- Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
It's time for the May garden tour.
(beautiful music)
So start at the first bed.
We've got a lot of things happening here.
We've got leeks that we transplanted,
and we're growing for the flowers.
We've got a load of shallots.
We've got some chards, some lovely ruby chards here,
and then a nice big row of dill.
I'm gonna let it grow nice and big and flower.
This is where we had the swede growing last year,
and I'm following a JADAM principle
of actually putting down the crop residues.
We've created a swede JADAM liquid fertilizer,
and then we've sown the seeds.
And they're just starting to come through now.
So I'm excited to see.
And then I'm really excited because we've got the first
of the dwarf French beans have now been planted.
And hopefully in about seven, eight weeks,
we'll be harvesting them.
We're now at the end of the same bed
where last year it was kind of an island block,
where we grew a lot of annual herbs
and edible annual flowers.
They've all self-seeded.
So we've got borage, calendula.
That's a forest of dill.
We've got a lot of Confetti coriander,
which I think is really nice.
It's got a lovely texture to it.
And then we've made some space here,
and we've just transplanted
these Rhondda Black runner beans,
which is a Welsh variety.
I've never grown them before.
They're very rare, but I'm excited to see how they do.
So this is the, I always mispronounce it,
I think, Asturian tree cabbage.
Probably got that wrong again.
We're just letting it flower.
We're gonna clear it just 'cause it is a nice pocket,
and it's actually quite a nice valuable area
of growing space.
We've planted out next year's crop.
We've got our main onion crop coming through.
We've got over a hundred onions in this small space.
And then at the end,
we've got Greek gigante beans that we've planted.
We've also interplanted them with some bush beans.
And then I've also been trying to make the most
of this cold frame with starting off extra seedlings.
There's a bit of sporadic germination
because we actually have quite a big vole problem here.
We have done for a few years.
So sometimes they find the seedlings
and can cause a bit of carnage.
One of my favorite things about May is all
of the trellises suddenly turn green.
They go from brown to green.
So I've got loganberries
and also hops behind me.
There's more hops and roses and stuff in that corner.
And I've also been making more A-frames,
and this is a Trail of Tears climbing, or pole beans,
that we've just put in yesterday.
And then we're gonna plant up the rest of the A-frame with,
I believe, Abundance climbing beans as well,
but I'll just see how I feel.
So here is gonna be the first cauliflower of the year.
It is Snowball, and it's looking nice and healthy.
It suddenly shot up in the last couple of days.
However, one failed,
so I've replaced it with another Asturian tree cabbage.
So in this bed here, we've got all of the old kale
that is obviously running to seed.
But I just wanted to give a little tip.
All of these little seed pods,
they're actually really delicious.
They almost remind me
of mini French beans in a way.
There's that kinda like beany, crispy flavor,
alongside of brassica.
They're absolutely tiny.
But Charlie and I are convinced that if we pan fried this
with some garlic and some butter,
like everything tastes good with that.
But honestly, I think this is a nice crop that we can enjoy.
And also in front of me here, there's a load of garlic
that I'm gonna treat as green garlic, primarily.
And then by the end of the next two weeks,
most of this bed will be clear and ready
for the next kale harvest because we've got
those little seedlings appearing right now.
This is potentially the most random bed in the whole garden,
but I quite like it.
We've got some asparagus.
It's just towards the end of it now.
We've got a load of New Zealand spinach.
We've got some of our spare broad beans put in.
And then in the corner,
we've got a bunch of mint and chives and fennel.
And there's just a lot of things going on,
but it's kind of being swamped by this big perennial kale,
which I actually think looks really, really nice.
So most of this bed is clear 'cause this is
where we're gonna be transplanting our squash.
But at the top here,
we've got a row of Chinese kale, kai-lan.
I will probably end up thinning it out.
I'm a little bit seed happy when I sow directly sometimes
because I don't always have faith that everything will grow.
Most of the time, more than enough grows.
And then in the front here,
just transplanted a load of Rondo fennel.
Fennel is probably in my top three
of favorite crops that I grow,
and it's nice to start seeing the next generation coming up.
These tiny, almost grass-like plants are a new crop to me.
They're Chinese garlic chive,
and I'm excited to see how they do.
They're apparently a perennial.
So if they grow well,
they're more than welcome to stay here,
as long as they're tasty.
And then in the bed behind me,
we've planted out some Vespa field beans.
They're a culinary type of field bean.
We've also got some sweet peas growing.
And towards the end of the bed,
sometimes I feel that that corner of the garden is just,
there's just too much green.
It's mainly 'cause there's loads of gooseberries as well.
So there's nothing to add a bit of color.
So we've actually put up a load of self-sown foxgloves
to allow them to flower at the end of the bed
and bring a nice punch of color.
So this bed, we've got a load of Oregon sugar snap peas
really starting to come into their own,
but I've got to tie them now to this A-frame.
And in the front here, we've got some calendula
and then a bunch of coriander
to grow for the green coriander seeds,
which is easily my favorite part of coriander.
And then behind it, Mammoth dill,
because I love dill,
and a local restaurant wants a bunch of dill
to turn into a dill oil.
So hopefully that'll be a successful crop.
Now, towards the top part of the beds,
we've got some shallots.
The closest row is basically all of the old shallots.
I'm not expecting them to do anything in particular.
They're not looking too good, but they might pull through.
And then at the top we've got some more onions,
which do need a little bit of a weed.
Or if you've seen my latest video,
they need to be nutrient harvested.
Another new crop that I'm growing for the first time
is mangelwurzel or mangel beets.
And I'm just using,
I'm a ambassador for GARDENA this year,
and I'm just using actually one of my new favorite tools.
It's their hoe, and it's super nice and agile.
And it's perfect for getting around
all of these little seedlings.
So I'm having a lot of fun with this.
And then between the mangelwurzel,
I just decided to direct sow some mixed salads.
And then I'm just gonna start clearing around
this nice block here of field beans.
I think field beans are really underrated.
They're basically a dwarf version of a fava bean,
and they're really tasty.
And yes, this is just a normal green manure field bean,
but I can't wait to try the taste of this
versus the Vespa field bean
that I mentioned a little earlier.
The solar tunnel is the same old solar tunnel
but now with a nice leafy grapevine
and a lot of little grapes starting to appear.
And it's just, as usual, all systems go with the seed sowing
and constantly churning out more and more plants.
If you haven't yet gathered, I adore peas.
We've got a load of Kelvedon Wonder coming through.
They were hit really hard
with some of the really cold frost in April,
but they're pulling through.
A lot of pods are developing.
Ah, can't wait to harvest a lot of peas from this.
Probably the biggest issue right now in the garden,
except for the normal voles,
is this rust of this garlic.
You saw the other garlic earlier,
and that's absolute fine, rust free.
This, though, has been hit bad by rust,
and I've heard that it's happened
for quite a few people as well.
So I keep meaning to make some LAB and some other things
to apply to it, and I always forget.
So I need to be on it and create a nice
kind of diverse microbe solution to put onto it,
with the idea of actually helping to outcompete the rust
on the leaves and bring them back.
Now, more often than not,
I've always found that plants seem to pull through on rust,
especially with leeks.
I'll usually get it towards the end of the summer,
and then it all disappears coming in to winter.
So fingers cross for the same outcome here.
But on a positive note, I have got garlic scapes,
and I can still use this
as green garlic or even wet garlic now
just if I pull off some of the leaves.
This little corner here where I harvested the green garlic
on the video about why you should harvest garlic in May,
we've got the carrots continuing to grow.
I'm gonna have to sow some more carrots.
But as a crop in a small space,
you can get a lot of food from a limited area.
There's also some self-sown dill.
I will keep a bit of it in.
And these shallots are now,
you can see them in the center starting to develop,
which is something that gets me very excited.
So these two beds are the first two beds you see
on the left of entering the garden.
A lot of things are happening.
This is more of just of a mix
of all sorts of different things.
This caraway, which has been flying for a while now,
is now starting to create little seeds.
And then the goal is we'll be able to dry them,
and we'll have our own caraway,
which is gonna be really nice.
This elephant garlic is looking stunning.
I'm excited to harvest that.
And then the broad beans are absolutely flying.
And I had a little look earlier, and I can see the first
of the little bean pods starting to form,
which is quite a signifying moment
because I almost associate that first broad bean harvest
as finally stepping out of the hungry gap.
And then just in the front of the bed there,
we've got a load of bolt hardy beetroot
and also some golden beetroot.
Golden beetroot, if you don't like normal beetroot,
golden beetroot is really, really special.
It doesn't really have that really earthy undertones.
It's got a bit of sweetness to it, and it's really good.
You have to try it.
So this bed here was where we had
the amazing purple sprouting broccoli.
What's in it now is Brokali,
which is just like a Tenderstem broccoli.
It's absolutely fantastic.
We've just put in some amaranth here.
Amaranthus cruentus I believe is the proper name for that.
And then in the front, we've got that Asturian tree cabbage,
this year's version,
a little bit of borage at the end,
and then a bunch of parsley.
So the asparagus is at the stage of its life
where you can start harvesting a bit of it but not too much
because next year's when it really will start producing.
So what I have done is, well, I've been harvesting some
to snack on when I've been gardening.
We've also done the calendula hedge as a redo
'cause it worked so well last year.
And I keep hearing about strawberries
being a really good companion plant for asparagus.
So I think I'm actually gonna bring in
some strawberry plants to companion plant
as an underlayer on this bed
and make the most of it a little bit more.
'Cause I do see this bed,
have a bit of wasted space.
The calendula's lovely.
But if we could get some strawberries in here,
that would be a nice thing.
So these Rat's Tail radish are getting a little bit crazy.
I'm gonna have to create some kind of structure
'cause they're starting to encroach
as they're flopping over onto the brassica seed bed.
Within here, we've got 15 different varieties of kale.
I'm not a massive kale person myself,
and you'll be thinking why am I growing this amount?
Well, part of it is to go to our other growing site
because we're gonna do a trial
on trialing all 15 varieties
to see if I can confidently say
that I've got an absolute favorite kale.
And then I'll just grow that
because then sometimes I do waste a bit of space
in the garden to kale.
It's a nice idea, but you can see all of these flowers
that are happening right now in the garden.
Almost all of them are kale
that I never really got around to eating.
So that's a bit of a personal mission for me.
So the strawberry bed in front of me is doing okay.
I have limited strawberry plants.
'Cause I actually took it all out,
and we took most of them to the new growing site.
And so I was like,
"Oh, no, I need to try and spread them out."
In hindsight, I should have just planted the same quantity
of strawberries to use up half this,
half the bed and grow something else.
But that's part of gardening.
What I do really like, though, is this corner
where there's always, it feels really wild.
We've got this mint where every time you walk past,
you get hit with this lovely fragrance.
We've got these chive flowers coming through
and all sorts of things.
I mean, look at this. This comfrey is going nuts.
I never planted it there. It just happened.
It's now probably gonna be there forever,
but I keep cutting it down
and creating different plant foods from it.
But right now I'm letting it flower for the bumblebees.
I adore leeks.
And it isn't just because of the country I'm in,
it's because a cracking vegetable.
Here is my leek seed bed.
We've got five different varieties growing here.
I'm trying out a couple of different varieties
that I haven't grown before.
One of them is Hilari,
which is more of a late summer, autumn leek.
That's something so nice about actually quite small leeks,
that you can grow much closer together.
And then you harvest them a little bit prematurely
and then grill them on a fire,
and they taste so good.
Then this here is also,
it's an over-wintered calendula.
So don't actually take out all of your calendula,
as if they're protected a little bit
they will survive the winter and come through
and give you a early flowering like this one.
So this is quite an interesting thing,
that we just thought, "Let's just give it a go."
We have no idea what will happen.
That's part of the joy of gardening.
And it's testing the use of coffee grounds in a raised bed.
And this section here is five centimeters, two inches,
of neat used coffee grounds, nothing else at all.
And it's quite amazing
'cause we've got some radish going through.
This is a Crimson broad bean.
We've got golden beetroot that's growing well.
We've even got peas that need tying up.
It's really interesting.
We're testing it against a control with just compost.
And the main thing is not so much about productivity,
it's about whether it'll actually taste any different.
So we've got loads more plants to put in here
and fill up and see what happens.
You know, the broad beans hated the wood chip mix,
but the radish look okay.
I'm just curious to see if there's anything
that does really, really well,
and then I can use this method again
moving forward into other seasons.
I'm trying something different here.
These are Sarpo Mira potatoes.
We've got around 20 containers' worth,
and these are for my autumn
and winter main crop
because they're blight resistant.
My goal is I'll be able to harvest roughly
one bucket every single week.
With that concept, this should last me five months.
Let me know if you've tried something similar.
You might have seen the video I did about compost pathways,
and this is just kind of a visual update.
It, at the moment, is working kind of exactly
how we wanted to.
The main thing is, is just to continue ensuring that
whatever we can do,
continue adding leaves and materials and off-cuts to this,
and just keep building it up.
If you want to see just how much a garden can change
in around four weeks, watch this video here.
It was my garden tour, but for April,
and you can use it to compare just how much happens
at this time of year.