
15:32The digno dig trial here is is
15:35Quite interesting results. We're about 10 ahead on no dig which is this one compared to the dig bed
15:42For the same amount of compost used
15:45And yesterday i've harvested some kale and endy from both beds and they've gone to agriton to be checked for
15:52nutrients
15:54We'll see i'll get you posted on that
16:01Well here we have incredible cabbage that again suffered a lot from flea beetle and despite that
16:08I'm really particularly impressed with the golden acre. You can see there's one or two fine heads developing there
16:14And I actually took out some that weren't
16:17Going to make it and put in some endive instead just to feed the microbes
16:21and
16:22We've got savoy cabbage as well, which is not hearting yet because that comes later. So it's a good mix
16:29While the red cabbage, I don't think it's going to make it because
16:34We're mid-october that that needs to have a bigger head
16:37If you plant cabbage a bit too late, these didn't go in the ground until early august
16:43You can see it's worked for the golden acre. That's a rapid early cropper
16:48But not the red ones and i'll just mention here as well coriander so
16:53Very good plant
16:55To grow for winter
16:58That needed sowing really in september
17:01It's just remembering to do that like all of these plants in here which are now going in the ground
17:06In fact, we just planted the greenhouse this morning. Those new plants went in
17:10a few hours ago and
17:13They've just been watered
17:15And we're going to see the same thing here in a sec but on the way, I just want to
17:18mention these dahlias because
17:21Truly they're
17:23They're a site and really liked by the insects actually as well and these are more dahlias from home safe
17:29seed
17:30So the same batch of seed and you can see the incredible variation you get in there
17:35So these were sown in april this year
17:39In the greenhouse in module cells and then I potted them into seven centimeter pots
17:44And planted them early june
17:48And finally, ha
17:50The polythunnel
17:53I'm feeling good about this because
17:55It's only what do we say? Yeah five days since this was all cucumbers this end tomatoes there aubergines there
18:02marigolds everywhere
18:04and we cleared all that and
18:06And watered a lot in the way that i'm doing there now. So we just planted all of these this
18:11morning literally
18:13That's three week old brassica mustards and rocket and there's four week old lettuce and end Eve in the middle
18:21And yeah, these should crop all winter. I hope you can see more about this in a video that we
18:27shall post
18:28Towards no dig day about the polythunnel changeover