October 2022 harvests of many vegetables, replant more than resow, my trial of no rotation

Growth slows rapidly through October, while the volume of harvests can increase, depending what you replanted in summer. It’s a potentially difficult month yet also rewarding.

No dig makes everything easier as I describe in this recent podcast. There are few weeds and you can resow/replant easily, with more time for work on your vegetables. We are celebrating this beautiful method with a big No Dig Day on 3rd November: make a bed, tell your friend, host a no dig meal!

On 5th October we have a few places available on my compost making course. The day before on 4th I am lecturing at Sissinghurst Garden, then in Newport on the Isle of Wight on 13th.

Growth and ageing of celery, celeriac

There are several challenges in growing these two vegetables. Celery is the most demanding of water and that took some time this summer! Then in the damp days of autumn, a disease called Septoria can damage even destroy the leaves and stems, remarkably quickly. Removing infected leaves slows the process only a little.

It’s sometimes the same with celeriac, and if it happens I find it best to harvest before about November, by which time the disease risks travelling into the celeriac itself.
I have some good ones here but mainly where we started to water from mid July as in the right-hand photo.

Detailed info on growing celery and celeriac can be found in this online From Seed to Harvest lesson.

Heading, hearting, when to harvest

I find the hearts or heads of cabbage so beautiful that I’m reluctant to cut them. However there is a stage beyond which they start to decay, when you need to either eat them or make some sauerkraut!

The buttons of Brussels sprouts do not always grow firmly and I’m noticing this on open pollinated varieties here, the ones which are called heirloom or heritage! As opposed to the newer F1 hybrids.
I spoke to someone in the trade about this, and he reckons that for the old varieties such as Bedfordshire Champion, no serious selective maintenance has been done for decades.
You may be lucky and buy seed which has been better selected. I find it most reliable to grow hybrids because for all the time and space they need to grow, it’s just not worth messing around with something so unpredictable as the older varieties have become. The Seven Hills is described as “An old Dutch  variety Roodnerf, that has been re- introduced in the last few years for heavy crops of tight headed sprouts that have a good flavour, cropping from Christmas onwards”. It looks unpromising!

It’s a similar story for chicories to grow into heads of radicchio. Most of the open pollinated ones I’ve grown over 30 years until recently, from companies such as Kings seeds and even Seeds of Italy, do not make reliably firm heads. Some newer ones bred in Italy are good however, 506TT for round radicchio and 206RR for Treviso type heads. There are many others too, including Lusia types as on my recent tour video..

Sow now

After eight months of regular sowing, of so many different vegetables, we’re coming to a time when there is much less to sow.
Just plenty still to plant, in particular under cover for winter cropping of leaves in particular. Under cover means greenhouse, polytunnel, cold frame, and to a lesser extent a garden bed with a cover of mesh. I recommend that more than fleece for winter use because mesh admits more light, and is stronger in winter winds.

The main sowing for October is garlic, which can be of your own cloves from bulbs you grew this year, even if they had rust. In my experience this does not increase the rust next spring, which is dependent on weather conditions. You can also sow mustard in the first week of October for green manure , and broad beans in the second half of October for green manure. For picking pods next June, I find it most effective to sow broad beans in early to mid November. Even late November if autumn is mild.

Transplanting and covering small plants, for winter too

If you have raised the plants, there is still just time to transplant spring cabbage, spring cauliflower and spring onions, for harvest next spring.

Also salad rocket, winter purslane, Chauvel, land cress, corn salad, mizuna and mustards for autumn salad leaves and perhaps through winter. The latter is in milder areas.

Harvest, clear, mulch, replant

Many plants are finishing now or soon will. On a course day yesterday I had an interesting discussion about this, because many participants were saying they had been advised and taught to remove all roots of the vegetables which were finished, and that’s what it meant to clear a bed before replanting. I am horrified by such advice! With No-Dig we leave all the roots in the soil as food for microbes.

You can use either a knife or sharp trowel to cut around base roots so that enough of the plant comes out for it not to regrow. This leaves most of the small roots in the soil. You can replant straight away, as we did after clearing courgettes plants this week, then re-planting with mizuna and garlic. Details are in the photo captions.

Replant where? My trial of no rotation

It’s now the eighth year of growing four different vegetables in the same beds, same soil and with the usual annual dressing of compost.. One of the beds has broad beans followed by cabbage in every calendar year. Another bed has potatoes followed by leeks, in every calendar year. The photo shows how they look now in autumn, with superb harvests of hearted cabbage and strongly growing leeks, for harvest soon.

“No rotation” gives wonderful freedom when you decide what to plant where, first in spring and then with summer’s succession plantings. See my new No Dig book for more about no rotation, and we offer it with a half price Calendar too.

Sow when for succession?

Each vegetable has one or more specific times of year when you can sow for best results. It’s not about whether they’re a leaf, fruit or root vegetable, but is partly about upcoming warmth levels, and partly according to their natural rhythm of growth. These details are basis for sowing dates in my wall Calendar.

For example the pak choi and turnips which you see in these photographs have a flowering time of May to early July. Therefore if you sow them in April, harvest will be small before flowering initiates and stops growth of new leaves and roots to eat.

For these vegetables the two best sowing dates are either very early under cover, for some cropping up to the end of May. Or you can sow them in early August for food through the autumn. The sowings of late summer avoid pests such as flea beetles, which cause most damage to spring sowings.

Mildews and squash harvests plus curing

It’s time now and soon to harvest squash for winter. If they have had enough time and warmth to dry on the plants, with hard skin and shrivelling stalk, they will store through winter and into spring. Your first step to achieve this is put them somewhere warm and dry after carefully cutting the stalk, so as not to break it off the fruit. If it does break, eat that one sooner rather than later.

If your squash plants run out of time before the first frost, you need to harvest them anyway. They will be less sweet and will not store well when the skin is not hard and dry.

Pumpkins are different. They are larger, more watery, have soft the skins and store only until Christmas usually. It may confuse you that many people describe squash as ‘pumpkin’ because these two words should be used specifically for each type of fruit and not as a general term for all such cucurbits.

Bean harvests for storing dry

I grew some dwarf French beans for harvest of dry seeds and we have harvested them already. We are in the middle of gathering all the pods of borlotti beans, which dry pretty much all at the same time on the teepees, which makes it easy to pick them quickly. Then we spread them in trays and bring them into the conservatory to dry fully, before spreading them on a sheet on concrete outside and walking on them to break open the pods. I demonstrate this in an Instagram video we posted.

Runner beans mature and dry at regular intervals and are more difficult to succeed where the weather in September is not hot, as here! I have a nasty feeling that we’re not going to harvest more than 2/3 of the beans for dry storage, and before main frosts we shall gather them as green pods with swollen beans, for immediate eating or to freeze in the damp state.

‍