Only a few years ago, if you asked us what early autumn should look like in a garden, we’d think of everything “wrapping up” for the winter. There’d be the general weeding and pruning, putting away and tidying up, maybe covering some less hardy plants with fleece, raking the leaves etc. Closing the shop, as they say. But we’d never think of starting a whole new growing season! Reading and listening to other growers really opened our eyes to a new realm of possibilities we’d have not thought of exploring before. Sowing now?!
Surprisingly to us, a lot of veg one might like to enjoy all year round actually does not like the midsummer - the dry weather, the heat, the scorching sun and the multitude of pests of the season really stresses those plants. And when a plant thinks it’s in danger, it wants to make it’s offspring ASAP. Radish, turnips, beets and chards, lettuces and other leafy greens, and virtually all herbs I can think of, they all run to flower and seed (and many turn unpleasantly spicy, too)!
We’ve learnt this the hard way: what last spring was promising to be a lovely trough of living mixed salad, became a seed bed almost overnight before we even managed to make one! This eventually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, a crash-course in seed collection and plant propagation. But it also meant we had to settle on supermarket lettuce, parsley, rocket and green onions for a good while, not at all what we envisaged at the start of this year when we were purchasing seeds and smugly drawing plans on paper.
That’s why sowing in early autumn makes all the sense! Now, where we are, it’s really best to start this in September, but this year we were just too busy once the school started, so we’re giving it a go first week or two of October (as in fact we did last year...). There is definitely a level of risk sowing so late, depending on what weather we‘ll get over winter, prolonged frost would not be welcome. Nevertheless, London suburbs can provide you with an astonishingly mild microclimate. So if you have some spare seeds and a bit of space, it’s worth a go. If you’re keen to try this, too, make sure your growing spot still gets enough sunlight, now that the sun’s position in the sky lowers (and will lower even further approaching winter). Plant growth is slower at this time of year and it will virtually come to a halt once winter sets in but 6 hours of sunlight is still needed as a general rule. What you might have wanted to keep in partial shade in the summer, can now generally grow in the garden’s most sunny spots.
What we are sowing
With the aim of harvesting as microgreens and baby leaves through autumn and winter, we’re sowing the following veg:
1. Spinach (variety Matador, really enjoys growing in harsh temperatures)
2. Red beetroot (Boltardy)
3. Kale (Cavolo Nero)
This was the original “microgreen trio” we’ve tried and tested last autumn. With a bit of fleece protection it worked very well, the winter being on the mild side though not completely frost free. This year we’re adding a couple more leafy veg for the purpose of experiment and because I’m getting serious about my winter salads:
4. Rainbow chard
5. Red veined sorrel
Also, as we prefer creamy rather than spicy, we’re also trialling autumn-sowing of:
6. Radish (mix)
7. Turnips (Sweetbell)
How we sow it
We’ve made a new raised bed (expanding - thumbs up) filled freshly with general purpose compost. It’s important to note this sowing shoul be done at volume, two beds of 3x4 feet if you want a good amount of produce.
Also for the purpose of experiment, we are inter-sowing all of the above, ie. alternating rows, just to see if we can this way ignore the seed packet recommendations for spacings, which can sometimes be a pain for a small-space grower. Growing tightly preserves space but also reduces weed growth, so it’s worth trying.
We’re sowing in shallow drills made in previously watered compost. Prewatering means the seeds are less likely to surface when you water next. I like to draw my drills with a hand fork. It creates too many rows, but they’re nice and even and I’m only sowing in every second or third one.
Next, cover the drills with a little bit more moist compost. Gently pat in to further secure the seeds in place. Cover with fleece et voila!
How we plan to harvest:
We have intentionally sown all of the seeds quite thickly, multiple seeds every inch or so, because we are looking forward to multiple harvests at different stages. You could summarise this plan as follows:
1. Thin small seedlings of all the plants to use as microgreens - late October through November
2. Pick and eat mature radish and young turnips - November through December
3. Pick single baby leaves of spinach, chard, beets, kale and sorrel to use in winter salads - around late November through December
4. Wait for plants to start growing again in early spring before picking single leaves off of them again - February
5. Pick young beets to eat whole, leave two to run to seed - March through April
6. Pick single leaves of mature chard, sorrel and spinach before it runs to seed - March through April
7. Leave two kale plants to continue growing till the next season (they will flower and seed a year later, that is in 2024).
8. Collect seed mid-summer.
The timings are approximate and depend largely on the weather patterns, which are difficult to predict at the moment. But I do hope this is helpful as a rough guide if you’d like to try growing now but are unsure where to start.
Post Scriptum
We also happened to have some volunteer lettuce seedlings that came up in the seed trough after my lettuces bolted in the summer and some seeds fell right below them. I’ve pricked a few of those and planted them in the last row of my new raised bed. I’m hoping they will grow on and survive until at least December, perhaps with some fleece over them, providing a basis for those grand winter salad designs... But I’ve not tried this before
Winter update (15 Feb 2023):
Starting December, this year’s trial turned into not much of a success story, with four factors contributing to this:
1. The spot isn’t getting quite enough sunlight. With long shadows arriving, our new raised bed being closer to the south-eastern fence than previous ones, this bed gets only a few hours of sun in late morning through noon, after which it is again shaded over by the tall eucalyptus growing at the south-western end of our plot. This, I expect, would be the main reason why everything took much longer to grow, with the sorrel being the slowest (it’s super tiny, though healthy looking nonetheless).
2. The spacing is indeed too tight. The spinach now seems to cover over both the sorrel and the kale. And radish and turnips were doing the same to beets and chard. Also affecting growth.
3. The weather was first unseasonably warm in October-November and then suddenly unusually cold from December onwards. We’ve had at least two periods of hard freeze, where the soil level temperature did not go above freezing for several days (around 10) at a time, which has not happened to us in my 10 years of living in London. This killed off a big proportion of our seedlings: virtually all of the beetroot, most of the chard, some kale and lettuce and prevented the radish and turnips from developing swollen roots. But spinach, sorrel, and turnip leaf have remained strong, even if small.
4. Considering we were sowing into freshly spread compost, we have not sown most of the seeds deeply enough. The compost has a tendency to sink down and the result is most seedlings have some exposed roots, which is not helpful with the weather being very cold. Sorrel is the only exception.
So many lessons learnt in this one simple exercise! Hope you enjoy the journey with us and learn from our mistakes!
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