- For a given area of ground,
you can massively increase the amount of harvest
by fully exploiting the whole length
of the growing season.
So in our climate here, for example, zone eight, nine,
we can start sowing and planting,
sowing undercover in February, planting outside in March,
which is what happened for most of the vegetables
you can see here.
And a lot of them have been cropping already
for quite a while.
And then they're gonna finish
at some point in the summer.
Many vegetables are half-season crops
so they don't, you don't sow once in the spring
and then keep harvesting or have one harvest
at some point in the summer and autumn.
It's a steady progression of harvest
from the early sowing
and then you can do a lot more sowings
in early summer to plant in the middle of summer
or so direct in the middle of summer
for harvest through the autumn and into winter.
So that way you get from one bit of ground,
huge amount to eat and here the soil is no dig
so it's not being disturbed at all.
And the compost mulch on top about two inches
five centimeters I put on last December.
And that is enough soil food for the whole year.
So for the summer plantings, I'm not putting
on any more compost and I'm not using any feeds,
no fertilizers, no slug pellets, it's organic,
natural, actually really easy.
So here, for example, these lettuce,
sow in February, plant in March
and we've already had from these lettuce
eight weeks of harvest, each one at least a kilo.
So the total harvest here nearly nine kilos,
19 pounds of lettuce already.
And they're gonna crop for another month.
This is taking off the outer leaves.
And between the lettuce, I've already sown the next crop.
So four days ago I sowed carrots here.
I actually used my finger to dry and to drill
in the compost, pop the carrot seed in
and then just cover it over, tamp it down.
And it was raining last week,
so the compost is quite moist.
I'm confident there's enough moisture still,
although the surface is dry, these carrots will come up
and harvest through September and October.
In last year we got 10 kilos of carrots,
22 pounds from two rows like that
that were sown in June.
And we also, the total harvest of the lettuce
was 12 kilos, 28 pounds, fantastic over many, many weeks.
Next up we have with a gap of around 14 inches
between these rows, which is 40 centimeters or so,
onions, these onions are for bulbs.
So again, sown mid-February, planted mid-March
and there were in each clump as many as 10 onions,
which is more than is feasible, really to make bulbs
of any decent size.
So we harvested about two weeks ago,
about half of the onions in each clump.
There's eight clumps across this five foot wide,
1.5 meter bed.
So supposing each clump in the end, has five onions,
that's heading for 40 onions in a row.
And that's as many as I want.
So any clumps that were more than five onions,
we harvested two weeks ago as spring onions,
salad onions, where you eat the whole STEM
and leaf and everything.
So that already is a harvest from here,
1.2 kilos, these make.
So two and a half pounds of really nice green onion in May.
And the rows across these beds are mostly
about a foot wide, 12 inches, 30 centimeters,
but for the onions, 'cause there's so many,
I've increased it by about three inches,
so that's 40 centimeter, roughly, between the rows.
A lot of onions all being well.
And next up we had a finished harvest already here.
So this was spinach, which cropped heavily
from late April to early June, and then went to flower.
As spinach does at that time of year,
that's perfectly normal.
And we've planted in its place,
cleared the spinach by just twisting out the plants.
And I had ready some cucumber plants.
So these are suitable for our team for outdoor
that will trail along the ground and give a harvest
of cucumbers at ground level and that all being well,
that will fill up the space between the onions and beetroot.
Although by then, by the time these cucumbers
are cropping the beetroot will be pretty well finished.
Where the onions are I'm thinking to plant endive.
So that will give us some salad.
Then we'll have the cucumber
and where the beetroot are currently,
I'm thinking to plant celery.
So I've got some little celery plants halfway
to being ready for planting,
they're about three weeks old.
And these beetroot, we've already harvested
two and a half kilos from here.
That's six pounds of beetroot.
And there's gonna be about the same again,
I think, so really nice harvest of beetroots
from the multi-sown clumps
where we just keep twisting out the largest roots
over a period of about a month.
Quite close to the beetroot are carrots.
And here we've been thinning some carrots already,
taking out the largest ones from rather thickly sown rows,
I may have overdone it here, actually,
these were sown very thick.
But really what I have in mind with them
is lots of baby carrots in early summer
when they're so precious and sweet.
So these will carry on cropping by thinning and repeat,
pulling out the largest ones for about three more weeks.
And then their space will be probably taken up
by quite a bit by these parsnips
because parsnips, as you can see already,
these were sown direct in the middle of March
and getting fantastically large.
So they will already have quite big roots
but they are just a brilliant winter vegetable.
So they are the only vegetable here
which is going to grow for the whole season.
Everything else that we've seen so far
is a half-seasoned vegetable
and beyond the parsnips, there's more half-season
vegetables that we'll look at from the other end.
So, we have next to the parsnips,
peas that were sown early March actually,
planted late March and it's an early variety,
so they've been cropping already.
There's two very close together,
rows here supported by sticks
and we've had already a harvest of these
of quarter kilo, half a pound of pea shoots.
You see the plants haven't got tops anymore,
and we've already had a harvest
of over half a kilo or pound of pods.
These are mangetout peas.
And next to the peas are potatoes.
What's interesting here is that looking at them,
you'd think they're quite close.
But in fact, I had a row of cabbage between the peas
and the potatoes, and it's an early,
very fast growing type of cabbage
that makes a little heart and then basically stops growing,
which is ideal for making use of a little bit of space
like there was here.
It was around about two feet of space between,
that's 60 centimeter between the pea
and the potato as they were planted.
And both the pea and potato as the grow spill out over.
So you can often do that where you slip something
in a quick growing crop.
And there were five cabbage plants
across this five foot bed, 1.5 meter,
and the total harvest was three and a half kilos.
So that's seven or eight pounds of lovely,
sweet cabbage heart that has already come
from that bit of ground.
And finally, we come to the potatoes.
So these are early varieties, early type of potato,
Colleen, roquette and Apache.
And all of them are starting to harvest now
which is why we've really got a gap there
from an early harvest.
And that two plants there gave 1.3 kilos,
nearly three pounds of potatoes.
And what am I gonna grow here afterwards?
So where the peas are, I'm thinking to put some kale
for late summer and autumn harvest and even into winter
and where the potatoes are, probably some beetroot.
And when I say probably, I'm deliberately saying that,
'cause with summer sowings and plantings,
it's good to be flexible.
It depends on the weather, on the timings,
precisely when you do make the harvest
of potatoes in this case say, and then the ground
becomes available and whether you have some plants ready,
it's really good to be thinking ahead
and having some plants ready,
'cause that way you add four weeks to your growing season.
'Cause you can be raising a plant
that's already four weeks old
and you can plant it on the same day
that you make a final harvest here.
So that's what we'll look at in the second part
of this video, where you'll see the second plantings
after the summer crops.
And just to sum up this little early section
is what we can see in this bed so far.
This is already we've taken 21 kilos,
44 pounds of vegetables from this bed,
five feet wide, 60 feet long and last year
and actually over the last four years,
the harvest from this bed have averaged 100 kilos,
220 pounds of vegetables over a very long period.
So using this method of no dig
which makes life a lot easier and quicker,
very few weeds and then repeat cropping
and careful spacing, you can grow a lot of food
in a very small area.
(birds chirping)