Kitchen garden & greenhouse tour ~ September

[@wendycullingworth3879]

What a super efficient way you garden! Always fascinating to hear about your methods and good to hear the ups and downs of your gardening journey. Such a pity you have club root though. 😔 it seems club root and onion rot are everywhere this year. Not forgetting the slugs and snails!

[@SteveRichards]

Yeah, it’s a challenge to overcome and I quite like a challenge

[@SteveRichards]

I have so little time, I have to be efficient, maybe in a decade or more I can just grow only for pleasure and not for food as well, that would be interesting : all the best - Steve

[@lorainemcguire5795]

Thanks Steve enjoy seeing all what your growing in your kitchen garden and greenhouse looks plentiful ❤

[@SteveRichards]

The greenhouse looks better in winter I think, it’s nice to see it full of bigger plants, not just seedlings : all the best - Steve

[@stevehitchman9591]

My first time growing Kalettes (thanks to you). They all got completely eaten by caterpillars, not a leaf left on them, but amazingly they’ve all grown back and look super healthy. Not seen any of the babies on the stems yet but I’m so glad I didn’t pull them all out!

[@SteveRichards]

They sometimes develop late, but they should be there when you need them in late winter, early spring : All the best - Steve

[@RawLondonGardener]

Nice plot, looks top notch

[@stevegreenwood8168]

Great round up Steve. Thank you.

[@potagermalo]

Magnifique bravo 😊

[@bernadette6211]

I haven't tunned in for awhile, like always I have great admiration for your consistency and beautiful garden. I'm sure you've considered planting calendula as a sacrifice plant for white fly, I find it does a great job but also really lifts the spirit to see the bright orange.

[@SteveRichards]

Actually I've not tried calendula, I've never yet lost a harvest to whitefly, so even though it's annoying I generally ignore it. This year is particularly bad though : All the best - Steve

[@danthanhcozygarden]

I wish I had a greenhouse as nice as yours !☺️

[@SteveRichards]

It is nice, it took me a few years of savings off our food bill to afford it : All the best - Steve

[@ThatBritishHomestead]

Wow still tomatoes, epic

[@Gardenofglory-l6v]

Hi Steve your plants are so beautiful it’s gorgeous viewing your plants except for the white flies they are really a bother, ❤

[@SteveRichards]

Always a few things going wrong in gardening, but it’s different every year

[@paulinesweetman3770]

Goodnes me, Steve, I don't know how you find the time to do all the pricking out that you do. I'm hopeless at it, also I'm rubbish at the discipline of planting out :)

[@SteveRichards]

I spend about an hour a week pricking out and sowing seeds etc, it’s not too bad, but I love planting, so I’m always on top of that

[@markshaw5835]

Great video, u got lots going on. Club root is a nightmare. Ive seen a few people say use rhubarb leave when planting brassicas or before u pot your brassics out male sure the root system is kinda pot bound before planting out. They say that helps. Ive got lots going on, want to do some more sowing of brassics,.lettuce some spring flowers and green manure.

[@GurpreetKaur-hd2fx]

HI Steve, love your videos. 🙂 Can I please ask where you got those huge plastic drips trays on your seedling bench in your greenhouse from? Thank you 👍

[@SteveRichards]

They’re great aren’t they! Garland Giant Garden Tray Black www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01C7IH1OA?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

[@GurpreetKaur-hd2fx]

Thank you 🙂

[@thelittlebluehouse5689]

Hello Steve and family. Please would you provide a little input. One is pretty new to gardening. 24 was really only my first season proper. I have a polytunnel and am considering adding a greenhouse. What are your thoughts/advice? I see you went for glass. Why not the polycarbonate? What are your thoughts on the polycarbonate "polytunnels"? Hoping you have a chance to respond or even make a show and add it to the basics playlist. Gratitude for all the inspiration and advice. Best wishes from Ireland

[@SteveRichards]

I’ve no experience of the polycarbonate tunnels, except that they are very expensive. However my greenhouse guide should cover your questions steverichards.notion.site/Greenhouse-Design-and-Growing-Guide-b3bf5d6ee29f4feaaa1671b0ea0a42f9?pvs=4

[@anthonystevens749]

All looks fantastic as ever Steve - I'm jealous 😁 How do you harvest the yacon, and what's left to regrow or replant?

[@SteveRichards]

You wouldn’t be jealous if you saw the whitefly infested leaves up close! Yacon has storage tubers that you eat and a central root cluster that regrows, it’s easy to tell when you lift them, but they are very brittle and easy to damage so I dig them out with my hands to start with

[@anthonystevens749]

Yes I've got the joy of whitefly - conquered in the greenhouse, but currently trying to kill my attempts at various cuttings (despite plastic-bag tents & elastic bands!) Thanks for the guidance about bacon harvesting - my first year of trying this plant... 👍

[@anthonystevens749]

Arghhhh, bloody autokorrect! I'm an experienced *bacon* harvester... 😂

[@carolphillips9441]

Thanks for sharing, I always enjoy watching up dates, I noticed your sprout plants have no leaves on the bottom, I'm growing sprouts for the first time, I have very small sprouts on the stems, do I have to remove the lower leaves, thanks ..

[@SteveRichards]

The lower leaves naturally die back over time, when did you sow and plant your sprouts?

[@carolphillips9441]

@@SteveRichards Hi Steve, sown the sprout around back end of May, planted out in summer, they're the early half tall ones, they're coming along nicely.

[@SteveRichards]

That’s late for sprouts, so no surprise they are small right now. They might grow to a decent size, but they will need full sun, wide spacing and good soil, if not then sprout leaves and sprout tops are lovely

[@carolphillips9441]

@@SteveRichards Thanks Steve appreciate that, one plant the sprouts are about a thumb nail size others are catching up, I got them off line from an organic grower & followed the instructions that he sent with them. I was telling my hubby about your greenhouse, I would love to have a greenhouse but no room unfortunately....

[@gseamans]

Do you feed your seedlings? My toughball onion don't have as good a growth as yours, sowed mine mid aug, so 6 weeks ago

[@SteveRichards]

I don’t, I sowed mine at the same time

[@SteveRichards]

Just wondering about your onions, did you grow them in a cool place, ie not in a greenhouse etc

[@gseamans]

@@SteveRichards thanks for reply, i had them in a warm dark place until they emerged, then transfered to one of the little plastic 'greenhouse'.

[@SteveRichards]

@gseamans with the door always open?

[@gseamans]

@@SteveRichards just an inch open the bottom to aid ventilation

[@tonyr7393]

Will be interesting to see how much of a harvest you get from those yacon in the 30L pots. Due to a lack of ground space I can't grow enough of them in the beds, so if you have even just moderate success with them in pots i may well give that a try next year. ps - your greenhouse is cleaner than my house!

[@SteveRichards]

lol, well I use it like a house

[@SteveRichards]

Tomorrow’s gardening week shows the first harvest from the Yacon tubs : all the best - Steve

[@tonyr7393]

@@SteveRichards great, thanks for the heads up. My yacons in the ground are looking very healthy at the moment - couldn't spot any open flowers on them yet, but the ones i'd given to my neighbour to grow are in full bloom. Roll on December and harvest time!

[@SteveRichards]

@tonyr7393 no need to wait until December, mine are all ready now, although I won’t harvest all of them

[@tonyr7393]

@@SteveRichards thanks Steve. i only have 5 or 6 plants growing in the ground and my aim each year is to try and maximise the size of harvest. i believe the tubers keep growing right up until the frosts, so my tactic is to only start harvesting in ~early December, mulch the plants left in the ground and stagger harvest them over winter. i think i ate the last yacon in May, so i was quite pleased with that.

[@bonifacekarahari9541]

I am watching from Africa

[@ChrisGardenAllotmentJour-pr3en]

What are the upturned cans for ??

[@SteveRichards]

They are originally there to support nets, the birds associate them with the nets, so I leave them there

[@dn744]

I have never tried Yakon? What is it similar to? 😊

[@SteveRichards]

A crispy pear, keeps crisp after cooking too

[@David-xh9cw]

Playing very, very fast and loose moving clubroot infected plants about Steve. I'd lift the lot and give the soil a good long break from brassicas to let the clubroot levels deplete. Definitely wouldn't be moving them to yet another location to spread the clubroot there. No good will come from that surely? Good luck!

[@SteveRichards]

I’m not, im moving them into pots for winter David. It takes 7 years to get rid of clubroot, so that’s not really an option, but I have a fairly successful strategy for growing in club root infected beds that I’ve used for a few years.

[@David-xh9cw]

@@SteveRichards No worries. Yeah even moving pots I'd avoid personally but like you say you already know that that's a hazard :) Glad you're able to manage it. I've always found Calabrese to be pretty affected by it and sprouts utterly cannot tolerate it. I wonder has it affected your Kalettes? They've always been the most tolerant in my experience. Thanks as always Steve.

[@SteveRichards]

How come you’d avoid pots?

[@clivedavo]

Who nicked your cap!

[@SteveRichards]

The cat was sleeping on it

[@БогданШрібак-з3ж]

Hello, I am a computer science student. And I am designing a database for accounting for growing and selling fruit and vegetable products. Can you provide a list of tables and attributes for the sale of products, such as: consumers, customers, their addresses; not the exact values, but the scheme itself, because I don't have a picture of this whole process yet.

[@SteveRichards]

I don’t sell any products, so I can’t really help you

[@БогданШрібак-з3ж]

@@SteveRichards Ok, thanks.

[@markhildred2456]

@@SteveRichards However I have always been curious as to how you assign value your crops ( I know you keep records and it is part of your criteria for what to grow). I try to keep track of the value of what I grow with reasonable success, but you grow so much out of season , and so many crops that are not really readily available to purchase ( eg. oca, yacon and kalettes in this video). Do you factor in any of this , its grown in the Uk locally , its out of season , its organic, cannot buy it in the local tesco etc? or you just assign a reasonable nominal value based on average shop price at the time regardless of origin? Imo this topic would be worth a mini video.

[@markhildred2456]

As a former DBA I can advise you need to be able to do the first part of the exercise as well, not just create tables Good luck!

[@SteveRichards]

I've explained this in a few older videos, but I also wrote it up in this chapter of my ebook steverichards.notion.site/How-much-space-time-do-you-need-97c72254b81242728b3c7f1aba62a834?pvs=4