(SLOW FOLKSY GUITAR MUSIC)
MILLIE: In my book, every moment in the garden is beautiful.
There's always something to stop to see and, of course, to revere.
But as that gentle decline into autumn
heads down that slippery icy slope into the depths of winter,
there is also some work to do.
At the peak of summer
when you are absolutely drowning in zucchinis and tomatoes,
it can be hard to think that you'll ever go hungry,
but in the cooler months here, growth almost stops still
and that means that pretty much everything
that I have to eat and harvest over the next few months
is already in the garden.
You really have to harvest smart
and a lot of that comes down to
understanding the plants that you're growing.
Take something like broccoli.
It might seem really straightforward,
but there are loads of different varieties that you can grow.
Some produce a good solid head.
Once you cut that off, really,
that plant is not gonna give you anything more.
Others, once you cut the main head off,
they'll actually produce a few side shoots,
so it's worth leaving them in the ground a little bit longer
to harvest them.
And then others still like my 'Spigariello',
well, that is a sprouting type of broccoli.
I harvest these little tips right throughout the cooler months
and then in late winter and early spring,
it produces lots of tiny florets,
so the better you know the plant, the more you'll get to eat from it.
Just left a couple of those little side shoots to develop
and I'll come back for them next week.
I even harvest my weeds in a strategic way in winter.
One of the most common weeds that I have in the garden is celery.
It comes up in lots of places and I love it and use it a lot.
So, instead of pulling it out when I first see it,
I wait until it starts to become too big for the plants it's growing with,
it obviously needs to come out
and then I harvest it for the kitchen.
One thing that's really important
to ensure that you eat well right through winter
is to take note of anything that's gone really well.
This is my coriander crop
and a lot of people struggle to grow it
and the problem they commonly have is timing.
They try and grow it in the warmer months
where it just bolts to flower and seed,
it rushes through its life cycle,
whereas I've been sowing seed every few weeks
from January through February and March
and you can see what the result is here.
I've got successive crops which I'll be able to continue to harvest
right through the winter months.
This can just freeze solid and then thaws out and is right to harvest.
For me, this is a great success,
so I've made a note that I'm gonna do it the same way again next year.
To keep the harvest coming right through winter,
you need to feed your food,
but in the cooler months when that soil is cold,
there are some nutrients that can be hard for those plants to get,
so a simple way to get around it
is to use a liquid fertiliser in a watering can.
It's about eight litres of water -
I'm pretty fussy about my measurements -
and just put a slurp.
I go quite weak because I do it quite regularly
every couple of weeks onto all those leafy greens,
the broccolis, the radicchios.
They all love it
and that'll make sure that you've got those crops coming.
Any gardener knows that one of the best ways to feed plants
is actually to feed the soil,
and particularly in a productive garden.
Every time you put a crop in, you grow it really quickly
and then you pull it out of the ground
to feed yourself those nutrients,
you're of course depleting them out of the soil.
And one of the simplest ways to do it is to use a green manure.
Now, that's where you're using plants much like you would animal manures
to add organic matter and nutrients into the soil.
And there's lots of really specific things you can use.
Legumes are a really common one
because the bacteria attached to their roots helps to fix nitrogen.
That's things like peas and broad beans
and, in summertime, you'd use beans.
But there are loads of different things you can incorporate.
Here, I've got some mustards
and then a whole lot of brassica seeds
that have basically run out of date.
They're not really viable enough to use as my regular seed sows,
but I can chuck 'em in here and, if they work,
well, they'll be perfect for improving the soil.
And to make this seed a bit easier to spread evenly,
I'm gonna mix it into a little bit of soil
and then I'll go and prep the bed.
I'm preparing the bed by raking back all the old straw,
working across the surface with a fork to loosen.
Sowing this is fun.
Just sprinkle it over the surface. You don't have to be fussy.
And then give it a gentle tease
to work it into the soil surface.
These will germinate and grow relatively slowly
over the next couple of months,
but they're doing good while they're there.
When they get to about knee-height, I'm gonna chop 'em up
and loosen the top of the soil and let them rot down
because, essentially, they're here to be organic matter
for this garden bed,
but the other benefit of this particular green manure crop
is that everything I put in that mix is edible as a seed,
which means from this garden bed,
I'm also gonna get continuous harvests
until I need to dig it back in.
Getting extra value out of a piece of real estate in a winter garden
is always worthwhile.
Then again, every moment in the garden is.
(THEME MUSIC)