- 3 weeks ago
After a week of freezing weather, and with more to come, see how the plants are surviving. Winters here are normally temperate, so this is unusual for us in zone 8, south-west England.
You also see no dig beds prepared and ready for planting in the spring. It's quick and easy with few weeds to worry about.
Filmed at Homeacres by Nicola Smith, 14th December 2022.
00:00 Introduction, and some info on upcoming events
00:55 Broad beans for a cover crop
01:38 Rye plants, some with wireworm damage, and mustards - Synapsis Alba
03:18 Spring onions
03:45 Endive and lettuce, coming to the end
04:11 More mustard, later sown, interplanted with garlic
04:43 Savoy cabbage, a brilliant winter vegetable
05:12 Purple sprouting broccoli, covered with netting against pigeons
05:40 Vegetable storage in the shed - all frost tolerant veg…
06:47 …except fennel
07:38 Pigeon damage to Brussels sprouts
08:21 Lamb’s lettuce and swede
08:51 Spinach, Medania variety
09:22 Beetroot Boltardy
09:49 Compost, just spread, with some bits of wood
10:52 The three-bay pallet system
11:50 A pile of fresh wood chip, compare it to 10 months old woodchip
13:07 Another bed of mustard, and garlic
13:31 Fruit radish - Shawo fruit, Sakurajima and Green Luobo
14:26 A different type of Brussels sprout, Red Bull, a non-hybrid
14:54 Broad beans under thermacrop, and Aalsmeer cauliflower under mesh
15:51 The dig and no dig trial beds
16:24 Broad beans just planted in the trial beds
17:01 This year’s harvesting results from the trial, see webpage below
17:38 The greenhouse, with plants under fleece
20:42 The Small Garden, and a look at coriander
22:09 In the conservatory - oca recently harvested
22:40 Tomato plant, F1 hybrid Rosada, propagated from a sideshoot
23:31 I cut open a leek, Philomene, harvested the same morning
24:15 Two fruit radish, recently harvested - Green Luobo and Shawo fruit, the latter with cabbage root fly damage
25:32 Outro
Homeacres courses 2023 listed on this page of my website:https://charlesdowding.co.uk/courses/
See the 2022 results of my dig/no dig trial here: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/no-dig-trial-2019-2022-current-year-at-top/
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
You also see no dig beds prepared and ready for planting in the spring. It's quick and easy with few weeds to worry about.
Filmed at Homeacres by Nicola Smith, 14th December 2022.
00:00 Introduction, and some info on upcoming events
00:55 Broad beans for a cover crop
01:38 Rye plants, some with wireworm damage, and mustards - Synapsis Alba
03:18 Spring onions
03:45 Endive and lettuce, coming to the end
04:11 More mustard, later sown, interplanted with garlic
04:43 Savoy cabbage, a brilliant winter vegetable
05:12 Purple sprouting broccoli, covered with netting against pigeons
05:40 Vegetable storage in the shed - all frost tolerant veg…
06:47 …except fennel
07:38 Pigeon damage to Brussels sprouts
08:21 Lamb’s lettuce and swede
08:51 Spinach, Medania variety
09:22 Beetroot Boltardy
09:49 Compost, just spread, with some bits of wood
10:52 The three-bay pallet system
11:50 A pile of fresh wood chip, compare it to 10 months old woodchip
13:07 Another bed of mustard, and garlic
13:31 Fruit radish - Shawo fruit, Sakurajima and Green Luobo
14:26 A different type of Brussels sprout, Red Bull, a non-hybrid
14:54 Broad beans under thermacrop, and Aalsmeer cauliflower under mesh
15:51 The dig and no dig trial beds
16:24 Broad beans just planted in the trial beds
17:01 This year’s harvesting results from the trial, see webpage below
17:38 The greenhouse, with plants under fleece
20:42 The Small Garden, and a look at coriander
22:09 In the conservatory - oca recently harvested
22:40 Tomato plant, F1 hybrid Rosada, propagated from a sideshoot
23:31 I cut open a leek, Philomene, harvested the same morning
24:15 Two fruit radish, recently harvested - Green Luobo and Shawo fruit, the latter with cabbage root fly damage
25:32 Outro
Homeacres courses 2023 listed on this page of my website:https://charlesdowding.co.uk/courses/
See the 2022 results of my dig/no dig trial here: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/no-dig-trial-2019-2022-current-year-at-top/
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Welcome to Homemakers No-Dig Garden
00:02in some pretty cold weather.
00:04And although the year is winding down in the garden,
00:07we're thinking ahead to next year already.
00:10And there's actually events coming up in January.
00:13I'm giving some talks at Westeen College in Sussex.
00:16And in February 9th, I'm going to Le Manoir,
00:20Raymond Blanc's restaurant doing a no-dig course there,
00:22no-dig garden, believe it or not.
00:24And a couple of trips to Ireland maybe.
00:27Plus, we've just put up all our course dates
00:30on the page on my website,
00:32Homemakers Courses Days and Weekend Courses
00:34and a few in the offnoons.
00:35So I want to show you what's going on here now.
00:38It's 14th December, which is actually a day
00:40when it's the shortest afternoon of the year.
00:44The mornings carry on getting darker,
00:46but the 14th of December is when the afternoons
00:48start to draw out a little bit, believe it or not.
00:50It's still dark here soon after four o'clock.
00:54And it's also cold, as you can see.
00:55So these broad beans, we've just had a solid week of frost.
00:59This is 10, half past 10 in the morning now,
01:03and it's still below freezing.
01:05The temperature just pops above freezing briefly.
01:08And we've got a few more days of that,
01:11but they're looking okay.
01:12They're surviving.
01:13Broad beans are amazing plants.
01:14These actually went in earlier than normal
01:17because I'm planning, my idea is to grow them
01:19for cover crop, it's called, or green manure.
01:22Putting goodness back into the ground through photosynthesis
01:25and piling in the carbon through their roots.
01:27So we might just take them out before planting something else
01:31in late April, May, we'll see.
01:34Or I might take out every other one and crop some broad beans.
01:37You've got options.
01:39And here we have the rye.
01:42I made a video about this if you haven't seen it.
01:44So growing rye and harvesting the grain and making bread.
01:47I've got a little mill.
01:49And lo and behold, this is what it looks like at the moment,
01:52which is nothing like as good as I'd hoped.
01:54There's been wireworms here, horrible wireworms,
01:58pest, soil grab, eating the roots.
02:00And we've done quite a bit of work fishing around for them
02:03and squashing them.
02:05And also we're trialing a few things to see if it helps
02:08the mustard, like the brassicas between that's mustard there,
02:11for example, that was a very late sown mustard.
02:14There's potato traps, that's pretty much frozen in the end.
02:18The idea is you might get a wireworm going in there to eat.
02:23And as we get closer to the rye, the mustard looks,
02:26sorry, as we get closer to the mustard,
02:28the rye looks stronger.
02:29So this is the rye here.
02:31That's two seeds, has made all those stems already.
02:36And we'll have a look at this next year.
02:37I'm hoping that it will grow strongly
02:39and I'll get a harvest of grain
02:40to make more bread.
02:42This is just pure mustard here.
02:44It's a type of mustard called synapsis alba, white mustard.
02:49Synapsis alba, which was sown early October.
02:52So it's got quite big.
02:54You can sow it as even late September,
02:57and then it's killed by frost.
02:59That's brilliant for no dig.
03:00You're getting all this carbon from the leaves and the roots
03:04and the frost kills it.
03:07Then you've just got stems, you can rake them off,
03:09and you're ready to go in the spring.
03:10We put a bit of mustard on, a bit of compost on,
03:14when sowing the mustard in October.
03:17And same story here where we put compost on
03:20before transplanting the spring onions.
03:22So these spring onions went in the ground
03:24in 30th September.
03:27And it was a bit at the tail end, actually,
03:29of quite a lot of plants with fewer in a clump.
03:32And they don't look brilliant at the moment,
03:35but they're looking okay.
03:37You know, that's a classic overwintering crop.
03:39They're hanging in there.
03:41And they've got their roots growing strongly,
03:43all being well.
03:45Whereas this is a harvest which is finishing.
03:48So these end even lettuce in this bed,
03:52they've had it now.
03:54And that's fine because we've picked
03:55for a good 10 weeks from this bed.
03:58Just repeat picking of the outer leaves
04:00and a few leaves off the kale as well.
04:02So this has been a salad bed.
04:04Probably all those plants are going to come out now.
04:06So we've still got a few plants to clear.
04:11There's some more mustard.
04:12And we tried something different here.
04:14This was slightly later sown, 10th of October.
04:18And we popped in garlic between.
04:20You can see it there.
04:22So we haven't been able to see this garlic
04:25until very recently, until the frost.
04:27The garlic's not killed by frost.
04:28The garlic is fine in frost.
04:30The idea is maybe get the soil really micro-rich.
04:34That might help the garlic and we have less rust.
04:37We've been having terrible rust problems on the garlic.
04:40And yeah, I'm trying anything.
04:43These Savoy cabbage are brilliant winter vegetable.
04:46I love them.
04:47They just stand however much frost comes their way.
04:52Look really beautiful as well.
04:55We've been removing the outer leaves.
04:57That definitely helps to keep them looking nice
04:59and reduce the slug numbers.
05:01All of that goes to the compost heap.
05:04And they should stand to harvest,
05:07maybe not all winter,
05:09but for at least another couple of months.
05:11Whereas these plants looking very sad at the moment
05:14from frozen nuts, purple sprouting broccoli,
05:17variety Claret to harvest in April.
05:20And we've put this structure up.
05:22All the black netting is against pigeons
05:24because they normally don't bother me too much here,
05:27but come December in colder weather,
05:30they really get in.
05:31And you'll see in a minute, some pigeon damage.
05:33They massacre the plants if getting on, sitting on top.
05:40Now, I want to show you some storage.
05:44And it's not going entirely to plan
05:48because of the depth of cold.
05:51So this shed is not insulated.
05:54It wasn't really designed for this.
05:56So I wasn't sure what I wanted it for actually,
05:59to be honest.
05:59I knew this would be some of it,
06:01but I didn't imagine storing this much.
06:03We've had a very successful year, as you can see.
06:06And even things like leaks here,
06:10that's a temporary story.
06:11So they're not frozen solid.
06:13They're frozen a bit because the temperature in here
06:15has been going quite low.
06:17So that is reading only one degree centigrade,
06:2234 Fahrenheit, only just about freezing.
06:25But everything in here is frost tolerant.
06:30So the celeria, the Chinese cabbage, the radicchios,
06:35these beautiful white fildecrat cabbage,
06:38granat red cabbage, they can all freeze a little bit.
06:42Even the carrots that you see in the bucket there,
06:46they can freeze.
06:47The one thing that isn't going to work
06:49is this fennel here.
06:51And I picked one up yesterday.
06:53I couldn't believe it.
06:53It was actually quite frozen solid.
06:55Fennel is very watery.
06:56And so I made a mistake there.
06:58I needed to have cut it out of the frost.
07:00But even these apples actually surprises me,
07:03you know, cause they're quite watery,
07:04but they can freeze.
07:05So that's Bramley apples.
07:07And more beautiful radicchio.
07:10That one does feel a little bit icy,
07:13but you know, they can stand that.
07:14So that they're better off in here
07:16than outside getting really frozen,
07:18also getting rained on and soggy.
07:21And something also like the onions,
07:22you know, they, you got choices that I prefer
07:25to keep these in the house
07:26because then they, they're in dry air
07:31and they don't go moldy so much.
07:32Same with garlic.
07:38So.
07:44This is the pigeon damage.
07:47If you see that jagged leaves where they packed
07:51between the veins, that's classic bird.
07:53It could be any kind of bird do that.
07:55Pigeons commonly, they sit on top,
07:58and they'll often leave a contribution behind
08:00before they fly off.
08:01And fortunately, they haven't in this case,
08:03not on the Brussels.
08:04But you see the Brussels actually are pretty nice.
08:06I'm really happy with these.
08:08And you know, if you harvest them frozen like this,
08:11they're obviously best wait to leave them out and cook them.
08:14But they're sweet because the freezing increases the sugar.
08:19And same for these plants too.
08:21So again, you can see the lamb's lettuce looking,
08:23sorry, lamb's lettuce and swede.
08:26Lamb's lettuce freezes completely.
08:29And that's totally fine.
08:31We're going to harvest them later
08:32when it might thaw out a bit, all be well.
08:34And this is swedes of different types.
08:37And again, I've been removing the lower leaves.
08:39And I don't mind if the pigeons eat these leaves now
08:43because they finish growing.
08:46The pigeons don't eat the swede roots in my experience.
08:49So, you know, I'll give them that.
08:51And spinach, well, here at the moment,
08:54nothing eats the spinach.
08:55Although I have known that rabbits will eat it.
08:57And we haven't got many rabbits at the moment, fortunately.
09:01That's variety Medania.
09:02You can see it totally frozen.
09:04And I'm finding with that, the incredible sweetness
09:06when it thaws out a bit, this level of cold.
09:09It's a variety that, well,
09:12all spinach should resist cold.
09:13This one's very good at it.
09:17Right, let's have a look.
09:18Oh yeah, compost.
09:19Just, sorry, just want to show you.
09:22In fact, while we're here, I could also point out
09:24the beetroot.
09:26These are amazing.
09:27I mean, look at the ice on these.
09:30I don't yet know how much they will survive this.
09:36Sometimes beetroot getting this frozen, it goes soft.
09:41But we'll see.
09:42I'm going to do a trial.
09:44It's partly, we've harvested a lot of beetroot,
09:46got most of it in store.
09:49This is compost.
09:51I just spread this morning, actually.
09:54And there's the icy soil underneath.
09:58So you can see, there's not a lot of compost here.
10:01But this is really high quality compost.
10:04It's over a year old.
10:06Some from the pallet bed bays
10:08that we're going to look at in a minute.
10:10And we turn it just once and we don't sieve it.
10:14Pretty much, I would say a lot of that is worm cast.
10:17But see the bits of wood as well.
10:18So I'm totally happy with having those bits of wood
10:21on the surface.
10:22Because it's not like a layer of wood chip.
10:23It's just a bit of semi rotten, almost rotten wood, actually.
10:27Which is really good for all the fungal inhabitants of soil.
10:32So when you're spreading compost,
10:35don't expect it to look perfect.
10:36Don't worry if it's not.
10:38You don't have to put on a huge amount
10:39if it's really high quality.
10:41Probably in depth terms, that wasn't even a centimeter.
10:44But my soil is now really fertile
10:46from repeat applications of compost.
10:48So I'm actually reducing the dose most years now.
10:52This is the three bay pallet system.
10:56And that one's got compost that Adam turned in there
10:59from here.
11:01That one's maturing on the right.
11:03And this is the current heap.
11:05And we're doing something here, which we don't normally do.
11:08And that is covering it.
11:10So this is stuff that's gone in recently.
11:13I was did a few more carrots.
11:15But actually we have got a bit of warmth.
11:18Just put a thermometer in there and see 25 degrees
11:22compared to ambient temperature of zero or minus one.
11:27But I'm totally happy with that.
11:29Normally in summer, that would be like 50.
11:32If you get any warmth at all at this time of year,
11:34it's amazing actually,
11:36because you've got to have quite a bit of green material
11:38to make the warmth.
11:38And that's what we don't have so much of now.
11:41We just crop residues and that'll be it really.
11:44So keep filling your compost heap,
11:46but don't worry if it doesn't get hot
11:47and it'll start again in the spring.
11:49And here is another application of fertility
11:53for pathways we use it for mainly.
11:55This is a very frozen pile of wood chip,
11:59which was delivered three weeks ago
12:02by a local tree surgeon.
12:03I paid him 30 pounds for that.
12:05It's quite a big load.
12:06For me, that's good value.
12:08You sometimes get them free though.
12:09You know, it's up to you.
12:10I want to support the guy as well.
12:12You know, they're doing great work, these guys.
12:14And that's fresh, therefore, three weeks old.
12:17This is what he delivered last February.
12:23So that's, if you compare these off,
12:25I put them side by side.
12:28That's fresh.
12:29That's the same.
12:30It looked very similar to that
12:32when it came around nine months ago.
12:35So, that gives you an idea.
12:37And I actually prefer to spread it
12:40when it's like this, like on the pathways.
12:45So that's why we leave it in a heap until we need it.
12:47So I'm always buying a bit ahead
12:50or getting it delivered ahead.
12:52And this guy, I like his work
12:55because he's got a chipper
12:56that doesn't make pieces that are too big.
12:58So that's another factor.
13:00There's woodchip and woodchip.
13:01It's not all the same.
13:06Here you can see another bed of mustard,
13:10which we also sowed garlic.
13:15And if you look along,
13:17this is slightly early varieties of garlic.
13:21I'll explain these next year
13:22when they're looking more obvious,
13:27but there's, so far, yeah, I'm impressed.
13:30And this is an interesting little planting as well,
13:33because these are fruit radish.
13:36These are radish,
13:37but they're not like your normal spring radish.
13:40And they're frost hardy.
13:41And I'm going to show you when we finish,
13:43we're going in the conservatory.
13:45I've got some we harvested before.
13:47So they've thawed out now
13:48and you can see what they're like.
13:50Look, they're beautiful actually and really tasty.
13:53Shawa fruit, Sakurajima, the really big one,
13:56and green luobo.
13:59And they were sown on the 29th of July.
14:02That's really late.
14:03You know, that means,
14:04that gives you options for things you can sow late like that.
14:07And that helps to keep your garden full
14:09to use space that might otherwise be empty.
14:11And with Nodig,
14:12it's so easy to keep this all growing.
14:14And, you know, weed free.
14:16You can see how weed free it is.
14:18Some people have been asking me recently,
14:19so what weeding do you actually do?
14:21And yeah, I do.
14:22I do weed.
14:23We weed.
14:23You know, other people weed as well,
14:25but not very much.
14:26That's the point.
14:27So, I'll quickly mention,
14:29different type of Brussels sprout,
14:30which is not so brilliant.
14:32It's Red Bull, and it's a bit messy.
14:39But actually, they're tasty.
14:41It's not a hybrid.
14:42And as a result, you get,
14:45you generally with non-hybrids,
14:46you get much smaller Brussels
14:49that need quite a bit of more work cleaning up.
14:54And I just mentioned some covers in passing.
14:56So, this is Thermocrop,
14:59which is different to mesh that we'll see in a minute.
15:02I prefer mesh,
15:03because you can see the planting through it.
15:05This is broad beans under here.
15:07You can hardly tell they're there,
15:08but we will see some in a minute.
15:11Whereas this is mesh.
15:14And so, you can see the difference.
15:19I love how visible these cauliflowers are.
15:22And this is a variety called Arlesmere,
15:25which I sowed in the last week of August,
15:28around 25th of August.
15:31That's a key time.
15:32And then you get them in the ground by Autumn Equinox.
15:36And the idea is they're not too big over winter,
15:38because plants that are not too big survive the frost better.
15:42And I was afraid they were going to get too big.
15:44I mean, they're pretty big already, actually.
15:46We'll see.
15:47They're looking all right.
15:51Here we have the very interesting ongoing comparison
15:55between dig and no dig.
15:57So, I've dug this bit.
15:59I dug it last week with a spade,
16:01took out a trench of soil,
16:02put it in a wheelbarrow,
16:03put some compost in the trench,
16:05keep filling back.
16:06So, all the compost here is under the soil in a trench,
16:10about that deep 20 centimeters, eight inches.
16:13And this one has the same amount of compost,
16:16same compost, but on top.
16:18So, that's about two and a half hours work.
16:21That's about half an hour.
16:22And then we do the same plantings.
16:24We've put these in straight away, these broad beans.
16:27So, I took the cover off just to show you.
16:29They don't look as strong as the ones we saw before.
16:32They haven't had time to get their roots established, really.
16:35These were sown five weeks ago.
16:37Those were sown three weeks ago.
16:39You know, they're looking all right to me,
16:42except for that one.
16:42I hope that one's had it.
16:44When you, if you do get blackening on top like that,
16:47probably it's not going to pull through.
16:49And even that one actually is not brilliant.
16:51But we'll see.
16:53It's a bonus if it works.
16:55It's an overwintering green manure again, cover crop,
16:57because the main planting happens in spring.
17:01And the results this year, we've just added everything up,
17:05because we did the last harvest, 91 kilos.
17:08That's 1.5 by 5 meters.
17:11And this, 1.5 by 5 meters, same size,
17:14same amount of compost, 113 kilos.
17:1991, 113, two hours more work.
17:24Why does the world dig?
17:25I still don't get it.
17:27I'm putting up these results on my website,
17:30and do have a look.
17:34Again, we'll put the link in the video description.
17:38Greenhouse, you can see this is nice and icy,
17:42but the temperature is above freezing.
17:44I'm looking at the thermometer up there,
17:46and it's saying three degrees up there.
17:48And you can see we're fleeced up.
17:52This is extra layer of protection.
17:54And I must say it's been working really well.
17:56I got this idea from Elliot and Clara Coleman
18:00at Four Seasons Farm in Maine.
18:03Winters there are much colder than here,
18:05but lighter as well.
18:07And this system for them works really well.
18:08I would not do this in a normal British winter weather,
18:13because fleece like this, you can see how thick it is.
18:15It actually keeps out at least a quarter of the light.
18:18And light here is really precious.
18:20Plus, we are more humid.
18:21Normally, it's quite dry at the moment,
18:23and that will hold humidity under there.
18:25And plants like this lettuce,
18:28Grenoble is a brilliant variety,
18:29but any lettuce does not like high humidity.
18:33This is some plants I've been raising.
18:38The broad beans, I've got a mouse trap there,
18:40because we'd lost a few.
18:43And we caught a couple of mice here, actually.
18:45You know, something to remember if you're sowing seeds
18:47that are nice to mice.
18:48And same with the peas.
18:50And those peas, actually,
18:51and these broad beans are in my smaller module.
18:54That's the 40L container-wise module tray.
18:57And that's the 60 CD60,
19:01which, if you can get a good compost,
19:02as you can see,
19:03you can still grow a decent broad bean there.
19:06I'm not sure if we'll need those plants.
19:08That's why they're still there.
19:10And I want to show you the polytunnel quickly
19:12in the same vein,
19:13because it looks almost haunted at the moment.
19:19I also want to show you this.
19:22That's as much as I do in terms of shutting up.
19:24I don't shut the doors at night.
19:25That doesn't keep the frost out.
19:28It literally doesn't.
19:30Plastic just lets out heat.
19:32You know, it warms up beautifully if the sun's out,
19:35but at night, plastic cools down.
19:37Whether you shut the door or not,
19:39the only time I shut it is in a gale, a storm.
19:42I've got a thermometer here, actually.
19:44And last night, outside on my weather station,
19:48the weather lowest temperature was minus 2.2.
19:52I'm looking at this thermometer here,
19:54and it's saying it went down to minus 2.5.
19:56Actually colder in here from the lack of air movement.
20:00So just so you're clear on that.
20:02But having said that, you know,
20:03if you look under these covers, again,
20:05the plants are looking good.
20:07This is mostly brassicas this end,
20:09and a bit of garlic coming up as well.
20:12Get less rust in here, all being well.
20:14And you can see up there under the fleece a bit,
20:17there's more end-even mustard.
20:19There's a whole range of salads,
20:20and we've picked them three times already.
20:23We're going to pick once more before Christmas.
20:26That'll be next week.
20:26Big pick, and that will hopefully keep everyone happy for a while.
20:30And then we'll take a bit of time off,
20:32because they won't regrow much in January.
20:35Too dark and probably too cold.
20:42This is the small garden here,
20:45where we've just harvested carrots.
20:50This is what I'd normally do, actually,
20:52for ground preparation, using my feet.
20:56You know, this is one way to do it.
20:58I want to get it level before spreading compost.
21:03So that'll be the next thing there.
21:04And you can see that all the plants here are looking quite frosted,
21:08but okay.
21:09And what I'll mention particularly is, look at this.
21:13What?
21:14I wonder if you know what this is.
21:15It's coriander.
21:18So the other day I came out,
21:20and they thawed out a bit,
21:21and were then standing up again.
21:22And I picked it.
21:24I can even pick that one now, actually.
21:25And I'll take it in the kitchen.
21:27Guys, so icy.
21:28It's not really picking off.
21:31And chances are, when that thaws out,
21:33that's going to be all good to eat.
21:35Coriander's an amazingly hardy plant.
21:37I wouldn't recommend this.
21:38You know, it would much rather not see them so frozen as this,
21:41but don't give up on it if you see it looking frozen.
21:46So we're going to finish in the conservatory,
21:49where I can show you a few more things
21:52to do with the vegetable growing
21:55that we've just looked at.
21:58And also some storage going on.
22:06Like last Friday, I was doing audio recording
22:12in a nearby studio for my No Dig book,
22:15and Adam, bless him, he remembered the ochre.
22:18I'd forgotten about it.
22:19Look at this.
22:21So he, he harvested, that was five plants of ochre.
22:24We got three of these trays.
22:26And ochre is a root vegetable,
22:29which actually benefits from being in light,
22:30sunlight on it will help it to sweeten.
22:33And it, you can eat at any stage from now.
22:37Roasted is really tasty, raw in salad.
22:40And then look at this, you're probably thinking,
22:41what the hell is he doing raising tomatoes
22:43at this time of year?
22:44So basically what this is, the,
22:46you can see it in a video short that I put up in July,
22:50maybe early August, variety called Rosada,
22:53which you, it's F1 hybrid.
22:55You can't buy the seeds anymore.
22:58And the seeds don't grow true because it's an F1 hybrid.
23:00So if you keep a side shoot,
23:03I put a side shoot in the compost and that raises a plant.
23:07And then it's going to get too big.
23:10What you can do is actually,
23:11you can take the top off the plant and get effectively
23:14another side shoot, put that in a bit of compost
23:16and you get another plant rooting.
23:18So basically what I'm just trying to do is keep
23:21a few Rosada over alive over winter to plant again next April.
23:25That's about winter number eight,
23:27since they stopped selling the seed.
23:30And right now this, this is sequel to the radish
23:33and the leak actually, just intrigued.
23:36We harvested these leaks this morning to see because,
23:39you know, how is that going to be after freezing?
23:43Actually, that looks really all right.
23:45But leaks, if you've got with these leaks,
23:48so you can see by the white,
23:49the that's below ground, so that freezes less.
23:52The bits above ground,
23:53and this is more like an autumn or summer leak,
23:55even filament.
23:57If it gets freezing and thawing too much,
23:59it can rot.
24:00It doesn't like that.
24:01So it's something to watch out for.
24:03If you've got the older or special winter varieties,
24:06with the most of the stem or shank below ground,
24:10that's that's better for winter survival.
24:13I'm not going to grow much, but they survive at least.
24:15Now these two radish.
24:16This one I harvested yesterday.
24:18This is green luobo.
24:20We'll put the name again in the description
24:23or subtitles.
24:24Green luobo shawo fruit.
24:27This one I harvested this morning.
24:29It's still feeling frozen.
24:31I'm curious.
24:32That's cabbage root fly.
24:34That's a typical pest of all winter
24:40or brassica roots.
24:41That's the damage it does.
24:43There's a maggot been tunneling rather in the same way
24:45that cabbage root fly,
24:46carrot root fly does.
24:48As you trim off that,
24:50the idea of these radishes,
24:51not only their beauty,
24:53but their flavor.
24:55Yeah, it's still frozen,
24:56but look at that.
24:58All being well when that thaws out.
25:00And it's,
25:01it's reckoned to taste like a pear.
25:03Well, it does.
25:03I'm from what I've had before.
25:05And then the green luobo,
25:08if I cut it about there,
25:09I just see.
25:14Mm, amazing.
25:17It's got bi-color.
25:19You get the beautiful patterns there going around.
25:22I'm looking forward to eating these, actually.
25:24I haven't tucked in yet,
25:25but again, they get sweeter from being colder.
25:31So thanks for coming along.
25:33And also thanks for diving into some of the other tools I've done,
25:36because it's been an amazing year for No Dig.
25:38We've really enjoyed seeing more and more of you taking up No Dig.
25:42And I hope this has helped you to get some ideas of seasonal work.
25:46And we'll see you again in January, probably.
25:49See what the weather does.
25:51And it won't be that long before we start the year again,
25:54but there's no rush at the moment to sow anything.
25:56I like, you know, a few plants to overwinter.
25:59I hope that you have a lovely Christmas and festive period,
26:03however you celebrate with your family.
26:04And we'll see you again.
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