(birds tweeting)
(gentle music)
- There has been a catch up.
I said in the last video, cold Spring,
how the weather makes a difference in gardening,
it's the overriding factor almost, together with soil.
And since we made that video,
the change has been quite extraordinary.
And it was all triggered by a full moon,
on the 26th of May, when almost overnight,
the weather pattern shifted and instead of having this
blocking anticyclone over Greenland,
and directing cold north and east winds over the UK,
and much of Northern Europe actually.
we switched to a more typical prevailing tendency,
where the the milder air comes off the Atlantic ocean,
even pushes up from Southern Europe,
and we got it today, the prevailing southwest wind,
and it's a warm one.
The temperature right now is 22 centigrade, 72 Fahrenheit.
And that actually, I'm amazed, I was doing the figures.
Has been the average daytime temperature,
over the last 20 days, just under that level.
So that's around 71 Fahrenheit.
A bit more of a difference than the nighttime temperature.
The nighttime temperatures have gone from,
being around four centigrade, that's high thirties,
low forties, Fahrenheit.
In the 20 days previous to that full moon change,
to being seven and a half to eight centigrade, mid forties.
So we're still getting slightly cool nights,
but not cold enough to slow things down much.
And as you're in the last two weeks,
the nights have been really warm,
so again, that makes that fantastic difference.
Just leading on from that, you think,
well hang on, what's gonna happen at the next full moon?
That's in 10 days time.
It's too early to say really.
10 days in weather times, is a long time.
And in my last video, I said I wasn't too hopeful actually,
about a change, and the change did come
about 10 days after we filmed.
And it shows, you know, 10 days and beyond,
you can't really see,
so we'll just enjoy this while we're here,
and I can show you the results,
so for example, like the peas.
Last time we were here, so that's a month ago,
they were down there, almost below knee level.
And now they're almost as tall as me,
that's close to six feet, 1.8 meters, fantastic.
These are tall variety, clearly.
Tall Sugar and Alderman,
and there'll be cropping towards the end of this month.
What I'm noticing though on the peas,
peas are very moisture demanding,
there's a lot of leaf here, a wind like we've got here,
a breeze is blowing a lot of moisture
off those leaves as they grow.
And over the last 20 days we have had only nought point,
sorry, two millimeters of rain.
So that's just under a 10th of an inch of rain over 20 days.
So clearly we have been watering these peas,
all the watering here, we do by hand,
wherever I feel it's most necessary,
I'm not watering everything,
but just at this stage of growth, these peas really benefit,
they're flowering and they're podding, so every day,
maybe every other day, depending how hot it is.
Over there, by comparison,
the onions are still in full stage of growth,
and they won't be ready for another six weeks or so.
But again, what a difference compared to the last time.
They were just getting going really,
not much bigger than the size we transplanted them,
now they're full on, more than halfway there.
And likewise, the broad beans.
Although it's very interesting with the broad beans,
how because we lost the Autumn planting,
we are still, in terms of cropping,
we're still way behind what I would expect to be,
if the autumn planting,
starts sowing in November, had survived.
And so those were sown January, transplanted early March,
with fleece over, and they're still not ready yet.
We've just got a few broad beans ready from a few plants,
which survived from the sowing in early November.
Fleece though is what really enabled all of this lovely,
these lovely vegetables to survive so well
through the cold weather.
And they kind of get their roots down,
and I look at these cauliflower, for example.
So these had fleece on,
slightly longer than the other plants.
Longer than I normally leave it.
It was on last time we were here in the middle of May.
We were just about to take it off actually,
and as a result of that extra warmth, through the cover,
there is a cauliflower up there,
beautiful first purple curd developing,
it's Purple Graffiti variety,
so that's a harvest to look forward to,
from around the 20th of June through to early July.
And the broccoli too, that's just happening,
that's the spring planted broccoli.
So that was sown February, transplanted March again,
fleece over to help it get going,
and it survived all those frosts.
All these vegetables have been frozen quite a few times,
'cause they frost hardy vegetables.
And another frost hardy one was the other side of here,
which was the public sprouting broccoli,
and that overwintered from a June sowing.
You can see my latest video on that,
the previous one to this,
and this is the time to sow purple sprouting broccoli,
middle of June.
And that will overwinter as a broccoli plant,
and do its cropping in the spring,
which it was doing very beautifully
just a month ago actually, carried on for a while,
then we twist out the planets, chop them up for the compost,
and that's one of the few bear beds in the garden
at the moment, 'cause it's waiting for lettuce.
That's one of my main plantings this time of year,
the second planting of lettuce.
And it's not only the vegetables,
I mean the flowers are looking gorgeous.
These Oriental Poppies here,
I planted them about five years ago there,
so they're perennial, and they die back
once they've finished, and then leaves go yellow,
we'll cut them for the ground.
But they have their moment of glory during June,
and they really give so much pleasure while they're here.
And now we can carry on and look at a few more vegetables
in the trial beds where we were,
again, I can compare the growth
with what it was like just a month ago,
it's really so interesting to see.
(gentle music)
I'm really loving how things are moving on here.
Last time for example, the celery, celeriac there,
we'd only just planted them, transplanted under fleece.
And look at them now.
Celery, we have been watering quite a bit,
it really needs it.
And it's halfway to harvest,
just fantastic growth in pretty much the last three weeks.
Here we've even finished a harvest, so that was spinach,
and that row gave nearly four kilos,
around eight pounds of spinach leaves,
over seven weeks of picking.
And that's actually more than last year, so that's a win.
Slightly more than average actually,
the cool conditions favored that if anything.
Beetroot catching up,
and even I've managed to find space
by twisting out a couple of clumps to pop in cucumbers,
so that Ridge cucumbers, grow on the ground,
for cropping through July and August mainly.
The lettuce we're picking every week.
That's seven weeks of picking so far,
and that's given just over eight kilos of leaves,
close to 20 pounds actually, nearly nine kilos.
Slightly wider spacing than I'd normally give the lettuce
and that enables me intersow carrots,
so they're between the lettuce there.
They were sown 10 days ago.
Onion, shallots, again looking good.
I've managed also, we did it on a course day actually,
yesterday, interplant some kale between those two rows,
that will chug along until the onions
and shallots come to harvest, the carrots are looking nice.
And I wanna finish this with a potato harvest,
because I've mentioned in the preceding video
how we'd done the first harvest of early potatoes
on the 14th of June, that's today.
So let's have a look and see how they're doing.
(gentle music)
I've been looking forward to this moment for some time,
it's actually really one of my favorite moments
of the whole year.
The first harvest of first early potato plants.
These are first early varieties,
so that's one reason I've put them in a bit before,
say secondary early to main crop,
you're looking to get that super early harvest.
And then of course they get caught by late frost,
as we saw last time.
I mean, they were only about that high a month ago,
and the tops are all brown, not looking promising at all.
And then just look at this, it's phenomenal.
And these are two trial beds, so we've got no dig here,
same planting of Vivaldi potatoes, and dig bed over there.
And I have just pulled actually,
the first plant on the dig bed,
'cause I wanted to do that before this one,
then we've got the comparison, you can see how they look.
So this is the no dig bed,
and this is a variety I've not grown before, Vivaldi.
So I'm very interested to see how it works,
and it looks to me like one,
a variety that doesn't make a flower.
Some first early varieties do that.
So if you wait for a flower, you'll be waiting a long time.
A clue as to readiness is actually leaves going a bit pale,
going from lovely dark, lush green,
to more pale green, even slightly yellow,
and this plant isn't doing,
the one on the dig bed was a bit,
so I'm actually losing out by harvesting at this stage,
in terms of total yield, the quantity.
But the gain is the earliness and that specialness
of the first harvest super early in the year.
And also the flavor.
The flavors are sweeter in very early potatoes,
and then the sugars turn more to starches
as the potatoes grow and mature.
And then with no dig.
There's two more things to say actually really,
one is that I don't earth them up.
So in particular with these first earlies,
'cause they do nearly all their growing
before they really break surface.
So if you plant them, I put them in about that deep,
there's a good five centimeter, two inches of solid compost
on top of the potato at planting time.
And I can just see the first one.
Actually no, no, they're really,
this means either they're well below ground,
or they're not gonna be many potatoes there.
Sometimes if you, yeah look, there is.
Okay, this doesn't look so brilliant.
I am actually losing out quite a bit,
because there's just, it's called a stolon, and you can see,
the baby potato that would have grown some more.
So, let's have a look, and with no dig
you just pull them out, so no fork needed.
I'll make sure I've got all of this plant,
not the other one, they are quite close together.
Right, here goes.
Oh, that's not bad.
Yeah, I'll take that.
So, Vivaldi's reckon to have really good flavor.
And well, it kind of needs to,
'cause this is not a huge amount of harvest,
but it's not bad for a plant that's really only been doing
serious growing for about six weeks.
We actually put them in the ground on the 16th of March.
So that's three months ago, but for,
that's the rotting old seed potato.
For most of that time they were not doing a lot.
If we'd had a frost free spring, that can happen sometimes.
Oh yeah, actually.
The nice thing about early potatoes too,
is they're small size, so each mouthful is special flavor,
I just need to be careful here, I think that,
no, that is, it's the same plant.
You'll notice that I do have a trowel here actually,
and I might just use that to check,
but mostly I find with no dig, that because the ground,
you can see it's pretty firm.
Partly because it's dry, but also the potatoes themselves,
the tubers don't go down very far,
so you rarely need that actually for harvest.
The roots though, do go down, so that's the beauty of it.
The plant itself has rooted a long way down,
you can see roots like that.
So there we are, I hope you've enjoyed
looking at the plantings here at this stage,
and I hope that yours as well are coming on,
and are catching up in the early summer,
after maybe a cold spring.
(gentle music)