(upbeat music)
(birds singing)
- Springtimers, towards the end
of April the sunlight levels are actually now are the same
as around the 20th of August,
and if you think how much warmth there is then
and everything growing fast,
whereas now not much is growing 'cause it's too cool.
Today's been a bit warmer.
We've been up to 18 centigrade, 64 Fahrenheit,
but that's really quite peaky
compared to what it has been with a lot of frost.
So most of the time for most of my garden
at this time of year, certainly for new plantings,
I'm using covers, and what are good covers,
which ones to use, whether to support them or not
are things I want to show you in this video.
And this bed we planted five weeks ago
with a range of vegetables,
nearly all transplants, one direct sowing
which is carrots you'll see, and already, actually,
there's some potential harvest here,
Maltese sun turnips, for example.
There's four lovely turnips in a clump there.
And I'm growing them as a catch crop between two rows
of potatoes and peas.
But the potatoes are showing one reason for using fleece,
particularly if you can support it a bit,
because in the middle they're much stronger;
whereas on the edge there's frost damage on the tips
of the potatoes where they were touching the fleece.
And that's one potential reason for using supports,
which is to suspend the cover above a crop
because you can get frost damage where it's touching leaves.
In our climate normally that's not much problem,
but this year it has been actually because we've had
in April we've had so far out of 23 days we've had 15 frost,
and that makes it the most,
in terms of frost number, the most frosty month of the year,
even more than January.
So just an example of how fleece can help,
but it's not an automatic frost protection.
It's actually more about protecting from wind and keeping
off the weather (laughing) and generally a slight lift
of temperature.
You can feel the soil's a little bit warmer,
and even new sowings like carrots,
so the tiny little carrot seeds I sowed there
actually about 3 1/2 weeks ago,
and they're looking pretty strong.
You know, it's a bit, always a bit touch and go
with an early sowing of carrots.
Is it gonna make it?
They're tiny seeds.
They've not got a lot of energy in the seed,
not like a big potato, or broad bean even,
and they need as decent conditions to get going.
And it's kind of helped a bit, actually, that it's been dry.
And then we've got onions, lettuce, beetroot, spinach,
so all things that actually can tolerate frost
because it has frozen a bit under that cover,
but which really benefit
from the slight lift of temperature.
And here again, we got more, a whole bed of beetroot.
This one is covered, and we didn't have it under a hoop
to start with.
The fleece was sitting just
on the plants as we'll see up there in a minute.
But it was when we had this long sequence
of frost, and I could see the damage
on the leaves, again, which I'll show you up there,
that I decided we needed these hoops.
And normally I don't use hoops because when you put a cover
on a hoops like this, you can see how the wind's blowing it.
It means the wind can get under it a bit.
And that sometimes, you know,
this is a moderate wind.
It's not a strong wind.
If the wind was stronger,
which it can easily be at this time of year,
this is potentially can blow off and it can,
you can spend a lot of time rescuing your covers.
So that's why generally I like to keep them flat
on the ground.
So there's different factors to weigh up.
And then here we have a vegetable which,
it's growing beautifully without any cover.
I mean, how is that?
How has this spinach so fantastic?
And that's 'cause we sowed it last August,
so eight months ago,
and then transplanted it right at the end of August.
And that got well-established.
It got a very strong root system.
It's a very hardy plant.
We covered it for a while, actually,
in January, February when the rabbits were eating it,
mainly as a pest protection.
So that's another use for these covers,
and that did help to get it going a bit,
but it's growing fine without a cover, basically.
Less frost damage, and there's no need
for supports or any of that, either.
If you can grow without covers, fantastic,
but they definitely have a place
for helping things on early.
And over there there's some lovely spring onions,
salad onions, which we're harvesting at the moment.
And they, again, growing without any cover
'cause they were sown and transplanted last September.
So let's go and have a look now.
There's plenty more covers over here and different ones.
I can show you the different types you can use
and different ways of supporting them.
(calm music)
(birds singing)
So the different types of cover I can show you here are,
for example, this one's a bit different.
I only tried it last year
for the first time because fleece itself,
normal horticultural fleece, is a plastic, basically.
It's a polypropylene spun in some way,
so it doesn't degrade, I'm afraid,
but it can last a long time.
If you get the thicker fleece,
it lasts for several uses, several years.
But this one, by contrast, is cotton.
It's muslin.
And I found it from a mill in the North of England,
and I'm not sure what they use it for.
But anyway, I thought, why mightn't this work?
And so gave it a go.
And it does actually work in much the same way.
You can get nice protection from wind and keeping
off the worst of the weather, but like all fleece
it does the thing where if it's sitting
on the leaves and there's a frost, even of these broccoli.
There's a broccoli or two up there,
and they look a lot better now.
I'm really delighted to see them like this, actually.
If you'd seen them 10 days ago,
you might've thought, "Oh, are they gonna make it?"
Because originally all this planting we did just
under four weeks ago, and we had the fleece covers
and the muslin right on the plants like I normally do,
and which normally works.
This is the first year it hasn't actually worked
so well like that.
So fleece, the normal one,
I want to show you here ways of supporting.
So there we've got hoops.
Those hoops, by the way,
are four-millimeter high tensile steel.
Work really well.
This is a batten. (laughing)
And when the plants were smaller,
this one's not actually doing a lot now
because the lettuce themselves have pushed up quite well,
and their outermost leaves are pretty much touching
the fleece again, so I shall need to change this batten.
We'll take it out.
It's just sitting on the ground.
And then the I'll put hoops in just probably
for another week or so.
Might be two, though.
This year is not showing signs of warming up
like as maybe one would hope.
So these covers, that's another question is
how long do they stay on?
Well, it depends on the weather.
You don't want fleece on when it's really hot.
When I say hot, actually for those
of you in continental climates,
I don't mean really, really hot,
but when it gets above 20 centigrade or 70 Fahrenheit,
roughly, with bright sun,
that the plants can not exactly cook,
but unless they're well-watered
that can cause a moisture issue
that they can wilt really fast.
And here we got some beautiful broccoli again,
which has done slightly better, actually,
and that does make an interesting comparison.
I think the fleece is slightly warmer than the muslin.
The muslin's still working well.
The issue with the muslin there's that
because it does degrade,
where we're supporting it on stones
you can see that we're doing very simple supports here.
You don't have to bury it in soil or anything like that.
Just a few stones bits.
You could use stakes or sticks,
but a heavy stone or rock,
that works well about every, every pace,
every meter or so, sometimes more even.
And the thickness, 30 grams a square meter.
Whereas previously I was using a thinner one,
and that's this one here.
So this is a, quite a bit older, actually,
this fleece, and partly that's why
it's got a few holes in,
and holes can be an issue (laughing),
but not, more for insects,
which we're not using it for, than for weather.
So for the weather here,
I find actually the thinner fleece,
this is 25 grams a square meter compared to the 30,
I prefer it.
It still serves to keep pretty much equivalent amount
of warmth in and wind off.
And what I like about it is you can see the crop.
This is a recent planting of sorrel,
broad leaf sorrel, and just getting established.
I'm not too worried
about a bit of frost damage on its leaves.
So that's why it has, it doesn't need a support.
But also I find this slightly lighter, thinner fleece,
it doesn't weigh down so much on the crop,
and so that reduces impact of things like frost.
And I like it cause you can see the plants through it.
And so if there are issues, or you lose a few,
you can take it off and replant whatever it might be.
So that's 25 grams a square meter.
At the moment you can't buy it.
I don't think, anyway, but I'm negotiating
with Gardening Naturally, actually,
to see if they might stock it
because they're good suppliers of all this stuff.
And we'll see what happens.
And I wanna show you then over here a couple
of different covers you can also use.
(calm music)
The two covers I'm showing you here are not
so much about warmth, particularly this one
'cause this is mesh, and it's a nylon weave,
tight, close, small enough holes to keep insects out,
pests off.
Actually it's on here because of potential pigeon damage
over spring cabbage.
So these are cabbages that we planted,
transplanted last early October from a September sowing.
And you can see the result is pretty much going to plan
to have a nice cabbage.
I don't think they're gonna make a tight heart,
but plenty of lovely green leaves.
At a time of year, late April, early May,
like late spring when the weather's quite nice,
there's not a lot of big, big green plants ready to eat.
There's one of them has actually gone to seed a bit here.
That's not to plan, but that's also edible.
So this mesh is not providing much extra warmth.
It has cut the wind off.
So these were transplanted here a long time ago,
and this has been on all the time,
and the virtue of mesh is that the wind does blow
through it a bit, and so this has stood the gales of winter
without blowing away.
But we've had quite a few stones on it.
That helps.
And then here is Thermacrop,
which the name Thermacrop, Therma,
heat, suggests it's pretty warm,
but I don't find it it that warm.
Again, more about keeping off the wind.
So it lets a bit of wind through, which is nice.
That's fine.
And we got it on hoops 'cause it is a bit heavier
than fleece, so I prefer to use it
with some kind of support,
and these lettuce, I see they're not doing quite as well
as I'd hoped.
The cold nights have set them back a bit.
They've been in the ground for just over four weeks,
in fact, but we've had to replace quite a few
'cause there were some soil grubs,
leather jackets here.
So some of these are recent plantings in amongst
some older plantings, which, looking down there,
you can see actually there's some quite nice lettuce there,
which will come ready for picking
in about two weeks, I should think.
And this covers only, only put it on on Monday.
Before that it was fleece
which was sitting on these plants.
And there you can see some fleece which has kind
of served its time a bit. (laughing)
It's got eaten by rooks in it, and big holes,
and also over there there's some broad beans damaged
by frost where they were touching the fleece.
But they're surviving.
And generally speaking, that's the tone
of using these materials in the spring
is you will experience sometimes some problems, some damage,
but generally they are brilliant
at keeping the worst of the weather off.
And at the same time, you know, we've got rabbits here.
So covering against weather
like this automatically also protects the plants
from rabbits and pigeons in the case of those cabbage,
where I would not have used fleece over winter
'cause the fleece is not as strong as mesh.
So if you're on a really windy site,
it might be worth actually just looking at using mesh,
which will moderate most of the wind.
But apart from that,
fleece is great just for this period of spring
when we've got a light surplus and a temperature deficit,
and it balances out those two.
I don't use fleece in the autumn
'cause it's the other way around.
We've got plenty of temperature.
It's quite warm, but also a shortage of light,
and so these covers keep out a bit of light,
maybe as much as 30%, but at the moment that doesn't matter
because that 30% is the bit that's not being used
by the plants.
They can't use it 'cause it's not warm enough for them.
So it's moderating the light and converting it
into the warmth that's missing.
And the main time of operation
in temperate climates is the late winter through
to mid to late spring.
And in the summer you don't want to use fleece.
It's too hot, but you can use mesh
'cause it's great against insects.
(lively music)
(birds singing)