The Garden in December

In mild climates, like the Isle of Man, there’s rarely any snow, and the temperature tends to stay above freezing in winter. This means that the vegetable garden can grow all year long. This month, I’m harvesting brassicas and root vegetables, planting bulbs, and planting out broad beans. Here’s the Garden in December.

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00:00 Harvesting New Zealand yams (oca)
01:51 Growing and harvesting Yacon
04:05 What’s growing in the greenhouse
05:19 Results of the Potato Growing Competition
06:58 Wood chip paths as compost
08:56 Garden Tour
12:55 Polycrub
14:55 Bulb lasagne plantings
15:22 Watercress growing in soil
16:07 The two loves you must have as a vegetable grower

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[Music] [Music] [Music] I know this looks like an absolute mess the leaves on these plants are pretty much mush the stems are dead as well but this is what New Zealand yams need to look like right before you harvest them New Zealand yams are called Oka and I’ve shown them to you before around this time last year they’re a root vegetable and they only start forming those lovely colorful tubers after the Autumn Equinox and then they need a couple more months to plump up and then once all of the foliage has died back you can dig them up and today’s the day we’re going to dig up the Oka Harvest and see what we [Music] have there were two more New Zealand yam plants in that bed and I dug them both up but I was a little bit disappointed at the yield they just didn’t do as well as last year but that happens from year to year a harvest change and some years good years for some veg and other years are better so I came down here to this long bed that runs along the veg patch and it was down here that I planted a few more New Zealand yam plants and I got some more the pink ones were down here and at least that booked out my yield my Harvest for this year but while I was down here I also dug up the yakon and that’s what I have here beside me yakon are also a South American root vegetable and I have found them to do exceedingly well in my climate in fact there was one growing in the poly crub this year and the yield on it despite its massive size was nowhere near what these two plants have produced here now this is a type of a root or tuber vegetable that you mainly eat raw and we’ve had quite a few salads with these last year and as you can see there’s plenty more to come and all you do with growing them is plant them give them a little bit of support and just let them get on with things and they create or grow these amazing big crunchy and sweet tubers they’re a little bit difficult to get a hold of but once you do have some yakon growing in your garden you can save the plants from year to year and continue to grow them which is what I have [Music] done if you order yakon to grow in your own garden you won’t be sent a tuber like this instead you will be sent small plants and that’s because these tubers are just storage element so there’s Just Energy in here for the plant these don’t grow into new plants like other tu ERS do and so instead what you need to do to continue and to carry on your yakon from year to year to ensure that it’s perennial is to replant the actual plants and they’ll often times divide into two or more plants and that’s what I’ve done here so these seven plants that I have just parted up they came from those two out in the garden so I was able to divide them up they’re in their own individual pots here I’m going to keep them here in the greenhouse potentially move them out to the poly crub if I feel it’s getting a little bit too cold and then next year I’ll plant them out in the garden again yakon aren’t the only tubers that I have here in the greenhouse in these six pots are little tubers of a dwarf variety of Jerusalem artichoke my friend Liz Zora brought them as a gift when she visited a couple of months ago and they should grow No taller than about 3 ft so about a meter and really really great for windy sights like mine there are various different types of herbs and plants over wintering and I also planted my excess Autumn onion sets into these little pots this is a variety called Autumn champion and I couldn’t find a space for them in the garden so what I did was I put them into these little pots and then very early in Spring I’ll plant them outside and if you have garlic or onion sets that you cannot find space for or perhaps your G is a bit water logged in Winter you can do this plant them out in Spring and they’ll grow perfectly now beside them are my broad beans these are also called fava beans or I think also field beans and I’ve started them off again here under cover and these need planting out as soon as possible in a tub very similar to this one in fact identical to this one I grew a single seed potato this summer and it was for a local competition the big Spud weigh-in at crony V and you might have wondered what happened with it now it’s been a good couple of months since the weigh-in happened and I took some video of the day so you can have a little feeling for what this event was [Music] like oh wow look at that somebody oh look h is this the first time that you’ve been it is absolutely the first time so the the excitement is intense I can’t wait to hear the uh the results and uh are you tempted to grow your own next year well do you know what I think you know all they have to do is to give us the you know the the seed and the whatever and and the tub we’ll get on to it [Music] yes [Music] [Music] [Music] there’s quite a bit of winter veg back in the veg patch and we’re going to go have a look at it in a second but for the most part vegetables in the winter they’ve done most of their growing in late Summer and Autumn and they’re really just kind of waiting out the winter months until they can spring back into life again and so they’re kind of in a refrigerator in a way your veg patch can be a living Larder and throughout the winter that’s what I do I nip out I get a little bit of chard or brussels sprouts or kale or carrots and then I use it as I need it and I’m able to do that in my climate now because most of the growing is done for the year I can focus on a lot more projects and tasks in the garden that help with maintenance and structure and all of that and I’m here in front of this big pile of wood chip because this is a project that I have been meaning to get to but it’s just been so wet recently and quite busy as well this is something I’m going to be doing after Christmas though relaying wood chip on all of the paths in the veg patch now earlier I did lift up one of the paths just to check to see how broken down the wood chips were and they weren’t nearly to the point where I I could Harvest and use that as compost in the beds so I’m going to leave it down I’m going to cover it with more of this wood chip and then that will tidy up the paths it will help to stop weeds from growing and sprouting through the old compost and then in another year or two I can Harvest at least the lower levels of the wood chip on the paths and it’s perfectly good compost pretty much free and it’s developing under your feet as you’re gardening through the gardening year in my last garden video I planted up some broccoli and cauliflower in this bed they’re getting a little bit nibbled by slugs but they’re hanging on and the garlic that I planted here along the side has sprouted so you can see all of those green blades that’s next year’s garlic Harvest before I planted cauliflower and broccoli I got in this couple of rows of cabbage and they’re quite a bit larger than the other brasas and these are going to be a fantastic spring crop the light is so lovely right now and it’s quite a warm and dry day which is most important dry most of all it has been torrential recently but it hasn’t phased the Autumn onions and I’ve put the senu so the Japanese onion down here and then up here in this bed are the shots and a red onion so the shots are down here at the bottom of the bed and then there’s red onions just above and then I planted out some more Autumn onions just above here but quite a bit later I can see just the very first little green popping up flat leaf parsley is such an incredible herb to have in the garden this time of the year at least here it does just fine in cold weather and I’ve been just coming out here and taking small handfuls to use in cooking it’s right below where the leaks are and they’re looking a little bit sorry for themselves but they’re standing up well and there are two different varieties here this darker green one and then the lighter green more upright one here on the right these are a really good crop for the winter this end of the bed is filled with carrots and I’ve taken the the mesh off because we don’t have any carrot root flies attacking them right now but these carrots have not grown as long as the ones in the veggie pod let’s pull this one and see if we have a decent Siz one here to prove me wrong I have been proven wrong there are some good siiz carrots in here this is my perennial kale it’s a variety called taunt and Dean and believe it or not all of this is just one plant I planted it a couple of years ago and it was really suffering in the winds and so I staked it with that piece of wood there yet it did continue to lean over and wherever the stems touched the ground they formed roots and so so this plant has spread over this entire bottom of the bed you can see the stems down there and it is firmly rooted in with this type of kale the tasty leaves are the really young ones here in the center right at the top the big ones are edible as well but they’re a bit more leathery not as nice to eat kind of like the outer leaves on a cabbage but those young ones are really nice and because this is perennial I can Harvest from it all winter long I’m not sure that I’ve ever shown you my patch of perennial leaks this is a variety called porro perpetual and they come up twice a year and then to harvest them all you do is you cut them right above the soil take the little leak into the kitchen use as you would any other leaks or even green onions and then they come back they come back twice a year and they’re pretty hearty and they’ll stand through most of the winter and into [Music] spring back behind me the polyr looks lovely in this light kind of dappled light through the plastic but those little specks that you can see there they look a little bit different from the inside of the poly crub and it also means I’ve got another task for later on this month another cleaning task to [Music] tackle hey good girl hey about a month ago I brought you inside and we harvested the sweet potatoes and um that’s what all those little dappled speckled lights on the side of the poly crub are they are the remnants of leaves now I’ve pulled the vines down for the most part on the trellis but you can see that there’s quite a lot of goo on this plastic and so I think I’m I’m going to have to bring the pressure washer in here and just blast this plastic in fact I might just blast all of it in here and get it a little bit tidier for spring I’ve also been in touch with the Thirsty Earth who manufacture these automatic OAS and I’m going to dig them all up now these ones I have put here in preparation for pulling them up out of the Indigo which is still still absolutely Lush and growing I’m surprised to say the least but once I do dive back I will pull all the rest of them out and overwinter them someplace where they can’t freeze Maggie you always have to steal the show don’t you don’t you it’s been quite wet here but on the off days that it is dry I have been getting quite a quite a bit done outside including planting up a couple more bulb lasagna so I have a few on the deck ready to go for spring and I have a video showing how you can plant your own and it’s not too late if you would like to have a pot that contains waves and waves of flowers that will Bloom right through spring now out here in the birdy beds I wanted to show you my Water Crest and I’ve had so many people try to correct me and say that it’s land Crest it’s actually Water Crest and I have it growing in the water and I have it growing in the beds as well and it seems to actually prefer growing in the beds this is a peppery green it’s very tasty and it will spread if you let it I’ll just show you all of the roots that form along the stems there this is such a great green I got it as a plant from victoriana nurseries years ago and it always kind of suffered in pots which is where I’ve kept it but in the beds it has done so [Music] well I think that if you grow a vegetable garden you’ve got to have at least two Ls the first is the garden itself you really do have to love gardening for it to work plants just don’t take care of themselves you can’t just plant a garden and expect to have a really good yield you have to care for it over weeks and months and eventually when you do get a harvest you need to love cooking vegetables as well and I think that there are some couples out there that fortunately have one part of the partnership loving the garden and the other loving cooking but I think many of us love them both and now in winter when there are fewer harvests coming out of the garden I mean that’s all relative based on how you garden and what your climate is like but now that we’re in Winter and there are a bit fewer carest being inside and shelling beans that you’ve grown in the summertime and then using them to make really hearty meals it really just is the Pinnacle of what growing your own should be I hope that you’ve enjoyed this video of the Garden in December and we’re going to be taking a little bit of a break over the next couple of weeks Josh and I we’re going to relax a bit we’re going to celebrate with family and friends and then I’m going to be back in the garden before you know it because there are things to plan things things to plant and projects to get on with and the start of the New Year despite it being cold and potentially miserable is also the start of the gardening year for me and there are a lot of things on my to-do list so I will leave you with a message of Merry Christmas hope you have an amazing holiday season no matter what you celebrate in December and I will see you in the new year for another year of gardening and DIY content I’ll see you then