Small Garden Big Variety – Planning a year of harvests

How I plan for plantings through the year, helped in 2024 by Fryd app, this is the English version
https://login.fryd.app/en/library
See where I am on 5th March.
No dig for easier working.

00:00 Introduction
00:33 The principles of no dig
01:31 Yearly harvest totals of 20 different veg
02:29 Overwintered veg in the beds
02:59 Effects of the Small Garden being sheltered and shaded
03:27 Two varieties of spring cabbage
03:55 Cauliflower, with mesh against pigeons, and some slug damage
04:38 Broad beans and mustard sown as cover crops
05:41 Lamb’s lettuce and corn salad between strawberry plants
05:59 Overwintered chard, Savoy carnage and spinach
06:17 Sowing and planting through the year
07:03 Radish recently transplanted, with fleece over, to be followed by beans
07:41 Soon to be planted – lettuce and beetroot
08:01 Succession plantings – and a new app for garden planning!
08:57 Plans to plant potatoes after cabbage, or to interplant
09:29 Planning for succession
10:58 Outro

My 2024 sowing calendar is now reduced in price: https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/product/charles-dowdings-calendar-of-vegetable-sowing-dates

And you can buy it with other books as special offers: https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/store/special-offers-book-bundles

Filmed Edward Dowding at Homeacres UK, zone 8 climate but with cooler summers, low seventies.

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– Small Garden. March, 2024. We’ve just been through quite a mild and very wet winter. This is a space where I’m looking to grow a very wide range of vegetables in a relatively small area, 25 square metres, 270 square feet, and see how much this area can produce

Through the course of a year with first, second, even third plantings. This garden, one might say, is fueled by no-dig. That means no disturbance of the soil, except sometimes when maybe you’re pulling potatoes or digging out a parsnip, ’cause they go down so deep. And all the fertility is applied

In, usually, one application a year. You can see it here, compost. And that just sits on top and is gradually eaten by soil organisms such as earthworms, but many others as well. And they take it in and that builds the fertility by increasing the soil life, as much as anything, it’s microbe-rich,

So that, the microbes help plant roots to find the nutrients and moisture they need. And it’s a very simple process. One application of compost a year. It results in very few weeds. So I actually don’t spend a lot of time weeding here. It might look like I do, it’s very clean.

But I do pull any weeds when I see them, little weed seedlings. Every year I record how many harvests we take, and of which vegetables, and over six years now the average is close to 100 kilogrammes per year from this area. That’s about four kilogrammes per square metre.

And that is so much food because it’s a lot of different vegetables. There’s 20 different vegetables we harvested from here last year. From beetroot and carrots and potatoes and onions, to leeks and peas and chicories and endives and lettuce, chard, spinach. And you can see even more than that here now as well.

So there’s always opportunities to make new plantings through the year, a succession series that I’m going to explain a bit more in a minute. And that’s partly enabled by no-dig, because the soil is so fertile and healthy that you can just keep popping in new plants out.

One application a year of compost, two to three centimetres, enables so much to happen and all that wonderful food to come off this small piece of ground. Almost everything you see at the moment has overwintered. And for that you need a bit of knowledge about precise sowing and planting dates.

Like, for example, these brassicas here, which means cabbage and cauliflower in fact, as well, were all sown on the same date, 30th of August, transplanted on the 2nd of October. And then they’ve had the mesh cover over all winter, which serves to keep the pigeons off more than anything,

But also mitigates the wind, actually. And one other factor about this small garden is it’s a bit shaded, but at the same time it’s a bit sheltered. And last winter we noticed the cabbage and cauliflower survived here better than in the main garden where we had some quite severe frost.

And this just mitigated the frost a bit. So it’s a great garden, a great space for overwintering. And in many small spaces like suburban spaces, urban spaces, you have got at least that attribute. Even if you’ve lost light, you’ve got a bit of extra temperature. And these cabbage are called spring cabbage.

And there’s two different varieties here, actually. These ones are big ones and they don’t really make much of a heart, but you can take off leaves like that and do it like a leaf lettuce. And so that’s a nice tasty cabbage leaf for eating and just keep picking.

Whereas this variety here, it’s called Duncan, and that’s bred to make more of a little heart. You probably don’t get so much in the end, but very nice flavour. Whereas the cauliflower, you can see they’re starting to increase in size now nicely. Going to keep the mesh on against the pigeons,

And they could well make a nice cauliflower sometime in May. That’s as close as I can get to being precise on that. But they’re looking good. And we’ve been removing the outer leaves because, I mean, there’s one here I can show you,

These outer leaves are the ones that as they start to decay, that’s what you see. And that’s slug holes. That’s not a terrible problem for the plant, but it means that there’s slugs hanging around, and if you remove those to the compost heap, there’s less reason for slugs to be here.

There’s quite a few, potentially, slugs here. And on that note, you know, this is a bit of ground cover that possibly could contribute to slugs, but actually it’s worked well so far and it’s broad beans that I sowed into the ground direct as seed, 1st of December. Some years that might not work,

But we had a mild winter and that’s why already the growth is quite strong. And I also sowed mustard just before that. So this is mustard, which if it had been a cold winter would’ve been killed by frost. It’s not. That’s not too critical. It actually doesn’t take long,

You can see they pull out easily. They kind of look more than they are almost. So I’ll just remove the mustards and then you’ve got space for the broad beans to develop. And there’s one more thing about the broad beans is that’s classic winter damage there,

Where the stem has, probably the first stem that grew, has rotted. But look at the new stems growing and all of the plants have that, and it’s called tillering where you get new stems. And that’s one advantage of overwintering. Broad beans have a long time to grow

Before they start thinking much about flowering. They really get their roots down and make big plants in the end. And then there we overwintered, we’ve been picking lamb’s lettuce, corn salad, between the strawberries. That’s worked really well. We’ve had a surprising amount of salad from space between the strawberry plants,

Which otherwise was dormant in the winter. They’ll finish within the next two weeks. And then the strawberries, all being well, will grow nice and big. Overwintered chard, I put some fleece over that in the coldest weather, that’s really paid off. And that’s looking good now for another couple of months, possibly.

Beyond that, Savoy cabbage, they’re going to finish. So there’s a lot of things here that are cropping. The spinach will crop for another six weeks and then we’re going to look at new plantings. New plantings happen right the way through the year, well, until, say, October, like those cabbage and cauliflowers.

So you’ve got a long period ahead of making these lovely sowings and being able to fill gaps with them. Do check out my calendar for that, because I list day by day, month by month, all the things that you can sow at these different times

With the greatest chance of success, that’s the idea. You know, being right in season with them. And we’ve just knocked £3 off the price of the calendar because we have lost a month, kind of lost. But actually, you know, for many of you in in cooler climates than here,

There’s still time to do pretty much a whole year of sowing. So do have a look on my website, you’ll find the calendar there, and in digital form as well. And in combination with other books that we make offers on. So what’s happened here is, for example, these radish went in yesterday.

Today’s actually the 5th of March, just to put it in context. So they went in on the 4th and they were sown 17 days before that. So they’re quite young seedlings and they are looking good to me, they’re looking nice. We’re putting a fleece over them

Because it’s still very early and particularly against wind. So for these very early plantings, quite often I’ll use a cover. And these radish, actually, will be followed by beans. So, you know, I’m thinking also ahead to succession. I’ll mention that in a minute ’cause there’s a lot to reflect on on that,

And fantastic combinations. Then we’ve got, over there, we’re going to plant some lettuce by the wall. That’s probably the warmest spot of the small garden so I’m hoping for some nice early lettuce. And then there’s going to be beetroot behind me once these cabbage are cleared. And that’s pretty much it actually,

For new plantings at the moment. And then we’re into succession plantings after that. So here we are early spring, and wow, the garden looks quite full. Relax. Well yeah, you can, to a point, but it’s also really good to plan at this point, and the whole question of succession,

Which is such an interesting topic and can help you to get so much more harvest from quite a small area. And that’s what’s led me to work with app developers who are from Germany actually, who’ve created this app. It’s spelled Fryd and pronounced frood. You can find it in an app store.

And I’m working to create a plan for the small garden here, using it. And it’s led me to realise there’s some issues with the app still, which they’re working on. So it’s not an easy thing actually, to create a planting app, but it’s enabling us to see where the issues are,

Particularly with this quite high level of skill, I guess, in what I’m doing. But it’s what I want to share with you and show you what’s possible. Because what I want to do up there is where the cabbage are finishing in about five or six weeks, there’s time to plant potatoes.

And that means you need that avenue of possibility on the app, which they’re working on. So that’s my plan. I’m going to plant second early potatoes, even between the cabbage if necessary. I’m really into interplanting, you know, like we’ve done here with the lamb’s lettuce between the strawberries for example.

Looking for opportunities to use space or to overlap plantings. And you know, there’s not always a chance, or sometimes it just works nicely. So the timing here will be the cabbage finish, we plant beetroot, the beetroot finish, I might well plant chicory or something like that. Here, when the chard finish,

I’m going to put in probably only three, maybe four, big cabbages for autumn harvest. And up there where the broad beans are, that timing of broad beans is brilliant. You can’t really interplant between broad beans as they take up too much space and moisture. But as soon as they’re out,

I’ll be raising in the greenhouse, module raising, some broccoli to overwinter. So that’s where also you can gain time by being a bit organised and having a plan. Do make a plan. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t follow it to the letter, but you know, it’s a chance,

You write down some ideas and then look up, look up what you can do on the app, in my books, whatever, or you know, on the internet. Find the timings. So purple sprouting broccoli that I’m going to put after broad beans, although the seed packet says plant it in April,

You can actually plant it or sow it in June and transplant it in July. Which means you can get broad beans first. so you’re cropping more from your ground. And one of the nicest ones, I’m hoping here, you never know until it happens, but when the lettuce finish and the tomatoes grow

In that nice warm part of the garden, that’s going to be a lovely moment as well. And here in the middle bed we’re going to have, after the radish, will be climbing beans. After the spinach will be cucumbers or courgette, I’m not quite too sure which way around.

Courgette and cucumber in the middle there and then the potatoes at the far end. And after potatoes, if there’s still chance, maybe to plant some leeks. We shall see. And I hope you’ve enjoyed this quite quick resume of a small space and how much you can get from it.