😀

That is awesome and those are the friends you need! Thanks.

It's warming!!

Nicely put Ted, thanks. Yes I am sure the soil holds more warmth in winter and warms more rapidly in spring.

Lovely to hear Carolyn

😮 try Aquadulce Claudia

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thanks Charles, that's what we planted, only had the problem the last couple of years, I think I'll try a different location this year. Not ready to give up on Autumn sowing yet, it's one of our few overwintering crops and we are plagued with blackly if we sow in the spring !

Nice to hear and we all need it!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Hoping to get some UK weather lol. These -30 winters are for the birds!

arctic fowl 😂

I see!

So true!!

Ironically, we have harsher winters in SW Missouri, US than you have several hundred miles North of because we don’t have the Ocean stabilizing the weather. Spinach will survive lows well below 0 Fahrenheit and highs in the 20’s. Amazing plants.

@@johndyer9232 Do you plant them in ground in the fall or late fall and let them winter over? I'll need to buy seeds. No problem. Zone 6b. Ct.

@@smas3256 Late summer through early fall. Last week of August through October. They’ll slow down when it gets real cold, but any days in the 50’s and notice some growth. I use Bloomsdale Longstanding because they don’t bolt as quickly. Also in zone 6b here. I would imagine any spinach will handle the cold. The spinach I’m growing is from seed I’ve saved over the last few years. So it’s adapted to the microclimate of my garden.

So good to see this, thanks I shall try it :)

Many thanks 💚

Thanks so much for the feedback and how wonderful you managed that!

Here in zone 9/10 (CA), overwintering fava is easy. The biggest problem is that early heat can kill pollination. It's a race to get them to flower before the heat sets in. Same with Runner beans. I have some growing from last years beans (they are perennial if temps are mild) that are flowering now (May 26) and I already have a small bean or two, but when the heat comes, they wont pollinate.

I am heartened to see this comment, but somebody else from Norway was saying how much more difficult it is for you and I wish you well, you probably need more covers than I am using

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you Charles, you are so present ❤️ Yes, I might have to consider making some frames and consider using thicker but cheap fleece blankets. Last winter was incredibly hard, and so long this year. Surprisingly enough my kale almost made it through 2 rounds of -30, until a deer ended it. UK gardening videoes truly are it's own kind of torture for me. Once that winning lottery ticket comes through I'll get a house in Wales 🤭

​@@SiljeMeum I think you would enjoy the channel "Simple Living Alaska". This young couple moved to the snowy wilderness of Alaska, and they show methods they use to grow a magnificent garden during their very short season. They then moved several hours further north where it's even colder, and are just now starting a new garden from the beginning again. I hope you can learn something from them!

@@rubygray7749 Thank you so much! That does sound relevant 👌🏼🌱 I get so frustrated seeing the English green winters 😂 I lived in the UK for a couple of years and was so excited to have my first green winter, and lo and behold: greater London had its first snow fall in 8 years 😵‍💫😂 I'll check them out, thank you. This year I'm trying perennial broccoli and siberian kale. I really need to get a green house and do some heavier measures before winter. We never know if we're having a wet mild winter or siberian cold!

I don't understand it either, and I must say, it feels selfish to me because much as they like it, the soil life they kill every year, does not! It's an introverted level of self-amusement 😮

@@CharlesDowding1nodig 😂 amazingly put!

At my allotment some people use rotavators at the start of every season. I've noticed how the clay soil quickly re-compacts after a few rain showers and they end up with a flat hard pan which is ripe for weeds like Bristly Oxtongue which are a pain to get rid of. I don't really do much digging any more although I will occasionally use a fork to gently tease up some areas which have some compaction. I never turn the soil over though.

@@jaspercaelan4998 my grandad grows his tomatoes in buckets to concentrate watering. The idea of mulching seemed like a very abstract and bizarre idea to him.

Great tips thanks

Glad you enjoyed it Steven

💚

That sounds promising, and you can still sow + plant a lot for harvest this summer and autumn, see my timeline of possible dates www.charlesdowding.co.uk/resources/sowing-timeline

Tienes tanta razón Manuel. Espero que llueva un poco más para ti.

We are fortunate, I hope you can manage some winter growing

Oh no!!

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it Sam

Great to hear 🙂

I am glad 🙂

Wonderful and thank you for sharing 🙂

Glad you enjoyed it Loraine

Lovely to hear this from the 55th parallel, I'm impressed. Good soil and good gardening 💚

I live in Copenhagen and have tried getting sprouting broccoli outside through the winter a couple of times, but without success. There always seem to be 2 or 3 weeks which are just too cold and kills them off, together with autumn broad beans and chard. Kale can make it through though. What i have done is to dig up sprouting broccoli in November and put it in buckets in the greenhouse. That method works and i get a crop in spring, although perhaps limited a bit by the confined growing space in the buckets.

@@user-op4fb4kj7o Interesting! May be the mild local temperatures on my island Fejø, situated in a bay, around a to hours drive away to the south. I noticed the differece in this winters cold spell of minus 10-20 degrees Celsius in Copenhagen, compared to 3-7 degrees frost at my place. I am looking forward to trying the broccoli. Well, hoping, that we go free of the flooding this year.

I would recommend trying broad beans (hestebønner) if you haven’t already. They seem to not be so common in Denmark, but give a good and very early crop. I start mine in the greenhouse in February to get going extra early, for a crop in June which allows something else to be grown afterwards. Agree on the flooding front - less rain in DK this winter please!

You are very welcome

You are welcome!

Sounds great Dafydd!

Glad you enjoyed it

Great to hear Luke 🙂

Many thanks for your lovely comment!

Oh good, I am happy to be helping

That's nice Wayne. It's getting harder to find time to make them!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig thank you Charles! Your a very busy person. Wrestling with crabgrass and edging today, beautiful weather!

Merci bien Maxime

Love that Craig

Turnips are biennial. Save the seeds from this batch. I like to plant turnips in mid-summer. Then they’re ready to harvest in November, or let overwinter and they’ll make seed the following summer. The bees love turnip flowers (all brassicas for that matter).

Love this, very creative 💚

💚

2013 greenhouse was £6.500, 2019 polytunnel 18 x 42ft £2000 but more now, see video for comparison kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h9l7ochezeCwqoE.html

Thanks Philip. you are right and it would need a special greenhouse, not so practical

What's worse, is the low light levels.

Yes I have, tried it 1983-86 in the tunnels. Then decided overhead was better under cover. Never used it outside because I don't like how it leaves much of the soil dry, with microbes dormant. In some situations, however I can see that it's worthwhile. It's good to be aware of the pros and cons, then you can work it out.

Cool, thanks. We sell Skills book www.charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-2 So do Chelsea Green in the US

Challenging! Check out "walapini" info.bcgreenhouses.com/en-ca/en-ca/walipini-underground-greenhouses

I’m in zone 5 as well. I’ve had cabbage, leeks, carrots last through the winter without any cover. It may depend on the winter, of course. I did find that the leeks & carrots were great until they started sending up flower stalks. Then they got a tough core in the middle and weren’t nice to eat anymore. But I left them to flower & get seeds. I plan to try spinach this winter by using hoops with fleece like Charles does.

@@jenbear8652 yes, it does depend on winter. Fleece isn’t going to protect from high winds and -10 Fahrenheit temps.

Ah no, it's lambs lettuce or corn salad, flowering with its pale blue flowers, on its way to setting seed, which I shall harvest in about three weeks. We have been harvesting leaves from those plants since November.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig ah I see, hadn’t seen it in flower before so wasn’t aware of how different the leaves look when it begins to flower. But I can now see it after googling pics of it in flower. Thanks!

Nice to hear Tufty. We are quite fit from doing this a lot, and efficient, it rarely feels like a slog!

Você é muito bem-vindo Luisa

You are welcome Grażyna

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Yes,of course,thanks for answer. Pozdrawiam 👍

No - what do you eat at Christmas?!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Christmas dinner…potatoes, carrots, parsnips etc

Potatoes asap, parsnips and carrots mid June, Brussels now

Broccoli for autumn or spring David, also beetroot and carrots

Good luck with being ahead!

Between plants, it's about 50 cm or 20 inches which can look a little close, but they have a lot of space and root run to either side, because the bed is 1.2 m/4 feet. And there's some path space on each side as well.

Do the broccoli and cauliflower leaves taste good?

@@91wayne90 you have to try them.

I definitely will! Have some broccoli plants with huge leaves.

@@91wayne90 they taste like cabbage, they are a brassica after all.

Broccoli leaves taste just like broccoli florets

You are so professional, congratulations. Brilliant work on timings and approach, for your climate.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thanks, I wish! Just bumbling through and trying to adapt no-dig principles to our very different climate (and to do it extremely hands-off, too, as I have very little time for gardening at this stage in life!)

Congratulations. I find the exact opposite!

👍

I have wondered that. However, there are so many factors at play and it's often less straightforward than isolating one factor. Adam and Taryn are looking at mycorrhizal behaviour with and in brassica roots, which are supposed not to use them or associate with them. Yet they are! - I hope to make a video about this eventually.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thanks for replying. This discussion reminded me just now of a book, I think its this one: "The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate--Discoveries from a Secret World", which describes how plants use fungi not only as root extensions, but as conduits through which they can exchange nutrients with other plants and even to communicate with each other. Life is amazing. Thanks to evolution, pretty much anything that is physically possible (and useful to the organism) is likely to occur, sooner or later.

Here you are kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pbVjg8KFr97Do6M.html

Nice job Darren

Do see this video kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hc-iZK2QqMy5aYU.html and use the timings list to find what you want

Gracias. Debería poder elegir entre esos diferentes idiomas y, si desea español, simplemente haga clic en español. Estoy usando un servicio de traducción diferente y tal vez algo haya cambiado en la configuración, pero todos los idiomas deberían estar ahí para ti.

Thanks, I'm glad you like the video and I'm sure you can do useful winter work because of your relatively low latitude, around 43° it looks to me while we are at 51°, much further north. However, you do not have the ocean warmth, so you need to make more of that sunshine, check out the work of Elliot Coleman. And sow cabbage + salad onions a little earlier than me, say 25th August to have larger transplants with maybe four true leaves.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig thank you so much for the advise about timing. You’re right about the sunshine. It declines significantly in the later summer months and of course as you said, no ocean warmth. I’ll check out the channel you suggested. I can use all the help I can get! Thank you 🙏

Yes I have them sometimes and use water as Chris says

Thank you very much both!

Go for it Vicki - just those leaves need chopping up because they are so oily and resist bacterial decomposition unless they are broken. I think also maybe people worry about pH but I don't see that there's any problem with it. Thanks for your nice words.

Awesome, thanks so much.

Thanks Jakob and it was -8C. Below about -10°C, broccoli is not happy!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig thanks! Broccoli will be on the experimental end of the spectrum then :) of course, 2 winters ago we barely had frost. So it can work out...

Yes, I would remove them, and you may be surprised by how many slugs you find. Just press down the edges to 45° with your foot, add a little more compost on top and you are fully no dig.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig great thank you 😊

You sow seeds whenever is the right time for the particular vegetal;e, and then they overwinter as plants to give harvests either through winter or in spring

Yes this page, for the UK at least www.crocus.co.uk/products/_/vid.3796/numitems.100/sort.7/

Thank you am uk and thats great help. ​@@CharlesDowding1nodig

Oh…. And this year I haven’t dowsed in diluted used coffee granule “tea”. Usually works but forgot to do it this year….

Interesting, because here I have some leaf miner, but less rust that you. I wait until it's 80% rusty leaves, before harvest. Currently we are maybe 50% and they are still growing. Yours might be best removed soon and before end May, good luck!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you so much for your advice and feedback! I’ll get my drying racks up ready for harvesting soon. Will mince up and freeze the smaller heads without bothering to cure.

It sounds like chocolate spot, and I've had it where the soil has not been sufficiently amended with organic matter. They like it rich and fertile, so I would add some extra compost of any kind. There is false information out there about them 'being a legume so not needing compost', but the soil needs to be healthy!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thanks. I planted them the first and second year I was doing no dig. That would explain why they did better the second year.❤️

I don't, I'm very happy with pale green stems and they are still very long and sweet. Four potatoes we just pull them up after adding extra compost on top, kzfaq.info/get/bejne/e6iGktWalsW8g4U.html

@@CharlesDowding1nodig thanks a lot... 😁

I'm the same, I grew leeks last year and left them in the ground because they were still tiny, they have now more than doubled in size recently and I'm also not bothered about the colour, I'll just eat them as they are, last year when they were tiny I just cut them back and ate the tops and thought I'd just see if they'd grow back like spring onions do and they did. As for potatoes that has been one of my most successful crops, I can't seem to stop them growing here, they pop up everywhere 😂 even in places I never planted them, I have overwintered them a few times now successfully by putting some back in pots over winter covered with soil in the garden and just let them do what they want and they grow and it also means they get a head start in the spring and I'm harvesting potatoes earlier, around mid to late May, if they have leaves when there's some cold weather I will cover them with fleece and if the leaves do get damaged by frost I just cut the leaves back and they eventually sprout new leaves, potatoes do seem to be very hardy and I have also found some growing in my compost too, I love Charles' no fuss approach to gardening and I try to use the same approach which works well for me and saves a lot of work too, I try to work with nature rather than against it, i don't plant in rows partly because of lack of space and also because i think it seems to help with pests by mixing them up, maybe it distracts them by disguising the smells, I also don't worry too much about rotation and don't have the space for that anyway, I try to fill in as many gaps as possible and because I have a small garden the veg have to share pots with each other, I have to be creative with the space I have, I do forget what I've planted where 😂 but there's always a nice surprise when I go out there just to do one job and come back indoors with a selection of veg that I didn't know was there or had forgotten I'd planted, I did this a couple of days ago, I picked some chard, lettuce, spring onions and pack choi that had been out there over winter, I've also got some carrots still out there that I planted in autumn that were tiny but now they have since grown, there's also some spinach growing back from a last August sowing. I've learnt so much from this channel and as I'm in another part of Somerset I know my climate is going to be very similar to where Charles is based so I always take note of the dates he recommends.

I sell a fair few, we eat a lot including course lunches, and some are for seed as green manure

they're delicious boiled when green and fresh and used in salads and dips, or just a side, dressed with oil and salt. You can also dry them for keeping, they are used heavily that way in middle eastern cuisine such as egyptian style falafel and ful (a dip or soup made with dried broad beans).

Do you not have to double pod them to eat insides only?

I do, you can, ignore those who say you can't!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig that’s good to know, could you still save seed from each? Thanks again

Yes. they don't cross pollinate, and as long as they are not F1 hybrids

Datewise for sowings, no. Advice on spacings, watering, propagation, planting tips, v similar for you I reckon.

See this page www.charlesdowding.co.uk/resources/seeds-varieties

Maybe add a layer of mulch ...grass clippings or woodchips to stop that evaporation.

@@gmorgan894 thanks I'll give that a try

That's good to hear, but it was an exceptionally easy winter. Nothing ever is the same year on year, and never mind, you have a lot more success than failure 😀

Your comment is perceptive and there's no obvious answer that I know. I have a similar problem in one part of my patch. A supposed hybrid crown turned out to be a female, resulting in many competing and smaller plants. There is no guarantee that these self seeded plants will grow decent harvests, so I'm not sure!

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Asparagus takes so long to get established it is frustrating when things don't go well. Thanks Charles!

Thanks for your feedback, we shall check the settings, as you can see it's exposed.