Charles Dowding's no dig garden in May

After a long wait in a slow spring, plants are not holding back! We've been at full speed to keep up and there is much to show you.
The hungry gap ends and we enter a period when new harvests happen.
Currently we are picking spinach, pea shoots, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, fennel, small beetroot and carrots just starting. Peas and broad beans very close.

See the results of different mulching methods, for new no dig beds.
Ideas for intersowing and interplanting.
Propagation tips for June.
The joy of no dig and few weeds. An area which was masses of bindweed / convolvulus roots just two years ago.

April tour    • Embracing the Winds: A Tour of the Wi...  
I start slowly, jump to 01.15 for strawberries.

00:00 Introduction, the sun has arrived!
01:09 In the polytunnel – strawberries, lettuce for seed, aubergines and peppers, more lettuce for picking, tomatoes
03:15 Garlic bulb, starting to swell – I explain the stage of readiness
04:20 Cucumbers – reason for removing sideshoots and baby cucumbers
05:15 Basil, and onions for seed
05:44 Garlic scapes, hardneck
06:10 Watermelon and loofa
06:26 Root veg, including Jerusalem artichoke
06:41 Potatoes, dahlia and oca (New Zealand yam)
07:10 Outdoor garlic – problems with rust
08:06 Herb garden – thyme, rosemary, alecost
08:26 The ‘new area’, and how we dealt with the bindweed
09:06 An interplant of spring onions between celeriac
09:13 Courgettes
09:32 2nd polytunnel - doors very rarely closed - aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and a brief mention of an experiment with magnetic water
10:41 Spinach, cropping well, and thoughts on succession
11:39 Possibility of sowing carrots between recently harvested lettuce
12:01 Beetroots, multisown from homesaved seed, harvesting the smaller ones
13:15 Peas for shoots
13:38 Broad beans for seed
13:54 Two plantings of asparagus – from seed and from crowns, comparison
14:53 Flowers – lupins and alliums
15:44 Rye plants, for making rye sourdough
17:01 Courgettes, kohlrabi and cauliflower
17:41 No dig potatoes
18:15 Squash and sweetcorn growing though black plastic mulch
18:52 The meadow (weedy pasture!), hawthorne in the hedgerow, and wildflowers
20:19 New pond, holding water with liner, with stones from a quarry around the edge, and wildflowers
22:09 Wormery
22:23 Woodchip
22:49 More intercropping of asparagus with spring onion, and spinach
23:35 Newly composted bed, leeks just cleared, and reason for pressing it down by walking on it – firming not compacting!
24:58 Peas, Tall Sugar variety
25:33 Kuri squash, following turnips
25:48 Intersow of parsnips between spring onions
26:15 Early courgettes
26:33 Interplant of leeks between carrots
27:00 Fennel
27:19 Watering
27:47 The dig/no dig trial beds – soil comparison
29:40 Sowings I recommend to make now for succession/follow on plantings
30:38 Interplant of cucumber between fennel and spinach

Filmed 26th May 2023 in Somerset, UK by Nicola Smith.

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