After a fine warm summer, September gave 86 mm / 3.4 in welcome rain. The ground is moist, but still with a large moisture deficit.

October is a good month to make new no dig beds. My Beginner’s Course is perfect if you are new to this. While the full No Dig course explains much more about this wonderful method.

The principal planting in October is garlic, by separating good size bulbs into cloves. Eat the small cloves, and pop the larger ones into holes not too deep.

Over the years I've noticed that shallow planting works better. One method is to make a hole no deeper than the length of any cloves, meaning you will see the thin white top when it's in the ground. Then apply the annual dose of 3 cm compost or about 1 inch.

My No Dig and Compost books explain more about this.

Straight after spreading the compost, you can scatter seeds of mustard sinapis alba, one of the fastest  green manures, see this short video. It will soon reach 40 cm / 1.3 ft high before cold weather arrives. You won't see garlic leaves for quite a while.

Then the first moderate frost of -3 or -4°C / 25°F will kill the mustard, and it becomes a straw mulch of thin stems on the surface. At that point you finally see the garlic leaves.

We have planted outside, during the last ten days, spring cabbage, spring onions, turnips and chervil. And that is it for outdoor transplants.

Outside there is just garlic to go in next week, and broad beans at month’s end.

There are no more sowings to make under cover. Seedlings in the photo below are waiting to go in the polytunnels and greenhouse, after tomatoes etc.

A big job here before mid October is to transplant salad seedlings in polytunnel and greenhouse. They include lettuce, endive, salad rocket, mustards, claytonia and the last spinach. And already we have transplanted kale and chard.

Before planting, I spread no new compost. We apply it once a year and in the polytunnel the most practical time is May, before summer plantings such as tomatoes.

This year, the tomatoes have been unusually healthy and bountiful, partly a response to plentiful sunshine, partly no dig soil with great compost mulch and a little dried seaweed. Also from the energy work I do.

Aubergines below are from my February selection for Premier Seeds Direct.

Early results from the Three Strip Trial suggest the forked soil of strip 1 has struggled with dry conditions. Forking must break mycelial threads, which then cannot forage so easily for nutrients and moisture.

Harvests to end September:

The 448 kg harvest so far in 2025, is higher than I've ever recorded in a whole year, from this 60 m² space.
First plantings were potatoes, broad beans, turnips, spinach, parsnips (sown last year and harvested this winter), and squash. Everything in the photo below is a second planting after those harvests.

First plantings gave 53.1 kg from the dig bed, and 56.3 kg from no dig. Same compost for both beds.

Second plantings have given 22 kg and 28 kg respectively. We notice how plants can look the same, but no dig harvests are often heavier.

The photo below shows squash to the right which is not dying back, plus a 2 m high Salvia amistad (friendship sage, top right). They are both rooting into the no dig bed, shown by the much smaller kale, spinach, chicory and leeks on the right hand side..

Broccoli plants which are on the left, beside the far end of the dig bed, are making a nice head of green calabrese, Marathon F1.

When to harvest is your call, such as how big you want them. See my beetroot video for a humorous take on this.

When broccoli heads have still small buds, the heads will swell to at least double the size during several days ahead. If left longer than that, the buds swell into little yellow flowers.

Root vegetables and squash can store for a long time, but in different ways. Carrots, beetroot, celeriac, turnips, and more, need moisture to stay firm. Preferably cool, the same as for potatoes, but potatoes need to be dry in their sacks..

Completely different are squash, onions and garlic which keep the longest when dry. In your house is a good place. Those together with potatoes are my only stored harvests so far.