More Options and Rapid Planting with No Dig

Succeed with succession. Ah, it's one of my favorite phrases because it's all about It's keeping your ground full of growing plants All the time through the year and a lot of vegetables grow in half a year that means that you can Have seed or plants ready to keep cropping and with no dig your soil is more healthy And keeps cropping for you you don't need to worry so much about rotation either I don't really Count that in as a factor. So i'm just looking for gaps which are going to appear As in going to appear so that you just need that bit of knowledge when say three to four weeks time The last harvest will have been taken from a particular plant that's going to open up a space and I just thought i'd highlight this lovely message I received from scott in scotland Who said he sent me a photo really a really abundant plot and he said three years ago this was a wasteland really he said your advice has been really helpful and inspirational because You've enabled me to keep cropping all this time and not have empty grounds. So right the way through the year It's growing something it's growing food. And although we're in june now, you know, we need to be thinking ahead for autumn and winter So to give you this example Here i've got some lettuce which We've been cropping we're picking every week. We've taken five if not six harvests uh weekly harvests of outer leaves and we put them yesterday, so That's opened up a bit of space before the next harvest in a few days time And it means i'm just using my dibber here to draw a drill in the surface compost Which i'm then going to water a bit because it is dry. This is a factor with succession sowing and planting that you are doing it often into quite dry ground, so You will need some access to water for sure And i'm pre-watering the drill so that the moisture is where the seedlings or the seeds rather Need it and i'm going to sow some parsnips which are Famous for being difficult to germinate mainly because they take a long time to germinate But because we're watering this lettuce all the time Well all the time say every twice a week Enough though to keep the ground moist and that means we're doing two things at once. We'll be watering the lettuce and watering also the parsnips and then i'm just going to Cover over the drills So it's very Quick and straightforward the main thing now would be to keep them moist and you can also do this you can Just tamp it down with your foot, you know even walk on it Except there's not really supposed to do that so there we have one example and That was sowing seeds which will take quite a long time But while they're germinating the lettuce still cropping these lettuces will finish in about five weeks. We'll twist them out All being well by then we'll have little rows of parsnips probably some carrots up there as well coming up Sowing from seeds takes longer in the ground. I want to show you next sowing seeds in module trays To transplant because that way you gain even more time by having a plant ready when a certain crop finishes Raising transplants is a fantastic way of adding to your growing season because you're Sowing a seed but in a propagating space wherever it is it doesn't have to be greenhouse like this, but somewhere undercover really helps and Your little plant is growing for three or four weeks already before it goes in the ground So you basically added that length of time to the growing season And if you interplant between something else that's adding even more time So just to give you two quick examples here This is french bean It's some I saved seed off last year And i'm just going to do a few just to give you the idea. So i've pre-filled module tray With potting compost and i'm dropping one seed in each tray push it down fill it over And keep it watered They'll come up in about five days be ready to transplant In as little as two weeks actually could be three so you've got options there and then beetroot I take a few seeds Drop them in I put in three actually I find that That gives on average four plants, but we do thin them. I want to make sure that the Clumps are not too thick so these will be ready to transplant again in about three weeks and I don't always know for sure where i'm going to put these in but sometimes just having plants ready gives you the spur to Oh find that bit of space And other options that you could consider at this time of year a classic one is potatoes Whether they're first earlies or second earlies in particular, they're going to finish sometime towards the end of june by the middle of july even So halfway through the summer and you've got time then to plant leeks, for example And many other things you still plant beetroot for example after potatoes or so carrots just and then uh spinach which is finishing now, uh, you could plant cucumber or courgette even Again, you would need to have the plants ready. So this is where the bit of forethought and raising the transplants really helps carrots you could Plant french beans between the carrots that are going to mature quite quickly now After beetroot, you can transplant purple sprouting broccoli It's a really good time now to sow purple sprouting broccoli and kale for example, even up to the end of june you could After onions you could transplant radicchio chicory for radicchio is a really nice autumn harvest after cabbage and calabrese You could plant fennel Uh, the list is really quite long. So do do have a look at some of the options And I hope you'll enjoy keeping your garden really full and having lots of food to harvest through the autumn and winter there's a lot of information in my recent book skills for growing which Concentrates in a whole section on propagation and succession And these are the pages which scott mentioned in his email has been particularly helpful He said he read them. He had to reread them. He's like, ah, right so much to know there and learn and apply and Check it out. This one is my calendar which has the sowing dates all year. So if I open it in june You can see there's lots of possibilities and it just helps to keep you on track Keep that hanging on the wall and just keep an eye on it to remind you to make these sowings