Even now in the middle of October, the garden is full of beautiful vegetables. We have a lot of work ahead to harvest them, for my various outlets and for store.

We are about to enter the year's winter half, and 25th October is a tipping point I've often noticed. After that date, the sun is present for less than 10 hours and new growth is weak and slower.

The diminished light level affects us as well and I start to take vitamin D at this time.

Even though new growth is slow, plants continue to mature, converting their resources into harvests we desire. This cauliflower, Purple of Sicily, went in the ground after beetroot on 15th July, and three months later the plants are giving a nice flow of harvests like this.

Kohlrabi Noriko F1, were transplanted 13th August from sowing mid-July. I sow them July because there is no chance in autumn of kohlrabi trying to flower and become woody. They just continue to swell. Initially they spent six weeks under fine mesh to protect them from flea beetles.

One vegetable that thrives through winter is lambs lettuce / corn salad. I sowed the ones above between lettuce on 7th September, just before a thunderstorm which I could see developing. That saved time because I simply scattered the seed on top, and the rain washed it in for successful germination.

We have continued to pick leaves of the Maravilla lettuce, and soon they will finish and can be twisted out.That allows the corn salad to give harvests from December. There are many ideas like this in my new book, Growing Together, published next March by Dorling Kindersley.

At the Festival, we sold plenty of my Calendar of Sowing Dates, which you can also buy in Waterstones and on Amazon. Almost as popular were the Children's No Dig Gardening book, and the No Dig Cookbook.

It's vital in the second half of a year to time your sowings carefully, in order to have beautiful harvests such as you see above. See more of them in this recent video. 

And I have just published a video about this year’s first harvest of sweet potatoes!

For learning how to improve soil, we sold many Compost and No Dig books as well. I explain in those books how you can grow tomatoes like in the photo 21st September.

I had a question about this tomato photo on my TikTok account, which went like this:

"How do you make the plants bear fruits like that after months of cropping? Mine start to get smaller in size despite an increase in nutrients added. I’m using hydroponic methods."

I replied that their comment shows the limits of hydroponic growing, compared to the success of growing in undisturbed soil, where plants can continue to find food throughout a growing season, exactly as these late tomatoes demonstrate. It’s about more than nutrients, it’s about enzymes and fungal, filaments, and bacterial enablers in the soil, helping plants to grow. It's difficult if not impossible to get that life into a chemical solution. 

For Spanish speakers, we have just translated the contents of this No Dig online course into your language. That includes subtitles for the videos. This what you have access to after purchase:

I scattered mustard seed on 7th September before the thunderstorm, after we had cleared the squash harvest and plants. For no dig, this mustard is the best - fast to grow and killed by frost. Healthy no dig soil means no worries about it being a brassica.

In contrast, I see many recommendations to sow other green manure plants which are much more difficult to eradicate next spring. Such as clover, trefoil and rye grass. Clearing them without digging (eg mulch over 3-4 weeks) interferes with spring sowings and plantings. Plus by early spring, the leafy covers increase slug populations. This is based on my observations of trying them.

It's almost too late now to sow mustard, and a similar option of phacelia. Only in climates with mild winters would I sow them now, and as soon as possible. You can even sow mustard over the top of new garlic plantings, as in this image.

You can plant garlic, and broad beans, any time until December. A good period, based on moon phases, is 1st to 3rd November, just before the full moon on 5th November.

The seedlings above were sown between 10th and 20th September in my homemade potting mix of worm compost, in the small cells of my CD module trays. I have not fed them and never do that.

I'm afraid it's too late to sow them now unless you accept the wait until March for first harvest. The plants above will start cropping late November, and continue until April.

After clearing tomatoes, aubergines, basil, marigolds, and other summer plantings, the ground is dry. Especially after tomatoes, which I have not watered for one month. We water by hand, and use the spray line. This water is structured by magnets on the hose.

Soon we shall announce a competition about choosing a photo caption, and one for children. 

We shall celebrate the day with a new video, followed by lunch here for the team. It's a chance to do anything you feel like which will offer inspiration to others about this beautiful gardening method.

For example, the Chinese cabbage above. It's not an easy vegetable to grow, and yet it was transplanted very recently on 18th August, so has achieved all that growth in just eight weeks, with no new compost since the previous December. Also, there have been very few weeds. We spray Bacillus thuringiensis to make leaves indigestible by caterpillars only.

For more on no dig, and how I started 40+ years ago, have a listen to my recent interview by Karen Anderson, on her podcast The Sieve.