I want to help you with some examples of
how to crop more in a small space and in the time you have available. So this is tips for
doing things maximizing space,
and saving time with not doing unnecessary work
So the very first
unnecessary job is digging.
When you go no dig
not disturbing the soil, that means you save that job to start with
And the result of not disturbing soils, is you've got a lot less weeds. So the weed growth is much reduced.
You still need to weed
but it doesn't take very long and then you could be creative and you have more time for
sowing, planting, picking.
And all I recommend doing, I found worked really well for me over 38 years of growing now
is mulching the surface that means covering once a year. I put on
around three centimeters (one inch) of compost like we have here, for example.
So that's some compost that I put on about three weeks ago, before planting these
what were seedlings,
transplants,
and
normally, I do it in the winter
but like for example there, I put it on under the tomatoes where we planted spinach because that spinach is going to be cropping
right through the winter.
Not a huge amount, but the plants will be there
for actually eight months, because they survive the winter, and then they crop again in the spring.
So that's no dig
easy cropping, easy looking after the soil and even things like you can do this you can walk on this soil
if you need to walk on your beds or if you need to reach the middle
and with no dig it sort of rewrites the rules a bit so you can think outside the box and
actually have a bit of fun.
And then in terms of cropping, to get the most out of your space -
it's really good to sow things in their best time
and
the seed packets don't always give you that necessary detail, they'll give you a very wide window of opportunity
Some vegetables you've got more of a window than others, like beetroot actually
such as that,
planting there we made in June
I did two plantings here of beetroot - in the early spring and then in early summer,
because it crops in this oceanic temperate climate pretty much
in half a season. So those beetroots are coming ready from now,
right through until late autumn for storing even over the winter.
The leaks will stand in the ground. They were all sown in early spring
actually, I sow my leaks here the first week in April
and undercover, so quite a bit of this is about propagating plants
and learning a bit about that and having plants ready to put out because these leeks were growing,
while peas for shoots were
being picked, so you can have one lot of plants ready while another lot is harvesting
And then sewing dates here for dill, coriander, parsley, and bulb fennel, I do late July. I find that works really well.
And coriander, in particular
crops through the autumn
a little bit in the winter, but it's survived the winter
that's the main thing, down to about -6/-20 Fahrenheit and then crops again in the spring.
So one sewing giving you more, that's a big time saver
These mustards
sown - if you look at the seed packet
it says sow April or March even onwards - and I find that best actually to sew in early August.
So I worked out sewing dates that just went well because, for example, you get less pest, less flea beetle on the leaves
and they crop for longer before they flower, which will be next May, so could be a long period of cropping there.
And then the spinach, like I've already mentioned that will go for a long time and then in terms of how you space it all
I'll show you that in some detail over here because the one bed I've got is 5 feet wide 16 feet long
has already cropped this year 78 kilos, whereas this area, which is 25 square meters
270 square feet, has so far this year croped 60 kilos. So it depends a bit on what you grow
how much you will harvest. And
those choices are good to sit down at the beginning the year and work them out a bit, but
as you go through the season, just keep planting, keep your space full. So let's have a look at this bed.
So the small garden that we've just been looking at there are no wooden sides to the beds
That's a good saver of space and time. There's less preparation
this bed though does have wooden sides and it's because it's
in some part, one half of a
comparison I do between a dug bed and a no dig bed. So this is the no dig bed of those two beds and
in terms of soil preparation, it has just
enough compost on in December. It's three or four centimeters. It's perhaps a little bit more than the small garden
and to bring it up to the level.
It's interesting how the compost sinks every year so it only ever had compost in sitting on the soil
And it just sinks a bit every year and it's the same story you could walk on it
It's pretty firm, but it's also open because of all the soil life in there. That's what the compost is doing
it's feeding soil life so that
all those worms and other soil organisms are busy keeping the soil open and hydrated
and then you're not thinking in terms of
which vegetable needs which food, so heavy feeders, light feeders all those kinds of ideas.
Just don't worry and keep sowing and planting.
In this case, for example here
I've got mustards growing and fennel and
endive and radish and these are all third plantings after
vegetables, which have cropped already, like beetroot
spinach, cabbage
cucumbers, carrots all of that has happened already. This is the third crop of the year with no soil preparation at all.
I just raise the plants under the cover that's a key part of it.
If you really want to get more from a small area
raise your seedlings.
They can be growing for two-three or four weeks
while something else is finishing. You can even pop them in between something that's growing.
so this fennel went in between the cucumbers, for example, while the cucumbers were still cropping.
Here there were onions and now we have kohlrabi.
That was 11 kilos of onions, so that's 24 pounds and fantastic vegetables to grow in the first half of the year.
The kale followed carrots and this kale has already given five and a half kilos of lovely leaves, 12 pounds
And that is very prone to pests.
That's another aspect of
maximizing your cropping for the time available is just to make sure that everything you grow is not eaten.
Some of that does take a bit of experience and skill
but do a bit of homework as well to make sure that you know.
Maybe like carrots at this time of year - all my carrots here are covered with mesh covers and that keeps off the carrot root fly.
These had a cover on just for a short time, while summer plantings of brassicas
are worth covering
for the first month or so, just they like kids.
They need a bit of extra attention and care when they're young and the pests could do more damage. Now they're more resistant
Luckily here we don't have pigeons - if I had pigeons I would need to have a net over them. So you
need to find out what your pests are.
And then here we had
potatoes and I find that there's a variety called Casablanca. It's a second early
So it gives a higher yield than a first early but it does actually crop pretty quickly. So these
the harvest of potatoes finished
by the 25th of June and we got these
plug plants, these transplants in on the same day.
So that really makes a difference if you can
be really up to date with your timings. And so there's celery, beetroot, and leeks all pretty close.
And partly that's helped by
the multi-sewing technique I use - for example for beetroot and leeks. The beetroot, they've been twisting out already, the larger ones as they come ready
and that frees up a bit more space for the celery and the leeks either side.
And then the leeks we can harvest again one by one take the largest from each clump as they come ready
So some of the skills of getting more to eat from a small space is about picking.
Picking is a really important part of the whole thing
So this bed - I've been at Homeacres for eight years now, and every year
it has given at least 100 kilos, 220 pounds, of vegetables
1.5 by 5 meters (5 feet wide 16 feet long)
Just imagine that when once you get a bit of skill
and practice in growing.
details from that you can find in my second online course, "Growing success".
And that works both on small scale and on bigger scales so here at Homeacres, this is market garden in fact, and
we're selling a lot of vegetables from a quarter of an acre and
even now in the middle of September, every single bed is full.
Except for one because we just finished a harvest and that's going to be replanted
in 10 days with spring onions
So keep cropping, pack it in, have fun
You