The Garden in October

probably the most exciting thing that has been happening in the garden in the past two three weeks is this this is the devil's finger fungi and it's rare it's so rare that a lot of people have only seen it in books or photographs and one of them popped up in the garden not too long ago and i shared a photo of that in my community tab and then that started to fade away and then i noticed a couple more eggs because they emerged from an egg sac that are called witch's eggs perfect for halloween i would say and there were five more three in a cluster two that were just over here and right now the first of the cluster of three has emerged and it is like an octopus or a squid just erupts out of this egg and it stinks like you wouldn't believe it like rotting meat like dirty rubbish bin garbage can and there are two more right behind it and when they all emerge it's going to look horrific and wonderful and beautiful and just jaw dropping this one here i thought would emerge first and it's kind of poked up it's slowed down and then there's one behind it and you can see that there's something happening in the jelly inside the witch's egg it's all fascinating and i'm wondering how i can build some garden features around here so that i can see these again because they are rare and this is one of the great things about just taking your time with a new garden is learning a bit more about what is going to pop up and grow in it and you'll see behind me that we have been working on putting in a few more beds taking our time though and i'm going to be planting some garlic and also some spring cabbage in one of the beds today i thought that would be a great way to get them started and something to look at while we're continuing to work on the garden over the winter because winter is a great time to be putting in garden features laying paths putting in new beds and doing all of the hard work the framework the skeleton of the garden but on that regards there are a few things that i can be sewing right now so i'm going to take you around the back and we are going to sew some sweet peas and i'm going to show you the broad beans that i have in the greenhouse right now [Music] i told you that i would show you my broad beans but there's not much to show i'd kind of hoped that we would have seen the very first sprout by now because it's been 10 days and that's how long it takes for broad beans to germinate but being curious me i did kind of dig around this one and you can kind of see that it has split and it has swelled up i'm just going to cover it back over this is a type called aguadulchi and i have it labeled here and it's an autumn sewing broad bean and you can get spring sewing and autumn sewing autumn sewing can be a little bit earlier cropping and also growing them in modules like this keeps them away from rodents that might be out in the garden and looking for an easy meal those those broad beans are really tasty to them and also save them from being drowned out we have been inundated with torrential rain this week i'm talking flooding level some of the parts of the garden are especially around the greenhouse so back behind here by the shed they're just very buggy at the moment and having broad beans in the ground or anything growing in the ground when it's really wet isn't great for them and it can cause them to rot so growing in modules like this saves them from being exposed to the elements and also from rodents and other animals that might want to dig them up and eat them and they'll grow on in here in the greenhouse over the winter and i'll harden off and plant them in the spring and i haven't quite decided if they're going to go here in the home garden or in the allotment we will see and i'm going to be doing the same thing with sweet peas and i want to get sewing those just now but first i want to show you what's going on here in the greenhouse many of the pots that i had growing down here around this back patio area have either been moved inside the house and the last house plant to go in is that bonsai there and i'm moving it in today and i've put the rest here in the greenhouse we have a fairly mild climate but moving tender plants inside will help to ensure that they survive winter and make it into the spring and i can also prolong the harvest as well so if i have lettuces in here and different herbs like the fennel down here the korean mint and even some of the basil which is looking a little bit worse for wear but i'm still picking those also rockets so arugula i also have mint growing in here chives watercress kale all kinds sage there's a house plant in here too i almost forgot this one need to move it inside as well it won't survive out in the winter but having a greenhouse will really help to protect plants from the worst of the weather and also i have put this black bin in and filled it with water and this is another technique for keeping it warm in here so this dark plastic and the water inside will absorb heat through the day and then slow release it through the night and i've put my wormery right next to it so that it can help to keep the worms a little bit warmer warmer and i can see they're still active in there in fact there's one hanging right there and also wiggling around the food scraps they won't do as much composting so breaking down of food scraps but they will do and this will keep them protected from rain because rain will get in through these little openings here and it might drown them out you can see maggie back there making her usual cameos you'll probably see her a few more times so this is one of the methods that i use for maintaining my plants through the winter and you can see that i've got quite a lot growing in here now if you're in a colder climate you'll need to give your plants a lot more protection than i do but this is enough for me especially in autumn and early winter and you know what i might even see some harvests of raspberries this is a miniature raspberry variety called yummy and it's been producing really well this year [Music] i have a couple of tasks that i need to do and this palette i've put on the edge of the deck has turned out to be the most incredible workspace who would have known so first of all sweet peas i'm going to be sewing let's see here four or five different varieties including some sweet peas that i saved last year and dried out i have no idea what the outcome will be what the color will be but it's just a bit of a fun experiment and then after i'm done with this i'm going to sew some more bulbs and i've already put in or planted bulbs into another terracotta planter in a lasagna fashion so that it will bloom continuously over several weeks and i have a piece over on my website explaining exactly how to do that and i've been taking video so hopefully in the spring there'll be another video then as well so i went to the supermarket last night to pick up some items and i just could not resist but buying some more bulbs so we'll get to that in a second but for the sweet peas i'm sewing them into just bog standard multi-purpose potting mix or compost here in the uk and i'm just using regular cells these are one and a half inch cells but if you have deeper pots or root trainers that's even better and all i'm going to do is put two seeds in each and then label each row give them a very light watering and they won't really need much watering through the winter because it stays relatively cool and there's less evaporation and then i'm going to just put them in the greenhouse and they will begin to grow they'll begin to sprout and then they will slow down and just be in a kind of a stasis mode through the rest of the winter but come spring and those first warm days in march and april they will start shooting up and you'll get much earlier blooms with sweet peas sewing them in the autumn this way and now for planting this terracotta container up with some flowering bulbs this will bloom earlier i believe march yes so march to april and the riniculus will be june through august so the idea with planting both of them in the same pot is that there'll be two shows of flowers and depending on the flowers you pick you can put different layers in it's called lasagna layering and you can put two three four or even more types of bulbs together in a pot at different levels i have this pot it's about i would say six inches deep there's a bit of older potting mix still in there which i'm just gonna leave now these are really inexpensive bulbs i bought them for a pound each so they're just kind of fun there aren't too many in there so we're just going to space these out and remember when you're planting bulbs that the pointy end goes at the top the basal end goes at the bottom and this is where the roots form and just kind of space them out they're supposed to be about four inches apart as well but we're just going to cheat and do them a little bit closer now that these are all in i'm going to put in some potting mix and you can use just ordinary multi-purpose but what i'm doing is mixing some multi-purpose with some vermiculite you could use grit or perlite or anything just to add a little bit of extra drainage bulbs really do appreciate having a little extra drainage in their pots with them and terra cotta is a great material for bulbs as well because it breathes it lets air it lets moisture in and out and bulbs don't really like to sit in wet potting mix okay so just going to cover this up a little bit and then we'll put in the next bulbs or corms rather so these are a little bit weirder looking they look a little bit more like spidery scary kind of things rather than bulbs and they swell really quickly so if you put these in the soil and then you look at them even the next day they will swell up they'll turn a little bit of a lighter color these go in a bit shallower so about two inches deep and i'm just going to again just space them out and i think that their spacing is five centimeters yes or ten centimeters which is about four inches as well but we're just going to cheat and the thing is is that with bulbs and with corms and things like this they'll just pass around one another when they're growing up they don't really mind growing really close together and this is going to be a fabulous centerpiece of color for the patio out here from spring right through until summer really inexpensive and it will start bursting into life right when i start feeling the urge to get out and doing a lot more spring gardening so that's pretty much it i'm just going to label it and pop this over with the other pots that i have already planted with bulbs and then next month i will do the tulip so tulips from november [Music] at the allotment i have been busy clearing the original strawberry bed you'll know of my struggles with pine berries especially this year and i made the executive decision to clear the entire bed of all that was growing inside and while i was doing that i actually found four frogs which i relocated to the area up above where the pond is and then what i've done is on one side i planted new strawberry plants on the other side i've planted elephant garlic a soft neck garlic and a hard neck garlic and the soft neck is called germador and the hard neck was rose white and i have some left over and so i've decided to go ahead and plant them in one of the new no-dig beds and this is the first time i've planted inside so it's really really quite exciting and i've decided that my rows are going to go this way just because it'll be easier to hoe in between the rows or to get into them and i'll be putting some garlic in this side and then putting some of my spring cabbage on the other side and because the cats are constantly in here i will also be putting up some netting to protect it so we've got elephant garlic first of all an elephant garlic you'll have seen me harvest in the allotment before this is a single clove massive when i first started growing elephant garlic i didn't have much success because i always understood that you put it in the ground and you harvest it the next year like you would ordinary garlic but rather it's better to wait two years and then you'll get all these large cloves rather than just one bulb these are actually related to leeks rather than directly related to garlic but they are just so delicious and they're so expensive to either buy to start off to grow in the garden or even worse buy in the supermarket if it's ever even available so yes i'm going to be growing quite a few here so i think i've got five left and i put in two rows of elephant garlic at the allotments and then i have the rest of the softneck garlic to go in as well and you really can't have too much garlic [Music] do [Music] i can't express how good it feels to finally get some action started in the beds that have been in the garden they've just been sitting there as voids blank canvases for weeks and it's going to be great seeing those spring cabbages start to grow and also the garlic and i've covered it in netting for two reasons first of all pheasants there's lots of pheasants in the area and also rabbits and then the other reason is cats maggie and porsha are constantly in those beds and so the netting is there to keep them from digging around and doing their business where they shouldn't be now there are four of the metal hoops holding up the netting right now the fifth is at the allotment i'm going to be doing a clean out of the allotment for the next video and i'll be bringing home that hoop and using it to prop up the netting on that end where the garlic is and i'll be showing you what's going on there so i did mention to you that i've planted out the strawberries and i've planted out an entire patch of garlic there but there are still quite a few things growing there and we do have a mild climate so there are certain things that i do need to leave growing for a little bit longer before i start cutting them down the dahlias are still blooming there are loads of greens the purple spreading broccoli needs to have some adjustments to its netting and then just general tidying up but we'll get to that in the next video and then also i wanted to tell you about some really exciting news that i got this week my book a woman's garden grow beautiful plants and make useful things has been shortlisted for a quite prestigious gardening book award here in britain and i just can't believe it i'll find out if i've made the cut next month but just want to tell you about my my little bit of excitement and i'm really proud of that and if you've not checked out my book before if you don't have a copy you can find it at all good booksellers and it's available around the world in britain in the us in canada australia new zealand and if you're elsewhere in the world the book depository will ship to you i think free of charge so yes thanks so much for watching and i will see you next week and we will be back in the allotment garden and having a look at what we can do to prepare it for winter see you then [Music]

Channel: Lovely Greens

Views: 27,663

Keywords: allotment, grow your own, vegetable gardening, allotment gardening, gardening tips, gardening, edible garden, garden, kitchen garden

Id: 5bFBaJzSFC8

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021