July’s second half no dig, harvest and replant
July’s second half in the no dig garden, we need to harvest and replant despite the weather. I see little sign of the cool winds and heavy showers ceasing apart from an odd day or two.
Seize those dry moments to harvest vegetables coming ready, then replant the empty spaces. With no dig it is quick and simple.
See my latest newsletter for details.
Harvests of potatoes in trial beds, and re-planting the beds with leeks
Between storms we harvested the Charlotte second early potatoes of my no rotation trial. This is year nine of growing potatoes in the same ground. There is the annual 3cm compost on top where potatoes develop, and the plants root deep into the soil.
There are three separate beds within this trial area. The ones on left are forked in autumn, once a year and every year since 2014. That bed gave 9.7 kg potatoes and the no dig one next to it gave 11.3 kg. Both have the same compost on top, half green waste and half mushroom compost.
The third bed on the right gave 13.9 kg and that one has cow manure on top every year, the same amount as beds 1 and 2. It’s paler in colour, often a sign of more fungi in the composting process.
Seed potatoes are from last year’s harvest. They went in the ground early April, see my Growing Guide.
Onion harvests and replanting
Onion tops are starting to bend down and when roughly 1/4 of them I have flopped, that’s a good moment to bend over the rest. This makes for clean necks and better storage of the onions because they dry nicely on top.
Usually I leave onions in the ground to swell some more. The pull them a week or so after bending over the tops.
Beautiful vegetables
I took great pleasure in pulling these Early Nantes carrots from around the interplanted Brussels sprouts. The carrots were sown 16th March so they’re almost 4 months old, and still growing! Within two weeks, they will all be out and the Brussels can fill all the space.
- Amazingly, I am finding no damage from carrot root fly. This is the first year ever that I have experienced no damage in July. Even unprotected ones are not damaged. Where are the insects?
Outdoor cucumbers are cropping nicely but less fast than usual because of lower temperatures.
One of the chefs for courses this year is Anna Shepherd and she is writing a book about vegetable cooking. This is her on a Sunday morning, collecting some vegetables for photoshoots for her book. It appears next spring.
Wonderful visitors and a remarkable helper
It was a great pleasure to show Chantelle Nicholson around the garden and then to watch her transform the harvest into remarkable and tasty dishes, on a portable barbecue. Edward made a video.
Three days later we welcomed Gaz Oakley and he also toured the garden. Then prepared a super tasty dish based simply on carrots and garlic. Those two he chose because carrots were the first vegetable seeds I ever sowed in 1981, and garlic is my favourite vegetable. The video will appear on his YouTube channel.
Over the last 10 days it’s been a great pleasure to work with John Szymczak from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here he is popping garlic on a wire, the idea of Adam Wood.
John is an expert container gardener, no dig. He plans to start a YouTube channel about that, by the end of 2023.
A wonderful weekend course, mid July
It never ceases to amaze me how many fantastic people are gardeners, and want to learn more. I feel blessed that many find a way here! The weekend courses in particular are a chance for them to strike up friendships between each other, as well as learning a huge amount.
The next course with places is 26th-27th August.
My teenage son and I have just returned from volunteering on a veg farm in Germany that unknown to us follows your principles. It was wonderful to see the method on a larger scale.
I’ve unfortunately never succeeded with potatoes here in North Wales.
I’ll keep trying though!
That sounds a great adventure! I really happy they use these methods, it sounds like I need to get out more!
Hi
I’ve had to dig up and dispose of my onions due to maggots on the roots! Please could you advise on how to treat the soil now as a result of this.
Kind regards
Maria
Allium Leaf Miner. It sounds like this and there is nothing you can do to clean that soil except by not growing onions, leaks, garlic for maybe two years. If it is that, also you will need to cover a new plantings of Alium vegetables with mesh. But I can’t be hundred percent sure from your description.
Hello Charles,
This year is my second year of growing potatoes no dig….amazing success⭐️
My first year, carpet on grass and fresh compost on top gave me a huge crop of potatoes, all easy to harvest in the lightweight, fresh homemade compost)
. This second year, new homemade compost on top, ( no digging last years compost) and potatoes are growing deep in the last year compost, (dense & damp) and some potatoes have grown big, some still tiny…… ? Not enough rain when they were growing, perhaps?
Also it was cold in March -April so seed potatoes did not get planted till 26 April….
Do I need to loosen the compost from last year? It feels dense and thick.
Help!….(all biodynamic veg garden with MT calender.)
Lucy
Hi Lucy
No worries, it’s been in some places difficult weather for potatoes.
I never heard of compost needing to be loosened. I’m sure that yours does not! Possibly you are imagining that it needs to be looser than is the case. Your potatoes obviously grew really well with roots going down into the soil below. The fact that some potatoes grew large shows that all is well, some being small is related to other factors such as moisture levels. Yeah, my potatoes are nothing like as good as last year.
Aargh, my Musselburgh leeks already have rust. Here in Norfolk it’s been lowish temperatures, less sunshine and no watering required.
It’s autumn weather already Sheridan! My leeks also have some rust…
I have tried to start plants from seed for years without success. I’ve bought lights, new soil, tried various times of the spring without fail.
Help.
Hi Terri
I’m sorry to hear this. I cannot think what the problem might be that you are sowing the seeds too deeply. They need to be quite close to the surface. Do try that. And go steady on watering, enough but not too much!
To me, it’s been a very, very good first half of the growing season, with well charged soil with plenty of moisture from winter being followed by 6 weeks of warm, but not excessively hot, sunny weather. Now we’re starting to get some more rain just as the soil was getting pretty dry.
I have no polytunnel, Charles and I sowed my tomatoes indoors in the first week of April this year, but already I am harvesting Maskotka tomatoes both from a pot and a plant I grow in soil down at the allotment. Red Alerts in the soil are full size and ready to start ripening and my other pot plants (Tigerella, Alicante and Black Cherry) have more tomatoes on than I can remember. Only late blight can destroy my crops now….
We are now into the dwarf bean harvest season and the Cupidons are as good as ever – one of the crops that every gardener can save their own seeds from. It really is idiot proof and simple.
Courgette and cucumber plants outdoors are now in full harvest mode, and I’ve never seen my sweetcorn plants look better for this time of year. I’ve had to pinch out the growing tips of the winter squash as I’ve never seen them spread so far by the middle of July – three weeks ahead of normal.
I’ve got 20 swede, 60 fennel and a few less than 80 radicchio plants to put out this week, in space where broad beans, peas for shoots previously occupied.
We’ve just eaten the first ripe plums off the aging tree and the apple trees are so laden with fruit that I will have to do a second thinning!
I can already confidently predict that we will have great parsnip, Autumn King carrot and celeriac as winter vegetables to store. I’ll wait another six weeks before making predictions on the leeks, cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli and sprouts.
There’s always a few failures each season but no dig really does work pretty well every single season.
The best antidote to ‘thou must eat mRNA vaccines’, in my book….
You are doing so well Rhys 🙂