No Dig Autumn Success

Summer is such a rush and I welcome the chance to step back a little and enjoy the wonderful abundance. Healthy soil grows healthy plants and I am seeing it, feeling it all around me here.

See in this video what I have harvested, and am still to harvest, on one bed of 1.5 x 5m, 5 x 16 ft.

Weeds?

I'm often asked how many people are doing the weeding here, since so few weeds are visible in my photos. The answer is no extra people. I employ one full time and two part time.

New weeds are occasionally from seeds in recently spread compost. They pull out easily and quickly.

Because so few weeds grow, we can simply pull them out as soon as seen, when doing other jobs. walking from one part of the garden to another, when they catch the eye. Always small in size. It's quick and not onerous.

No dig means happy soil and no need for it to recover, "re-cover".

Start 1 - Create fertile soil clear of weeds

The no dig classic method for starting is carboard on weeds, then compost on that. This garden in N Italy was created like that in January 2024 and has been super productive this year, growing for the farmhouse restaurant.

Start 2 - Strong Plants, good seeds

Start point for success is having seeds and seedlings ready to transplant in their right season. Now, in late October, it's almost the end of starting time but broad beans can still be sown either in module trays or direct.

On 9th and 10th October we transplanted seedings from my module trays, into all under cover spaces such as the polytunnel below. They were three to four weeks old and very small. yet ten days later you can see the strong establishment.

Plant a box

Any spare transplants of lettuce, endive, salad rocket, mustards, chervil, claytonia etc and be popped into boxes to park on any spare staging, or on w windowsill preferably with extra light. My video has more on this.

We filled five, lined with a little newspaper. Each has the same plants, in a different compost, watch for my reporting in March.

Vegetable Beauty

I love the gorgousness of vegetables. A feast for the eye before being a feast for us. Seeds are from Lucy Hutchings at The Heirloom Seed Company.

Watching growth

Even now, there is some new swelling of roots and enlargement of leaves.

However, we are just passing the cusp of 10 hours between sunrise and sunset. It marks a kind of limit point beyond which growth is much slower and weaker. We notice when picking salad leaves that they are thinner after 27th October, even when trperatures are high enough for new growth to be possible.

Compost season approaches

I hope you have made plenty. And don't be afraid to buy some from local suppliers, see my links page,.or find a farmer with manure. And for pathways, tree surgeons with woodchip.

Compost need not be fully decomposed, when spreading on the surface in autumn. See my new book for details.

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