May 2023 no dig sowings, weather issues, slugs
May 2023 no dig sowings are meeting damp weather. It’s a wet and dull spring here. March and April had the most rain since 2001, and the least sun since 2004. Any lack of light is bad for growth, and I do not like the veil of medium level cloud I am seeing a lot.
The positive from clouds is higher night temperatures, and I’m confident of seeing no more frost here. Thanks also to winds from the south more than north. It’s therefore possible to plant out tomatoes and courgettes, but there is no rush to do so because it is not warm at all. On the other hand if your plants are well grown, you are better to get them outside, perhaps with fleece cover on top for a week or two.
Summer?
The highest day temperature this year is 17°C/63°F. Summer feels a long way off still.
Yet in the third photo below the small square of fleece in the middle has tomatoes underneath. We filmed this small garden in a short catch up on YouTube.
Sowings
As with every month until October, there are many sowings you can make in May. For a comprehensive list, please follow this link to my newsletter. You will also find a lot of other advice and information there.
May’s second week
I am feeling quite well sown for summer, with one notable exception which is beans: French, runner and borlotti beans. They are currently (1st May) still in their packets. My preferred date from many years of trial and error is any time during the second week of May.
I use the same timing for Brussels sprouts and autumn cabbages. Meaning the propagation space is fuller than at any time of year. Thanks also to many of the warmth loving plants being in pots which need more space than module trays. More watering too.
Slugs
They are liking the damp conditions. Learn ways to reduce them in my free web page, and we sell a Knowledge Pack on Pests. It contains information about dealing with all the pest problems you may encounter. Not to say that you will suffer these problems, but it’s good to know about them their likelihood ahead of time.
Often one can you can prevent damage happening, for example by covering susceptible plantings at appropriate times. In the case of slugs, I advise you to minimise habitat as much as possible. I had this great feedback on Intagram from Susan Bell:
“I’ve seen a significant reduction in slugs after following your advice and removing slug homes! I’ve removed wooden bed sides where possible. Moved all rocks and pots to a distant corner and lifted make shift steps with hollow space underneath. So far so good. 👍 I live in the wet north east too.”
Slugs and fleece
I hear that some of you find more slugs than normal under fleece. I think this is from having generally more slugs, not especially a result of the cover. I do not see it happening here. The one place I’ve had poor germination of carrots is, I’m pretty sure, because the seed was not good quality. In the same bed, seed from a different packet is growing strong carrots. See my video about when to remove covers, where also I show damage from woodlice.
The tiny leaves of new carrots are especially attractive to slugs. So small that one mollusc can demolish a lot in one night. Make your carrot sowings in the middle of a plot, not near the edge where there might be more slugs hiding. Photos below are 1st May and you can see the non-appearance of carrots one end. It is more to do with seed quality I’m pretty sure because there’s not many other differences in that bed.
Knowledge you act on is power. In this case is the power to grow food.
Views 1st May
Dear Charles
I am a 2023 convert to No dig and delighted with the results compared with traditional practices. A nearby cat seems to be very happy too, and has started visiting regularly and digging up areas in beds, most recently damaging 25% of my multi-sown leeks transplanted yesterday. I have read they like soft earth and compost, and wondered if you have a good solution.
Hi Christopher. yes they are happy when space is free and I use bird netting or mesh over such beds. Best of luck. Glad you like no dig.
Thank you for your fast and helpful response.
Charles can you help please! First year of our no-dig allotment plot after attending your propagation course and full day course… all going well with good growth of spring plantings then we changed fleece to mesh this week and now under the mesh are a huge number of small black flies! They dont seem to be on the stems of the lettuces/spinach/radishes but are on the compost and just sitting on the leaves…. What to do? Many thanks
Good to hear this Debbie and even those black flies are not a problem because they have almost suddenly come out of compost still decomposing. So they’re not going to trouble your plants and are just hanging around, were almost certainly under the fleece but you could not see them.
Thanks so much Charles, just panicked as there were so many of them. You are quite right though as nothing has been eaten so all is well!
No real heat yet this spring in NW London, but an increase in temperature from 14 to 18/19C for several days in May has seen massive growth put on by broad beans, onions, potatoes etc. I’m actually wondering if a mild wet spring is in the main what vegetables actually love?! We haven’t had this much rain in March-May since I started no-dig with one bed in 2014!
Another lesson I’m learning with my two no-dig plots/gardens is that some crops seem to require more high quality soil/soil structure than others. My home garden is now in its 9th full year of no-dig and here, I find no problems growing peas this spring. Down at the allotment, just starting its fourth year of no dig, I still struggle to grow peas (they get eaten by some kind of pest over several weeks) and germinating carrots in April is still proving problematical. However, in year 4, for the first time, I’ve had very good germination of early parsnips (still not perfect, but 75% of 40 stations have germinated well within 4 weeks of sowing) and shallot clumps put out in early April have survived and are now starting to thrive. That didn’t happen in previous years really.
The crops that don’t seem to be very fussy at all are potatoes, autumn beetroot, winter radish, squash, autumn turnip, broad beans and leeks.
Maincrop carrots, trailing cucumber, fennel, celeriac and dwarf beans were fine from year 2 onwards. Onions improve each year from a poor start in year 1 (this fourth year, sets are absolutely perfect). Brassicas tended to need until year 3 before they would yield a harvest. I didn’t try celery before year 3 but it did fine then. Ditto with sweetcorn, courgette and bush tomatoes.
These observations are based on starting from an overgrown jungle and using 5cm horse manure (laid down in January/February) as the initial compost/mulch on top of cardboard, with paths created using woodchips. I think if you can get 15cm depth of high quality compost right at the start, things may be closer to perfect even in year 1. In subsequent years, I was using my own self-made compost on several beds and limiting horse manure to where potatoes would be growing, along with giving asparagus, comfrey and rhubarb a turbo charge with a nice over-wintering of that kind of stuff.
Cloudy and awfuly cold in Romania too Charles… I am always surprised to check out your every month progress on the website and see that weather conditions are so similar to my country, considering the distance and very different climate. We are not so far as I thought huh?
By the way: it is my first year with a pollytunnel 4/14 m. Pretty large as we only use it for our family. How can you irigate everything you have there? it looks so easy when you do it on youtube, but in real life it is truly laborious. Are you very patient or you have helps for that?
Oh, and my compost has numerous seeds in it, keep growing again and again after I water. Will they ever stop?
Thanks! Have a warm summer I hope!
So Charles, I’ve been having the devil’s own issues with getting peas for pods to germinate this year. I’ve tried 5 different varieties from 3 different suppliers and I’ve been unable to get above 20%. I’ve used 4 types of compost including Sylvagrow, my own and a coir/home blend. They’ve had bottom warmth from a propagator and I think I’ve done everything I can. Everything else this year has seen above average (for me) germination rates – onions, leeks, tomatoes, cucurbits, beetroot, sweetcorn, cabbages, kohlrabi, caulis, broccoli have all done really well as per your guidance and seem to like my homemade stuff in particular. I’ve resorted to chitting the peas between wet kitchen roll and then sowing direct. My theory is that all the composts have been too nutrient rich for peas. Any other suggestions?
Hi John, that’s a pity. My conclusion would be very different, that there is a lot of old and poor quality pea seed out there.
It’s simply not true that seeds don’t germinate in highly nutritious compost. If you think about it, in nature seeds germinate and then also grow in the same material. They don’t germinate somewhere miserably poor and then somehow find rich soil to develop in!
It’s one of the many fallacies in gardening.
Small seedlings need good drainage. But if it’s a good compost, it can do both things, seeding and growth.
Hi John, we are using dryed peas from an organic food shop. They are very cheap and germinate easy. Best wishes from Cologne in Germany
For years I have chitted large seeds and sowing them when the root is just showing.
Not this year!
Broad and runner beans okay, french beans, sweet corn and peas very poor.
Same homemade compost, same conditions, just not the same performance.
All those others struggling, I share your pain.
On the bright side, after 10yrs of 2 or 3 fruit, I may be getting my first crop off my Conference pear.
Charlses, please, can you measure and share the relative humidity you have in your greenhouse during the day and at night or early in the morning? You often mention the temparature in your videos, but I don’t remember you ever mentioning humidity.
I follow your sowing dates from your calendar and my plants are several times smaller than yours given the same plant age.
I raise plants on a southern-facing balcony of the 10th floor appartment + use some additional lighting when it’s cloudy on the outside. The cotydelons and first leafs used to turn yellow and drop off on chillies and tomatoes. I don’t thinks it’s the compost issue as the roots did not fill the CD60 cells at the time.
Maybe it was the low humidity issue. On a sunny day, humidity could drop to 20%. For the last few days I’ve been using a humidifier to keep humidity at 55%-60% and it looks that plants look better now.
Hi Roman, I do not measure the humidity in my greenhouse, however it is high without being suffocating. There is always one small window open at the top and I open the side windows most days, unless it’s very windy. I wonder whether it’s the wind slowing growth on your balcony.
The greenhouse has a very nice environment, that’s the point of it and it’s difficult to replicate on your balcony.
However I’m pretty sure that you have a compost issue because that’s another BIG factor in speeding or slowing plant growth. This year I’ve noticed a significant difference here from adding a little of my worm compost and some home-made compost to the proprietary mix. All plants love it and grow noticeably stronger, compared to last year in the same environment. Your compost is not allowing the roots to fill the cells. I’m guessing a bit but there’s a lot of rubbish compost being sold.
Thank you for your response.
The balcony is completely glassed, so there is no wind at all. But I pry open windows during the day to let some air in. Your greenhouse has a large area for evaporation, but at the balcony only module trays have something to evaporate from. Anyway, I use a humidifier now. And in couple of weeks I’ll plant everything to the open ground.
The compost surely can be an issue. Here in Ukraine, most seed starting mixes are not compost but peat, upper layer peat, lower layer peat, some sand and a bit of perlite.
Right now I’m doing a trial of peat mixes from 2 different vendors and my home-made compost, similar to how you did it last year.
I cannot be using the sieved home-made compost in the appartment b/c there is just too much life in it – woodlice, some small flies and other insects and thier eggs. My wife would not be happy.
Thanks for explaining, and I see what your issue is, namely the compost. There is very little nutrition in there so it’s not possible for your plants to grow large.
Unless your wife relents, you will do better to sow a little later and just plant small. Or maybe feed, and I can’t advise on that because it’s not my speciality.
Same here in New Jersey! We had three days of temperatures of 85 to 89 degrees Fahrenheit, then temperatures dropped and stayed in the 50’s rest of April. Last weekend we had 6 inches of rain in 3 days. I followed your advice regarding leaf mulch giving slugs a hiding place . Once I removed it they were almost all gone.
Hi David, that sounds extreme, we never had 6in rain in 3 days!
Glad you could reduce the slugs.
Looking ahead: I was going to ask for ideas where to source bacillus thuringiensis. But it seems BT isn’t registered for non-professional use in the UK. This explains how domestic-sized packs are hard to find. (the best I seem to have found are packs for box caterpillar control) Any thoughts?
https://www.dragonfli.co.uk/blogs/news/beware-illegal-pesticides-available-online