September 2024

Autumn begins and we are still planting. I popped in these Chinese cabbage on 26th August, in beds where I had grown broad/fava beans and collected a lot of bean seeds. The Chinese cabbage are now covered with mesh, against insects and rabbits, for cropping I hope in November.

Sow more, including the rockets

You can still sow spring onions, asap.
Plus lambs lettuce, claytonia, mizuna and mustards, all to grow outside.
Sow wild rocket for cropping next spring and summer. Wild rocket is Diplotaxis tenuifolia, also caled wall rocket. Whereas salad rocket/arugula sown in August is faster to start and will be cropping soon, and through autumn, even a little in winter.
You can sow salad rocket in early September, but don't delay, so that it has time to develop a good root system before winter.

For green manure, sow mustard Sinapis alba in any ground you won't need for vegetables this autumn..

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Perennial weeds

If you suffer with any of bindweed / Convolvulus, ground elder, creeping buttercups, couch grass, and so on, no dig offers the chance to eliminate them. But that is only through regular weekly removal of new shoots, until they stop growing. That's when the old roots - which you never see - run out of energy.

It's a commitment and quite a bit of work. But much less work than regular digging of soil to try and remove all existing weed roots, followed by re-digging and re-digging, and depletion of soil fertility each time you do that through escape of carbon, and damage to soil microbes.

The ground in the photograph above is now clear of bindweed, and we have so much more time as a result for creative gardening. After the initial hard work, the beds and paths at Homeacres need almost no weeding through the season. This makes it possible to achieve what I do, because otherwise I would not have time.

Energy work

What does this mean? It can be as simple as your intent, wishing your plants to grow strongly, in the soil you have made healthy.

The 'energy' is unseen fields and forces, which can increase growth and wellbeing where you live and work. I have various devices working at Homeacres. With no moving parts, through implosion as Viktor Schauberger called it.
Like, you never hear plants growing.

To learn more, come on my second energy course 19th October. We had a fantastic group for the first one, including Aranya who made the cone for the tower (a land drain pipe) in the photo.

The tower is a scaled down version of an Irish round tower, as explained in the amazing writings of Philip S Callahan.

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Caterpillars!

Many of you tell me that your brassicas in particular have been shredded by caterpillars. If so, I hope you're reading this because I have a remedy which I've been mentioning for decades, but somehow there are only a very few people who have heard of it. The soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis. See this page for purchasing in the UK. Some say it's illegal, others say it's poisonous. Both are untrue and it's simply a soil bacteria.

To succeed against pests generally, the first three things are to understand
1 which ones are likely,
2 what damage they might do,
3 when they are common.

All of those details are specific to your location, and it's worth learning more, for example, through the knowledge pack we sell for £15. I would say that's a first class investment to reduce damage, enabling you to succeed with more harvests.

Harvests, when?

The winter squash in my photo are not yet ready to harvest. I know that because the main stems are still very green, there are many green leaves, although some are dying from mildew, and the stalks of the fruits are also still more green than yellow or brown.
This year growth has been slower. I do not expect to be harvesting winter squash before early October. See this short video for more detail.

Some may run ou of warm weather. You still need to pick them before first frost. They will be less sweet and will not store.

Remember next spring to sow them under cover in the last week of April, for planting out before the end of May. Details are in my £3 Growing Guide.

No dig speed, summer successions

It's so worthwhile to have transplants ready throughout summer, for filling gaps wherever they appear. Before the cabbage, I had grown peas for shoots. The bed was covered in pee plants and picked once a week for over two months.

As soon as they finished, we transplanted the little cabbages, and covered them with mesh. I removed the cover 31st August, and deleafed older leaves.

See also the chicory growth below.

Open Day 1st September

It was a pleasure to meetr so many of you at the open day. Your ticket purchases resulted in over £3900 going to Ripple Effect and Promise Works charities.

I was especially delighted to see Alby and his family. He is @nodigkid on Instagram and is passionate about growing food in a healthy way.

Alby with his parents and sister

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