Polytunnel & Greenhouse Changeover | No-Dig Winter Planting, Watering & Ventilation – October 2025
High drama coming up in the polytunnel because it's a rapid changeover time. Mid-October
we still have quite a lot of summer plantings like these beautiful tomatoes and yet within a few days
they're coming out and then we're going to water heavily and plant the salad plants that I'm going
to show you in a minute and there's also some leaf plants already planted here like chard and spinach
for the winter to come so I do two changeovers a year two crops you could say so these were
planted in May after we applied compost and they followed the winter salads which we're about to
plant now so it's October to May and then May to October and just apologize by the way for the
background noise it's the neighbor shredder quite a constant hum so these tomatoes this year we've
had a warmer and sunnier than normal summer and this is one of the results I've never had such
long stems this is all one tomato coming from down there there's probably a good two meters of stem
already cropped and these are the last fruits and if I'd had more time I would have taken off some
of the green ones because they've taken energy to do not much I know you can fry green tomatoes
you make chutney in my case we've just got a few too many of them so I try and keep it that
most of them ripen and you know I'm not unhappy with what I'm seeing because one way I'm helping
that is not watering so these have not been watered for a whole month and you can see the
is pretty dusty so the thing when soil gets that dry how do you water it again if you
say run a watering can over the top of soil like that a lot of the water will run off it takes a
while for the capillarity to re-establish and for the soil to be able to soak up new water
it's why you get flash flooding you know after thunderstorms on dry soil so what I'm fortunate
to have in here it's the only place in the garden I've got an irrigation system it's a spray line on
either side so I'll turn that on for maybe 10 minutes and then turn it off let that soak in
and just do it in stages and if you didn't have that facility you could just run a watering can
over soil really fast and let that soak in a bit and then you know it's like every five minutes
it's a bit of a chore but it won't be long before you notice that the water instead of
tending to run off is actually going in quite readily so it's a useful skill to acquire for
the times when you have really dry soil we're going to cut these plants right at ground level
leave most of the roots in there'll be a bit of disturbance on it because we need to pull out the
strings the strings are in the root ball that's all that's holding the the plant in place at the
they're tied at the top makes it pretty quick to dismantle and we'll quite possibly put these
through a shredder the stems otherwise you can slice them with a knife or put them on the ground
run over the lawnmower but I definitely want to get them into no more than 10 centimeter four inch
lengths so that they compost better so all of this everything you see except the fruits that
we're going to eat is good to compost and just on the subject of fruits Anne was picking yesterday
she's done a very thorough job luckily she left this one in fact these two because they both
illustrate what I want to mention which is if a tomato is doing that with just a little bit of
color that will ripen in the house off the plant and I know not everybody likes that method they
say the flavor is not as good might be true but we actually find it's pretty good here and what
you don't want to do though is don't leave them in the sunshine so they ripen better just in you
know out of the sun basically and that one you know within a week that could be pretty good to
eat so anything here that shows a bit of color is going to be picked to ripen and eat in the next
month or so might even be longer and I'm just looking at this one like this I'll pick it just
to show you if it comes off yeah here we go I will say this one is close to breaking but it hasn't
yet I'm struggling to see any true color on there but I'll nonetheless put ones like this in the
house and they these I would say won't have such great flavor but they'll be great for cooking
in five or six weeks time even so there's a lot of possibilities to use what looks like green fruit
but if they're bright green especially some of these you know like quite new ones like that
oh if I can get it off um no actually even that one's a tiny bit of color if you break the calyx
like I just did that's not so good it may not keep quite so well so try and keep the little
stalky calyx bit on and then I'll just put these out you're good to go so the first thing we'll do
and then clear and the marigolds marigolds are fantastic for collecting seed from if you need
marigold seed tagetes patchula this is it's all french marigold all of that is seed so
I'm not worried about putting it on the compost heap I don't find that it survives even if it's
not too it's not the most vigorous seed having said that there are quite a few self-seeded
marigolds like there there's some and I've not worried about that because they'll be killed by
frost so we have frost here in the winter down to say minus five minus six and I've got a thermometer
in here and it might be minus six outside I look at the thermometer in here minus six so these
structures don't keep out a lot of frost even if you shut the doors that might make a very slight
difference but basically it's the polythene is so thin so anyway all of this good to compost but
I have kept some seed already to sow for next year you don't need a lot of this way more I wish I
could find a way of getting it to some of you because home safe seed like this you know the
quality is much stronger these plants they're dwarf french marigold but they're sort of going
this big we're not going to put any more compost on at this stage compost goes on once a year
these tomatoes have not been fed they've had a dose of seaweed eight kilograms for the whole
polythene quite a good dose and I feel that that's enough that gives them some trace elements as well
but you can see how the leaves are still pretty healthy and green uh this is sakura and that's
sunburnt over there and then we've got the particularly beautiful orange sun in hurts
oxide tomatoes they have been just so prolific it's fantastic we just picked the might be the
last picking uh we'll see at the far end were cucumbers uh they're pretty much finished and
under them in very early august we did little holes and popped in some seeds of dill and coriander
and they've been cropping quite a bit over the last three weeks or so so that's a little bonus
while the cucumbers are finishing some of them actually started to rot
which again like like courgettes um squash they it's not their time of year anymore so
don't worry if your cucumbers slowly give up in september early october
and there's also up there I want to show you something fascinating the fun thing here is
loofah the only thing is it's not quite mature enough I don't know it's going to work
look at this so that needs to go start going yellow on the plant if it's gonna
if the loofah itself the spongy bit inside has formed enough to mature but it's gonna
have to come out because we we need the space to plant salads unless it's just possible we
can work around it we'll see there's a slightly older fruit here and this is more how they
need to go and it's feeling much lighter and softer so yeah we'll see and then the aubergines
have been amazing this year it's a variety called purple long or de parmentin so many aubergines but
I particularly like it because the plant itself is not too vigorous and many aubergine plants that
I've grown anyway different varieties crazy big plants wonderful looking not many fruit
and a lot of pruning and managing to keep that growth in check and these are really not done
that much and they haven't fallen over too much so they're just nice steady flow of fruit and
beyond them there's a beautiful snapdragon down there which is one of the loveliest colors I've
seen I think not watering has helped the colors to come really strong it's soft so there's quite
a few soft so snapdragons or antirhinos here and beyond them I do those three things slightly
earlier sowing and planting for winter so kale spinach and chard because I found over the years
that if you really let them get established big root system they give more smaller leaves in the
winter my aim here is because I'm selling salad leaves I want lots of not too big leaves for the
salad bags through the winter but you could still do that same thing and obviously we'll pick the
to eat quick greens and then because of the decreasing daylight and temperature the plants
will naturally sort of shrink almost as we come towards the winter and it's got a strong root
system though so they'll grow quite a few small leaves everything else that we're going to see
right now is sewn roughly mid-september it's a similar story in the greenhouse but I'm using
one end probably not much more than a quarter of the space for propagation it's 12 feet by 25 feet
at a 13 year old greenhouse that's about three and a half meters by nine and a half meters
a really nice size and good light levels as long as we keep the glass clean and in fact
two weeks ago we had a very heavy dew in the morning and I gave the window scraper to Adam
he did a great job of just pulling it down on the glass it didn't take too long but it was amazing
how much stuff came off of the green algae that build up and we haven't done the outside yet but
it's already looking so much lighter that's really worth doing before winter october is the main time
we do it and we actually did the polytunnel as well because two days ago there was a little bit
of rain not much but enough that with two double sheets tied together one person either side
pulling it against each other gets enough strength onto the plastic to make a huge
difference cleaning it so Adam one side and the other and I was on a step ladder hosing it just
to help the water to wash it off as well and truly in there it's like a different world after doing
that so once a year I do recommend doing that light levels and then tomatoes very similar to
up there we've got some beautiful Tulsi basil which would go on a bit longer sadly that will
have to come out as well it's such a nice flavor not really like basil I find holy basil is another
word for it but it is an ottoman and then some chili plants there which I grow in pots because
I find that I'm not a huge chili eater but if you wanted more chilies than that you could grow them
in the ground but they do an amazing harvest in not much compost if you grow hot ones obviously
you get a lot of chili units for quite economical use of compost and space and then the big story
in here is all these plants and there's more than enough I'm pretty sure to plant in here
and that big tunnel and also the small tunnel and any that are left over quite often we'll
put them in an outside bed which you can do up to the end of October here with temperate climate
and cover them with something like mesh maybe fleece for some winter leaves the advantage of
planting them in here these are all frost-hardy plants they would survive outside most of them
but they wouldn't grow much so undercover you're massively increasing potential harvest and that
for me is the main reason of doing it and this lettuce in particular I love it's called
grenobla red or rouge grenobloise and look at this I mean this lovely root ball and a nice
little plant that is definitely ready to go a little bit more than ready actually these would
have been good planted beginning of this week on three four days ago because when they get like
this really thick I don't water them too much I know it might sound a bit odd because they've got
such a big root ball on them but they like to say we haven't seen the sun at all so I didn't water
this morning because if you do you can get leaves lying wet for quite a while all close together
like that you get mildew and that can be quite damaging actually in these conditions when the
plants are very close together so I'll make sure that if I'm going to water them if I feel they
need water preferably I'll wait for a sunny day and do it in the morning of a sunny day so the
leaves dry out before evening and these are the trays I designed you can see how they're quite
small module cells going down to a tapering point it makes it hard to overwater which is good
but not much compost two liters for all of that and it's the homemade compost that we
half worm compost I haven't fed these at all no feeding just don't do that another job you don't
need to do if you can get a good compost in the first place and what what you do start to see
when they run out of food is that little cotyledon leaf the first green one does start to go a bit
yellow and so these are heading in that direction by this time next week they'll be in the ground
I'm committed to that it's got to happen somehow we've got to find the time so it's a big week
coming up and there's such a range of things there's some endive there frizzy endive for example
a lot of mustards most of them are on the
palette here which is actually where I'll put my hot bed in about four months time for spring
propagation but that area will enclose with plywood to make a hot bed at the moment you don't need it
because ambient temperature is fine so that's frills mustards and in fact there's a very
interesting one here which is from home safe seed the plants were one half green one half red
and the red was red dragon which is a big leaf with sort of round round edge and they've all
gone serrated and the green looks pretty dominant so we haven't got much red but they're looking
super strong so for winter I'm actually totally happy about that and there's dark red one here
is called red frills and then we have salad rocket and we have one other thing that's interesting
is wild rocket wild rocket and salad rocket very different this one grows much more slowly it was
so much earlier than the salad rocket and I'm going to pot it on to grow in pots in here through
the winter in nine centimeter pots so that's that's called a nine c or nine centimeter
we'll put them in that and put them in here through winter almost forget about them just
water them occasionally they go in the ground in February and give fantastic rocket leaves
but wild rocket April May June July even when the salad rocket is only wanting to flower
and one more thing is spring onions so these are kind of crazy late so it was right at the end of
so it's middle September outdoor growing I sow them early September but I want to have a few
undercover and we won't give them any space so they'll just go in between the salad plants
and they just grow up right so not in the way and just harvest to have green onions green onion
leaves in the winter for me that's ultra valuable and welcome and in the same vein
up the middle of this bed we pop in garlic cloves and the same in the polytunnel two or three lines
up the middle of beds no extra space so kind of you're getting a free crop but more than that
undercover they don't get so much rust it seems to be rain that brings the rust like this year we
had a dry spring early summer not much rust it was real joy so this is a banker in here that
should happen and that'll be the 13th year in a row that I'll have grown garlic up this middle
line in the same ground just like these tomatoes that's 13th year in this same soil here and
as you can see they're very healthy so I think you know no dig really helps it kind of underpins
everything if you get your soil right everything gets easier because you don't get so many weeds
it holds moisture better it has good structure it's easier to water once you got through in
this case the initial wetting it again and it's very much a win-win so check out no dig if you're
not doing that already and just pay attention for the winter particularly to the timings
so just one last word on that the lettuce roughly 10th September so that's four weeks ago that's
four weeks to do that in this climate and the brassicas were sown 10 days after that at equinox
because they're fast to grow and what I want to avoid is what's happened here and do you see how
these plants are growing yellow and that's because they are amsoy Indian mustard it's one of the
fastest growing and I'm making a note to sow these later next September I think right at the
end of September yeah they just need to get going because they grow so fast that they've run out of
goodies in the tray they'll be okay but they need to go pretty soon and further tip is when you put
in a plant like this these are multi-sonar we've thinned to take out any weeds and bury them all
that can go below ground level so some of these plants that are getting leggy we can rectify that
by deep planting I'm sure there's more I could say but this is giving you a brief resume of it
and we'll finish with one last look in probably about two weeks at these spaces after we've
cleared and planted just give you an idea what they look like for winter coming up look at the
change that's in two weeks since we were here so all the summer crops have finished clear them to
compost and then a big watering no new compost but giving water to get it back to something close
to fully saturated before planting it's a lot easier if you do that before planting and then
you kind of know where you are going forward so these spray lines here I left them on overnight
in fact which is a good way because it's a gentle water that slowly seeps in if you need to water
dry soil you can't do it all in one go if there's too much pressure because it would just run off
so gentle water or repeat watering and then we planted so that was nine days ago that these
plants went in and they were sown either 11th of September for the lettuce and endive which are
mostly on the two ends and they were 16th of September for the brassicas which is all in the
middle and like these ones here for example they're the ones from home safe seed that grew
right there a seed and you can see what might look like a lot of weeds here and it's actually
marigolds the dwarf french marigolds had a fantastic summer for seeding and it looks bad at this point
but actually they're killed by frost so that probably here will be sometime in December and
the frost does come in so it's not about keeping out the cold or keeping in the warmth I always
keep the openings the top openings of the doorways I don't shut the doors basically at all in winter
unless there's an exceptional gale it's mainly wind I'm concerned about and then I would shut
both ends but on a frosty night in here even with the door shut it'll be almost as cold inside as
outside so don't worry about that side of things and it's actually more important to keep ventilation
for these plants they don't like being too humid you would then get mildews you'll see aphids as
well so keep an airflow over them and don't overwater either so I know the soil underneath
is moist we're just watering by hand at the moment twice a week with a watering can just to make sure
the root balls stay moist at this point until the roots really get their run into the soil with
compost which is the same soil and compost as the tomatoes and cucumbers growing three other seedlings
that look like weeds is where we grew seeding plants in the summer and this often happens so
there's some spinach seedlings coming up there already quite a lot have been held off
there's some onion seedlings and it was a very successful seed harvest this year
and then there's some brassica seedlings at the far end it's not on a recipe just they'll need
weeding while we're picking over there we have some more mature plants and we saw them before and
actually just picked some of the larger spinach and chard leaves for cooking and there's more to
come of that and this kale as well what I'm looking for more than anything though is to have plants
that have a strong root ball established root run and they will give through winter small salad
leaves of chard spinach and kale which are very valuable for this and in terms of specialist
plants in here we've got some nice amsoy there which is a sort of Indian mustard we've got the
agretti still here which is doing its funny way it has a seedling and I'm going to just let that
I'm not even clear to be honest whether I can harvest those seeds it's not straightforward
with them I would like to but otherwise they will fall and then we'll use some of the seedlings for
growing agretti next summer there's a bit of chervil there near where minty's doing her thing
and otherwise yeah it's pretty much all grillobia red lettuce two types of nd frisian
scarol and different kinds of mustards with salad rocket although there's no new compost
on the beds the pathways looked a bit sunken and so I asked Adam to spread some wood filings and
it's a very fine woody material that's actually been sitting here for a year it's turned almost
into compost but it's a nice material to walk on in the pathways I much prefer that to wood chips
which kind of get in the way and they can spread onto the beds and also Adam raked the beds level
you can see they're nice and smooth it looks like they've been cultivated but it's actually not it's
just evening out the surface someone on social media said oh I can see they've been rotavated I
don't know and the widths just so you know in 18 foot polytunnel 31 inch bed on either side
18 inch pathways on either side that's 45 centimeter and then this is a 20 inch or 50
centimeter pathway in the middle with each of these beds 51 inches about 1.3 meters something
like that so it's just working out how to use the space most efficiently and the side beds are more
narrow because you've only got one pathway to pick from whereas these middle beds they're quite wide
and to reach the middle we do that sometimes and that's totally fine you know with no dig you're
not damaging the beds by walking on them or standing on them one thing I forgot to mention
because you can't see it here was garlic so up the middle of both of these beds
is garlic just a clove every nine inches roughly 22 centimeters and on the sides I deliberately
grew some spring onion plants multi-sown the idea being they don't take any extra space
and it'll give lovely salad onions to pull during the winter when green onion leaf is so precious
and I feel so good for you so watering going forwards it'll be maybe once a week in November
twice in the whole of December maybe no water at all in January when it's very humid
and then slowly ramp up again in the spring picking will start in late November so that's
about a month from now these little seedling plants will or should be already large enough
for a first harvest and all of this is for picking outer leaves in the greenhouse we did pretty much
the same and you can also see in the greenhouse the remains of plants we didn't use I've also
planted up three boxes of little salad plants that's to use up staging that's not doing much
in the winter and some of those plants might even be useful for planting outside kind of like a
green manure if we find time more than anything and the difference in the greenhouse is that we
will be earlier on picking and in cold weather the greenhouse plants are stronger than in here
in here in the middle of winter it's not that warm but the greenhouse
holds a bit more warmth at night and there you have it so that's a fairly typical and
very workable practical two crops a year undercover that you've seen in this little video