April 2024 no dig helps with drainage, harvests and sowings

Stormy wet weather - no dig helps

I have recorded 125mm / 5" in March, after 165mm / 6.5in through February. It is relentless.

The ground is saturated after the wet summer, wet autumn, wet winter and now a wet start to spring.If it were not for no dig, I would be worried. We continue to plant and growth is slow, but mostly sure. See this video for ways to start no dig.

Drainage is way better with no dig. I just had this comment on Facebook from Richard Fields:

My plot is next to a river and ditch in the lowest part of the town. Other plots have suffered greatly with water on soil, and still haven't planted anything. I follow your no dig and never had issues with excess water on mine, and my potatoes are OK, the others have now listened when i told them the no dig way, and are looking you up.

Overwintered plants

Likewise keeping plants healthy and in good condition through winter is easier with no dig. I see so many allotments that are empty over winter, perhaps because people don't want to keep plants going through winter, or it's easier just to dig the soil and bury the weeds.
The broccoli above has needed very little weeding, just hand removal every month of a few small weeds. And in 2021 plus 2022 the soil was thick with field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis, now completely gone. See progress through 2021 in this video playlist

The bed had a fantastic crop of beetroot last summer, which finished around 10th July. We transplanted these seedlings a week later, without spreading any more compost or needing to amend or prepare the soil in any way whatsoever. Planting like that is rapid: I was dibbing holes and Adam popped in the plug plants. He watered from a can and then we covered the bed with mesh on hoops for six weeks to exclude insects and pigeons. Since November, it's been black netting against pigeons. See my broccoli video and Growing Guide.

Overwintered spinach

We sowed this spinach in modules 10th August and transplanted the seedlings 25th August, after clearing lettuce and spreading 2.5cm homemade compost. The lettuce had followed purple sprouting broccoli.

The spinach grew fantastically through autumn and gave three big harvests before Christmas, before going semi dormant in the dark days of winter - this is 51° latitude. Growth started again in February because it was warmer than usual. Recently we harvested more new leaves and tidied up the plants to reduce the slug population. All of the decaying leaves and slugs went on the compost heap.

Thes plants should crop for another six weeks - much food from one sowing. The mild winter helped and I did not use the hoops for any cover, in the end.

Vintage Leeks sown April 2023

These plants suffered a little damage from the leaf miner last autumn, but are now growing very healthily. They will flower before the end of April so we have three or four weeks to harvest them. Very welcome food as we head in to the hungry gap.

Autumn planted salads, under cover

Salads have cropped steadily since late November. Yet between Christmas and mid February, we watered twice only. This reduces both the potential mildew on leaves, and slugs under them. Likewise, we remove damaged leaves and slugs while pickng, when we always have two buckets. One for rejects and one for the harvest.

The garlic went in on 18th October and suffers so much less rust here than outside. A wet spring is not good for garlic rust and I am seeing some outside already.

Propagation

This is a great time to sow leeks. Either 4–5 seeds per cell in module trays, or in lines outside, in soil with not too many weed seeds.

You can sow chard now but it may then bolt in summer – I wait until mid-April before sowing. For now there is plenty of spinach to eat, if you sowed some in August.

‍Under cover

‍Sow celeriac (don't delay), celery, broad beans, peas for pods and shoots, lettuce, onions (this week), salad onions, cabbage, calabrese, cauliflower, beetroot and annual flowers such as dwarf French marigolds, zinnias and nasturtiums.See my 2024 Calendar for details, and this offer-pack for information also on planning, propagation, spacings, harvesting and more.

‍Later sowings under cover Wait!...until mid-April to sow cucumbers for cropping under cover, until 20th–25th April before sowing courgettes, sweetcorn and squash, and until May before sowing summer beans and cucumbers for cropping outside.

Bottom heat
If you can run a heat mat under seedlings, it will make an amazing difference until some time in May.I have seedlings on a hotbed (compost heap) whose surface temperature is currently 25 to 30°C, around 80° F. Tomatoes are good, except for ones near the edge which were singed by ammonia gases from below.That can happen after one applies fresh material on top. We do that to maintain the temperature, and tomatoes are especially sensitive. The fresh material is either fresh horse manure, or green leaves such as grass, with any brown material such as paper, straw, old tree leaves and half decomposed, small woodchip.

Outside sowing

You can sow carrots, parsnips, leeks, lettuce, onions, salad onions, radish, broad beans and peas.You can lay a fleece cover to increase warmth for new seeds. Lift it after a week to check for slugs and weeds. In current wet conditions,

I'm finding it best to use hoops to support any cover, in order to increase airflow and reduce the humidity which slugs thrive in. It's fine to sow parsnips as late as June, to allow time to grow salad onions, lettuce or other plants first.

Asparagus is mostly not ready yet

The harvest season usually runs from the third week of April to summer solstice. So that's two months of picking at a time when there are not many other fresh vegetables.

I'm finding it fascinating to see the difference between what I grew from seed, sown February 2022, compared to one year old crowns planted at the same time. I recommend you sow some even now ( I am not linked to this seed company, just helping you find some seed).

The value of winter gardening and how no dig helps

No dig makes early planting easier, however much it has rained. No wooden sides to beds reduces slug numbers and costs. No dig like this is cheap and quick.

I saw on Facebook, someone proudly showing the photo of their immaculate allotment, beds all expensively assembled with wooden sides. Yet nothing at all was growing on 1st April!

This is such a pity when there are so many vegetables adapted to grow slowly through winter, as I have been describing here. Remember this when we come to autumn, and, however full your plot seems at that time, there's much more you can do to enjoy winter harvest next year, and into the early spring.

See my No Dig book, which has a vast amount of information about growing all different vegetables. We also run an offer with the Calendar for easy reference to the timings of each sowing, right up until October.

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