- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
It's currently peak summer
and it's absolutely boiling hot,
but the garden continues and I have to come out here
and make sure that everything is getting done.
And in this video, it's all about harvesting,
not just to enjoy all of the summer crops here
during peak summer, but also having a rapid succession.
So, as soon as I harvest some things,
I am putting a lot of crops almost instantly
in the same place,
which means I'm gonna get loads more food
through autumn and winter.
And I kind of want to show you
the different processes that I use for that.
As you can see, there's a lot of crops in different stages.
These cabbages are just starting to develop
these peas, llanovover peas are in their prime,
but they're still in this salad bed
and this spinach has gone over
there's a lot of things happening
in a very short space of time.
And this bed here was where we had all of the garlic.
It's probably about 150 garlic bulbs
of which we had a fantastic harvest and the very same day,
as soon as the garlic went up,
we put in these dwarf beans
because that means,
especially at this time of year, every day,
we can get a new seedling in
the more likely, it's gonna be to give us
a good harvest towards the end of summer
and then into autumn.
And this is a rapid succession I'm talking about
where one of the principles of having healthy soil
is to have plants in as long as possible
for as much as possible.
So by simply in a matter of a couple of hours
taking a crop out, but putting new plants in,
we're helping to maintain that soil health,
which in turn is going to help keep our plants nice
and healthy.
Another example was in this bed was the new potatoes
and then straight away, transplant the kale,
this kale variety here at the base is actually a new one
is called hungry gap kale.
And the clue I think is in the name
in terms of when to harvest and how hardy it's gonna be.
So I'm really curious to see how that performs.
Now, here, you can see these broad bean plants
or fava bean and the quality are diminishing
because it's coming to the end of the lifespan
and effectively all of the remaining pods have bulked up
really nicely.
So we've got a ton of broad beans to harvest.
And one of the jobs today actually
is to go through and harvest all of these broad beans.
And we're gonna take out these plants
and then transplant something in its place straight away.
So these onions are bending down and it's a sign
to show that they're getting ready to harvest.
Now I could just leave them here for another couple of weeks
so they could start to dry up.
But, what I'm actually gonna do is
I'm just gonna pull them out today, harvest these,
and I'll let these dry out in the sun,
or if it starts turning a bit rainy somewhere in the barn,
and I'm gonna transplant here, actually a load of leeks.
I know they're in the same family,
but because these are alliums
and they're showing really strong signs of growth,
I think I can risk it with planting leeks here
and where the broad beans are.
I'm gonna end up planting some kind of brassica
in their place.
Heres' the harvest from this bed of really nice,
shiny looking onions.
They're gonna be so nice to enjoy over autumn, winter
and hopefully into spring.
This bed is now all clear as you can see,
I'm just gonna give it a very light rake
and then a very light top dressing.
Of maybe just one to two centimeters of compost,
just add a little bit extra.
And then I'm gonna go through,
and then I'll start the process of transplanting leeks.
(calm ambient music)
this is where the broad beans were,
and we've also harvested another area of broad beans,
which is around half the size.
And you can see the sheer quantity of harvest here.
It's absolutely amazing.
Now, behind me,
you'll see is that all the leeks have also been planted out.
So that's where all the onions are.
And 65 leeks have now replaced them.
So that's a lot of food.
The leeks, we'll start harvesting them in around
November onwards.
And here, I'm actually transplanting some claret,
which is a really productive purple sprouting broccoli
variety.
I'm gonna put around nine plants here
and you can see that I'm doing them bare root.
'Cause I like to start them off in a seed bed
just to save shelving space in the poly-tunnel
for other seedlings.
And what you'll find,
if you do them bare root is they'll wilt.
They'll look sad for a day or two,
and then they'll perk back up
just like all these brassicas behind me have done.
So you can see in quite quick succession
we had one staple crop here,
which are the broad beans and other staple being the onions.
And now, I'm replacing them with crops that are going to
provide stuff, not just for winter,
but also like this purple sprouting broccoli
for the hungry gap next year.
And it's all in the same space.
And that can,
that's just a demonstration of how productive
and how efficient you can be with timing
to end up with an awful lot of food from one small area.
Another tip when it comes to rapid succession planting
is that these kale are gonna start growing quite tall
and there's gonna be space underneath it.
And there's still time to have some cash crops.
So we can enjoy in early autumn for example.
So I've got some dill and coriander here
and also a load of radish because in theory,
the weather's going to start to cool down in August.
So things like radish and coriander are gonna be
great to grow as an understory
almost as like a bit of a cover crop,
not too close to the plants, but around them.
And then you can also make sure that you plant other things
for perhaps the edges.
For example, I've got fennel seedlings,
which I can put at the end of this bed here
just to make the most of as much space as possible
that is available before later on in the season,
say mid to late autumn,
when these plants start becoming quite big.
So really, it's kind of that mindset of
if I see some space
and that space is going to be there for a few weeks,
I'm gonna take my chances and start planting
just some extra crops, just so I can really
get as much as possible from this space.
Here's a patch of shallot that are just drying off
at the moment.
And this is an example of another thing that happens
around this time of year,
where you get smaller spaces start to open up.
So you may not have kind of space for like
a load of kale plants here, for example,
but this is where I start looking at things like
root vegetables.
And I've got a load of beetroots in modules
currently growing.
And they're about a week off from being transplanted.
So all I'm doing at the moment is I'm actually just because
these are drying off really nicely.
I'm just gonna harvest,
pull up all of these shallots,
give this bed a really good soak in
because it's been so dry.
It's good to give that moisture.
And then in a week's time,
it's just gonna be nicely prepped
and ready for me to turn up to the garden,
put in the beetroot seedlings
and get a harvest of beetroots in autumn.
If you've already transplanted your brassicas or your leeks,
and you're looking for something different to try,
then I invite you to trial something
alongside what I'm doing,
and that is testing how daikon radish grows
and here's one at the moment
effectively, it's a winter vegetable
and it's really versatile in the kitchen
and now is the time to get it sown.
You can sow them direct just like I've done here.
This is more of a test thing
and they germinated so easily.
So I'm gonna go.
And I'm actually probably gonna dedicate
about half of a raised bed to sown daikon radish
to see if I can utilize it as a winter staple.
And I think it's something
that you should very much consider.
If you've got some gaps coming up,
then try grow this vegetable.
At the moment, it is very much the harvest stage,
the abundance stage of gardening.
And once thing you might be looking for
is some new recipes to try.
And maybe you're looking for new ways of cooking or eating
the produce that you grow.
Well, I've got some good news.
I've been working with a really talented chef,
a guy called Sam Cooper,
and we've created this project called farmer and chef.
And the idea of that is to showcase homegrown produce
in a quick and easy way of cooking it.
So all of the recipes, they may look refined,
but they're designed to be super simple
that we can all try out
and actually enjoy
almost kind of restaurant standard food,
but things that we can make in the kitchen
with the produce that we grow,
it's a real celebration and a real emphasis
on the produce that comes out of the garden.
So I invite you to check out our Instagram and also the blog
where you can find all of the recipes and I promise you,
there's gonna be something there
that you're gonna absolutely love.
Now, I absolutely love this time of year.
Yes, perhaps some of the crops are looking a little tired
or we've harvested and some gaps are emerging,
but it's an opportunity still to fill up those gaps
with young plants that are going to provide harvest
well into winter and throughout the hungry gap.
And I just wanted to show you the method of gardening
that I use, which is a very rapid, out with the old
and in with the new, and especially at this time of year,
if we can just maybe harvest onions a day or two earlier
than normal,
it might actually make all of the difference at the tail end
of this season, to give enough growing time
and warmth for these second crops
to really come into their own
and provide us a lot of food.
So thank you very much for watching
hope you found it useful.
And it's amazing just in a matter of two weeks,
how much the garden changes.
And I look forward to seeing you guys again soon, goodbye.