I'm showing you harvesting and replanting no dig
Nothing makes it a lot easier
We harvested garlic from here yesterday evening
It's an unusually early harvest. I've never pulled garlic on
13th of June before and
normally, it's about 24th, but it was ready and
How do you tell that well partly because there's quite a lot of rust there and
There's not actually many green leaves left if there aren't many green leaves. That's
Indication it's not going to grow and then you'll see in a minute. So I left this one in to harvest it
there's decent bulbs you there good ways just to pull one to have a look and
See that the cloves are swelling out
Again, we'll see that you'll get an idea to how much we've pulled from this area
And then I just want to show you with no dig how you prepare the ground for the next
planting
This time of year middle of June growth is phenomenally fast that those are almost at their longest
It's finally warmed up significantly, especially at night
So that the sooner you get the next planting in the better
Your harvest is going to be in the autumn every day's precious at the moment speed really counts much less than in the spring
And with nothing you haven't got much bed prep. So two differences here a little bit. It's one I
Left the roots. I cut the roots off the bulbs as we're pulling them
Edward who was hosting the other side put them in his compost bucket. Both are fine. It's just a question out
How do you look I mean this actually is quite nice first ones. They like that then just a good at level this
Yeah, I often use my feet. I know this causes some consternation because people worry about
Compaction as they call it nice. It's not compaction. It's just firmness because this lovely
Undisturbed soil doesn't you can see how it's if anything it springs up after I walk on it
But I just want to get it level and I notice there also an interesting thing
You see how white the soil is in places with
my Celia of
Certain kinds I didn't know their names all of them. And actually also how dry it is. Oh my goodness me. That's almost us there
And even from garlic which doesn't pump out a lot of moisture. We've been very dry today. It's raining a little bit
I'll just show you one variation of doing this you could use a rig you
Know if you really wanted to go level. So you're going to sow carrot sprouts or something like that
So that's option
Main thing I want to get rid of the lumps and and just have it
Firm on top because then it's gonna dry out less and at this time of year that really makes a difference
and then
What to put in next up just brought along this selection because these are seasonal possibilities
You've got leeks these were sown two months ago in early April we've potted them on so they're ready at any time
As soon as something finishes and you want to grow a leek to comport min
These are Brussels sprouts ideal week for planting Brussels sprouts. These were sown second week of May
Multi sown beetroot sown just two weeks ago
Perhaps a little more not not quite ready to go in yet, but that's an indication of the kind of thing
you've been putting in in June and
Dwarf French beans or bush beans. They're good to go at this time of year for
Picking from August and into early autumn. It's all of those possibilities and
once you've just got your bed ready to go like this I
Just use the dipper to make a hole just like that and pop in the plant
There's no need to do anything more than that
Compost we put on last year
in before planting or just after planting garden in fact
That's good for keeping the soft fertile and healthy for this whole year
No, so there's no extra addition of anything for second planting
Again, that speeds things up
You could also oh, yeah just caught my eye these onions. These are actually spring onions believe it or not, which
We planted late September last year from an early September sowing multi-zone. You can see they're lovely bulbs
And so you cook we could have pulled them out spring onions if you don't need them at the time
Which we didn't then you can leave them and they bobbing up as you can see
and
They're good to eat at any stage
You've got a lovely onion there a white onion and there's also a red one called Lily. That one's white Lisbon
So to finish the garlic, here's the last one and look at this amazing
Indication of how much root is in the ground I
Actually want to get it out without disturbing too much. So I'll give it a little bit of a shake like that
Let me see that lovely root system
Which I'm going to trim off
Because what I find is if you cut these roots off at harvest time rather than leaving them to dry
well, they're much easier to trim off basically and you get a much cleaner bulb and then
I'll actually take it over we were doing this with buckets yesterday
But I'll take it over to the compost heap now and just show you what we're doing with the debris
since it's right here and
How I do this?
This is a compost heap. We only started five weeks five days ago
Sorry and already it's going nicely at temperatures 50 centigrade will soon go up even more
and so everything goes on here including rusty garlic leaves and
All plant remains of whatever kind
So you can see how at this stage. It's very straightforward to peel
The outer sheath of skin and get a lovely clean Barbie no need to wash it
And I just take off the excess green
and
That for me for an outdoor. Garlic. That's pretty good
the indoor ones were twice the size, but then they've had a bit of Intel temperature and
To finish drying that you just need to keep it dry. It might go purple
Sometimes especially if they're in Sun
That outer skin will go purple
But the main thing is that this outer skin is still there
If I'd left this in the ground for another ten days
It would hardly have grown any more if at all and this outer skin would have started to degrade and then you start to see
the outer clothes of each bulb
sticking out not just not looking so nice might compromise storage a bit, but
Generally, I'd say get your garlic out
Soon if anywhere you are obviously if you haven't already and also hardneck garlic, there's one exception
this is soft neck no stem if it's hardened that could be another two or three weeks before they're ready and
yeah here is
The harvest so that was from that area
And it's just here in air
slowly growing