From spring to summer in late May

Written by
Charles Dowding

Last Updated
May 16, 2026

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It's evening time on 16th May, 11°C / 52°F and I have the log burner going again. But I shan't need to light it many more times after this because finally, there are signs of significant warmth. I hope that your weather forecast might be saying something similar.

The last week has seen horrible cold wind and hail, with -1°C / 30°F on 11th May, and ground frosts on most nights since then. That's not unusual of itself, because it's a period sometimes called the “Ice Saints”, but it has come after an unusually warm April. That brought plants on and lulled us into a false sense of security. Even after 44 years of growing, I planted some tender plants too early!

In this newsletter, I'm giving you tips about how to cope, should this happen. Together with a look back to my own unusual past week when I've been teaching in Sweden. I'm fortunate to have Adam here as full-time gardener, who was able to manage the extra covering, together with all the other jobs including selling a lot of salad leaves, turnips, radish, spinach, spring onions, asparagus and collard leaves. He was helped by Sam and Heidi.

My gardens are open Sunday 17th May, along with many other beautiful gardens in Alhampton village.

Outdoor tomatoes 15th May, which are really impressing me, two layers of fleece over, small garden. They are Crimson Crush, sown 10th March and raised initially with the hotbed warmth

I sow tomatoes in the small cells of my module trays, filled with the same rich compost I use for all propagation, based on wormcasts. That was on 10th March. Then we potted seedlings to 7 cm pots, and two weeks later to 9 cm pots if necessary.

This keeps them moving, but without having needed too much precious space on the hotbed when they are young. It's the same story for most of my warmth loving plants, including the cucumbers you see below.

You can find these trays on Containerwise website, where they are up to £2 cheaper than on Amazon. They ship only in the UK and for other countries there are resellers, listed on this page.

Cucumber La Diva sown 9 days earlier, 10 seeds from Premier Seeds Direct have grown 10 plants. You can still sow cucumbers, including these ones which are ground hugging (“ridge”) plants for growing outside, without any support.

You still have time to sow cucumbers, summer squash, corn, and beans for summer such as runner and French beans. For winter squash, sow as soon as possible because they need a long season to mature. I'm sowing more butternut today, after a disappointing germination from Chieftain F1, also from Premier Seeds Direct. They are looking into it!

Don't always blame yourself if seeds don't germinate! In this case I know it was the seeds at fault because in the same tray I had sown 30 Crown Prince F1, also from PSD, and 95% of those germinated.

Greenhouse propagation continues nicely and the hotbed thermometer is reading 35°C at 45cm into the bed. This gives enough warmth to make quite a difference if the weather stays cold. The large plants far left are Candy Roaster and Crown Prince F1. Out of sight in the middle are borlotti beans germinating, from last year's seeds.

Sow also carrots, parsnips, beetroot, swedes, salad onions, leeks asap, lettuce and chard. Not turnips and spinach which bolt too easily if sown now. I sow them next in early August, after their flowering season. Also, at that time, I sow rocket and mustards, which if you sowed them now would quickly flower, and they would suffer many holes in the leaves from flea beetles - which are less common in late summer and autumn.

15th May saw another slight frost but broad beans sown in November are very hardy, almost ready, depending whether you want small, immature beans, or larger ones which in my view are more tasty, and also quite substantial. They need rain in order to swell nicely, or we shall water.

Another frosty morning, but lettuce don't mind that: it's Can Can nearest, Copabacana red lettuce,and Little Gem after that, all picked recently of their outer leaves. Peas for shoots are on the left, and October planted calabrese is to the right, with two cauliflower plants which also survived the winter and are making lovely curds. The peas beyond them are Tall Sugar, sown and planted in February just to see if that might work.

The next few photos are showing you the results of using covers, as protection against slight spring frosts. We use two covers, one on top of the other for extra protection and mostly they are lying on the plant leaves. It would be more effective if they were on hoops, but the winds were too strong for that when Adam was covering the plants in the afternoon before.

Sweetcorn transplanted 25th April has survived the cold nights very well, thanks to two layers of fleece, which the corn plants are pushing up without supports. See my video about growing sweetcorn.

It looks like we are heading for a lot of dry weather, and I shall say more about watering in the next blog.

Frost damage to the tops of a potato plant, where its leaves were touching the frozen fleece cover. This level of damage will slightly reduce the harvest, but the plants will soon grow more healthy leaves again, and you don't need to remove the damaged ones unless you don't like looking at them!

Polytunnel tomato plants under the fleece are nicely protected by garlic holding the cover up. We shall harvest the garlic within about three weeks, once I find that the bulbs are nicely swollen with cloves differentiated. It's not a question of waiting for the tops to go yellow!

Learn more about growing in greenhouses and polytunnels, with my short course. We're selling it for just £9.50 and it's receiving some lovely reviews.

Polytunnel tomatoes under the fleece cover are nicely protected. I shall remove these covers tomorrow morning, now that it's less cold, and then we can attach the strings to wires above them, with a simple and quick slipknot. The strings’other ends have a knot on the end, underneath the tomato roots which hold them in place, and using baler twine of medium thickness, made of polypropylene

Whoops! This Dahlia was not protected during the first frosty night when we had -1° C, but it will recover.

You can increase growth and harvests, without expanding your garden!

Interplanting is a fantastic way to make more of existing space, by starting new plants between ones which you know will finish within 4 to 5 weeks. Or a little longer in the case of garlic because it does not shade new transplants.

This is the subject of my new book Grow Together, which has an extensive review in today's Financial Times. Here is a nice example of interplanting.

We transplanted celeriac 18 days earlier between the spinach, which will finish in about two weeks.

Teaching in Sweden

This came about through an invitation from Lisa Månsson, who had twice attended courses at Homeacres. Then I received an invitation from Peter Isaaksson to speak at his Country Fair of 5,000 visitors, and from MaryAnn Fargo to give a course at her farm, near Katrineholm, where I also gave an evening talk.

Lisa Månsson's already-productive garden in Gothenburg, 14th May. She started many plants in early March, and transplanted late March with fleece over. In February it was -18°C/3°F.

It was a three hour train journey north from Stockholm airport, to reach the beautiful town of Tällberg, late on Friday evening. I found it impossible to say Tällberg (“teiellbayg”) and pronunciation of Swedish names is famously difficult, to me at least.

Dalarna Country Fair near Tällberg in central Sweden, run by Peter Isaksson. This was after my compost talk in the afternoon, No Dig was in the morning and very crowded.

Anton and Geertje Meijering in their cleverly heated greenhouse on 10th May. I had met them at the Fair, and was particularly interested to learn more about their use of pulsating electrical magnetic frequencies (PEMF), both for plants and for personal health, see Centropix.

Also, at the fair, I met the lovely couple below who invited me to visit, since their garden is on the way to Katrineholm where I was speaking that evening. I'm so glad to have dropped in, I found it inspirational. Because of how far north they are, and how they started with soil that was yellow sand!

They had found my YouTube videos, and the whole garden was created on the basis of what they learnt there. At the end of this newsletter is a piece Mattias wrote about the garden and how it works in the community.

Mattias and Flora 'Nords Trädgåd in Insjön', 61° north, compost on sandy soil.

Profile of Mattias and Flora's soil, almost pure sand

At the Fair I also met Noorah, who runs Spring Sweden and does many trials to learn about growth from using water that has passed through magnets, as sold by Abimax. The photo below shows dramatic growth differences from the same seeds.

Four plants grown with tap water on the left, and the same tap water passed through a magnet on the right. One of the plants is a slip grown from last year's seed potato, which Noorah had cut in half. There is now a major tomato nursery in Sweden comparing growth of tomato plants with ordinary and magnetic water, and they are impressed already by the improved growth and yield. Full results will appear by the autumn.

MaryAnn Fargo and their 'spoiled' silage, delivered free by a local farmer. It helps to supplement massively the compost, on their thin and sandy soil. The farm is flourishing and is named oasis on the ridge ‘Oasen på Åsen’ near Katrineholm.

So many wonderful things happen at Gunnebo near Gothenburg, including formal gardens, a tiny ‘English garden’, lawns cut infrequently by scythe, cows on the 100 ha estate as guardians of biodiversity, education for school visits, an orangery and greenhouses from the late 18th century with ‘green glass’ and wooden build of that time, and the original castle, really a villa built by a wealthy merchant of Gothenburg who made his fortune from selling herring oil to light the lamps of London! This process involved using a lot of timber and the area became so empty of trees that Linnaeus in his tour of Sweden, encouraged people to visit in order to see how desolate a landscape can be when there are no trees. It’s better now! And this encourages the Head Gardener Joakim Seiler, together with the Head kitchen gardener Viola to explore new options.

In the kitchen garden they are Organic certified for 20 years. This however, leads to problems and I felt they are not using sufficient compost because the organic certifying bodies insist on using less for fear of nutrients ‘leaching’, which to me shows lack of understanding about the value of soil biology in no dig, where nutrients are much better retained, but in their case as a result of using less compost, they have many weed problems, exacerbated by broadforking all the beds. This is not no dig - and I was disturbed to see how much the soil was being disturbed! It’s a destruction of biodiversity.

Then I was advising them about making compost in better ways with bigger and enclosed heaps, which can get hotter, enabling the seeds of plants (held in the meadow grass they cut) to be killed in the composting process, so the seeds are not spread on the gardens. Also to use animal manure as compost (they have some!) and to see compost as mulch, which can be spread in late autumn and give value throughout the coming year because it’s nutrients are not water soluble, and can be used by plants throughout the coming year. As I see at Homeacres, where we have abundant growth from March to November, from one application of compost usually spread before December the previous year.

The 2000 m² kitchen garden at Gunnebo near Gothenburg.

Email from Mattias

Nords Trädgård is a garden in the region of Dalarna, built entirely on the framework of no dig ideas you have shared over the years. When we began, our soil was light and sandy, with a short growing season that often limited what we could achieve. By following your principles, we have transformed the ground into something far more fertile, structured, and alive.

Annual applications of compost have steadily improved the soil’s ability to hold moisture and nutrients, while also changing how it responds to our northern climate. The beds now thaw quickly in spring, warm up earlier than the surrounding ground, and give us a valuable extension of the season — something that makes a real difference this far north.

We work with fixed beds, minimal disturbance, and continuous surface mulching. Over time, we’ve seen how the soil biology takes over the work: weed pressure is low, plant health is strong, and each year the soil becomes richer and more resilient.

The vegetables we grow are harvested for our local community, sold directly through our small farm shop, and used in the dishes we serve in our garden restaurant. This creates a full, circular connection between soil, grower, and guest.

Nords Trädgård has become a living example of how no dig can create productivity and beauty even in a cold, sandy landscape. Much of what we do carries the imprint of your philosophy, and we are grateful for the path your work has opened.