I hope that your plot or garden still has a fair few vegetables growing. Unless you are in a much colder climate.

Here we have not yet had a frost and many vegetables keep growing until about the third week of November, on average. Then it becomes simply too dark, as well as too cold.

Growth almost stops at that point, and we harvest all the beetroot, radicchio, endives and celeriac for example. While leaving in the ground any remaining leeks, parsnips, overwintering broccoli, Brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, lambs lettuce and other salads.

In the photo above, left to right starting with the three Celebrity celery, which I sowed 24th June and transplanted 3rd August. They have needed much watering. 

Buffalo Pink tomato is from the polytunnel, as is the Orange Wellington and three cucumbers, while everything else is growing outside. 

Spinach Medania (short video) was sown direct on 19th August, first harvests were a month later.

Celeriac Asterix was sown mid-March and planted late April, has been watered moderately but much less than the celery, see video.

Spring onions were sown March and are now regrowing from the white bulbs they made in July.

Collards Hi-Crop were sown mid August and planted 4th September, this is a first pick.

Fennel Rondo was sown mid-July and planted 3rd August.

Courgettes Firenze were sown 8th April and planted on 30th.

In the middle are beetroots Chioggia and Flaming Barrel, they were multi-sown 28th March and planted four weeks later between garlic.

All grown no dig with compost mulch and no fertiliser of any kind. Just using important knowledge about timings, spacings and more…

Just for No Dig day (more on that below), enjoy a huge reduction on the price of my Essential Knowledge Pack.

This is a digital pack containing a spacing guide (in imperial as well as metric), a harvesting timeline, a glossary of gardening terms, tips on weather and the seasons, and information on plant families. The pack includes advice on watering, and a detailed sowing and transplanting table that gives invaluable guidance in a quick reference format. All downloadable in PDFs. On International No Dig Day 3rd November we are reducing the price from £15 to £5.

Sow direct or propagate first?

Propagating transplants is a fantastic way of having plants ready earlier, above all in spring when it’s still cold outside. My CD module trays are super-economical on both compost needed to fill them, and space needed for seedlings.

You need less seed when propagating, and spacing can be very precise, with full beds and no gaps. Also, if weeds are an issue, transplants give you a head-start and make weeding easier between the plants. 

Raising transplants gives many options for inter-planting between existing crops. This allows the new planting to establish while the previous vegetable is finishing. Often with overlaps of 4 to 6 weeks, see my book Grow Together.

You can transplant all vegetables except carrots and parsnips, whose roots usually fork after being moved.

For all these reasons, I rarely sow direct. One exception is salads for autumn use, whose seeds are going into warm soil and grow very rapidly. Such as the spinach (above) in mid August.

Then lambs lettuce in early September.

Sometimes we sow between existing vegetables, which will be harvested within a few weeks. Find more on all this in my new Organic Gardening book.

After harvesting winter squash and clearing the plants, we sowed salad rocket on 10th September. That was quickly done, in lines across the bed.

Next, we spent a fair amount of time thinning them two weeks later, and pulling the few weeds. That helps to make cropping easier, with larger leaves and fewer yellowing or diseased leaves at the bottom.

The rocket is ready for picking from now and should continue cropping until at least December, unless the weather turns frosty.

Transplanting mid-October

It's a big week here for putting in new salad plants to overwinter, after we recently cleared tomatoes, cucumbers and all the summer vegetables. 

The ground was very dry after tomatoes because I had not watered them for five weeks. When soil is so dry as that, you need to water gently and over a longer period so that the water can soak in rather than running off. I use the spray line in my polytunnel, and cans in the greenhouse.

With no dig, it's easier because water soaks in more readily. 

I have thousands of transplants ready to go in. The Grenoble Red lettuce were sown 10th September, the seed is from one lettuce allowed to flower and seed this summer. We sowed the brassicas 22nd to 24th September, just before the full moon, an auspicious time. Sowing on a strongly waxing moon gives a ‘horoscope’ of rapid growth and regrowth, until next spring.

Outdoor greens

I can't believe I had not grown collards before, and many of my American readers comment on this! They have been using them for a long time, to have continual harvests of wonderful greens.

This week we took a first harvest off collard plants sown mid August and transplanted early September. Already they are producing a steady flow of large and tender leaves.

This will continue until it turns colder. Then regrowth in the spring is significant, when the leaves are so welcome. 

I even have collards still cropping from August 2025's sowing. They were eaten by insects this summer, but are healthy again now.

How much compost for no dig?

You can use as little as a half centimetre per year. However, where I've tried reducing the amount, I notice more weeds, less moisture retention, a harder surface making it more difficult to plant especially in dry conditions, and lower output of produce.

I recommend 2.5 cm/1 inch every year, but that's not a rule. That level of annual edition will on average enable more harvest from less space, saving you time, weeding and watering. If you don't have enough compost, I recommend cropping a smaller area and planting more intensively.

Compost can be any organic matter, 50% or more decomposed. There is no need to sieve or sift it.

My no dig trial bed gives an annual average since 2013 of 105kg / 230lb, all kitchen ready produce, from 7.5 m² / 80 ft². This recent video discusses the method, andshows results of that.

Most beds at Homeacres are double or triple cropped in a year, from the one compost application. Output of £42,000 produce value feeds many families. To me, it feels very reasonable, and worth making + buying compost.

Are synthetic and organic amendments giving the same nutrients?

What I have observed over 40+ years is that when no synthetic fertilisers are used, plant growth is strong and robust through the season. Nutrients in organic, no dig soil are not equivalent, and soil life helps roots to access them. I explain this in my new edition of Organic Gardening, Bloomsbury 2026.

For one thing the nutrients are not water soluble. For another, they are in more complex molecules than synthetic fertiliser. No dig soils’ proliferation of microbes encourages biological interactions around root hairs, enabling plants to obtain what one might call a balanced diet, rather than the rhizosphere being flooded with water soluble nutrients.

For more on how synthetic fertilisers depress the activity of soil microbes, see this webpage from Rothamsted Research Station in Herts, UK.

International No Dig Day

It’s such a fine opportunity to celebrate this super method of growing plants, whether floral or for food. We shall be enjoying a team lunch here and we'll share that on social media.

You can enter one of our two competitions: captions for the photo of me spaced out between endives. It’s on YouTube.

Plus children can win cash by writing No Dig with leaves, sticks, stones etc in their plots. Full details are on this page.

Why not also register yourself on the No Dig World Map. That may lead you to find neighbours with lots to share about gardening in your climate and location.