Get Your Growing Space Winter Ready
Welcome to Can I Dig It? A podcast about food growing for busy people. I'm Zoe, a curious and enthusiastic beginner who's on a journey to grow food for my family in the tiny pockets of time between work, school drop offs and pick ups and everything else.
Pippa:And I'm Pippa, a seasoned gardening expert. But as a professional gardener, writer, content creator and mom, life can get intense. We're here to help time poor people achieve the joy and fulfillment of growing their own food.
Zoe:No waffle, no overwhelm, no Latin names for anything. Can I dig it? Yes. Yes, you can. Is this now the season where we start every recording with a big old moan about how cold it is?
Pippa:Yeah, probably. Nice scarf you've got on there.
Zoe:Scarf, I've got two layers of knitwear and a cover mirror top and a vest and I'm sitting next to the space heater.
Pippa:Oh lovely, well I've got a big blanket on my knee as well.
Zoe:Good, good. I was considering the blanket but yeah I went for the space heater. Because yeah, it's time.
Pippa:Yeah, I'm glad that I'm not working outside today. It was meant to be cold and heavy rain, but it's not actually started raining yet, but I'm still glad to be inside.
Zoe:Good. How many days a week are you having to be outside at the moment?
Pippa:Every day. Oh. Every
Zoe:day. Yes. I don't love that for you.
Pippa:Unless it's really, really bad. And then, yeah, just get on with jobs in the house.
Zoe:Have you started using your meaty face moisturizer yet? No,
Pippa:I haven't. I have been so busy that no, I haven't. But I did buy, when I was in Whitby, I did buy a little bottle of like a rose essential oil to put in there with the lavender. It's going to be lavender and rose and hopefully not too beefy. Lavender,
Zoe:rose and cow.
Pippa:Yep, yum yum. So we'll see how that goes.
Zoe:When are you gonna do it? When are you gonna make it?
Pippa:Well, I was hoping maybe to have done it last weekend, but it didn't happen. So maybe this weekend, you know. What do you do? Well, I'm just going to warm it slightly so that it turns into liquid, and then add the essential oils, and then pour it into little pots. So it's very easy really.
Zoe:So it's literally just that, that's the only ingredient really?
Pippa:Yeah. Yeah you can add other stuff, can add like when Andrew makes our coconut oil moisturizer he adds in some vitamin E oil and things like that but I'm just gonna try it as it is and see how goes.
Zoe:Because you're round one, you can always iterate, can't you, Gary?
Pippa:Yeah, but it's definitely the weather for it now. Yesterday morning, I went out with a thousand layers on. Andrew said I looked like a Weetabix. Which I thought was really nice. I was kind of gone a bit square with the amount of layers I had So
Zoe:how's your week been apart from cold?
Pippa:Yes, busy. I had my birthday, which was fun.
Zoe:I didn't know about that.
Pippa:Happy birthday. Thanks. Yeah. And then other than that, have I went to a clothes swap at the weekend, which was really fun.
Zoe:Fun. Did you get some new stuff?
Pippa:I did. I did get some really nice stuff. I got a really nice, it's a vintage style dress, but it's like a kind of warm, almost fleecy fabric. So that's quite nice. I got some thermal leggings to wear under my work trousers, so that's a bonus, and a scarf.
Pippa:And then, I mean, my kids came too and they came back with like three massive bags full of Oh, Yeah, was that's great. We took all the stuff we didn't want anymore, got some new stuff, and it was really busy, was brilliant.
Zoe:Amazing, so how frequent is it?
Pippa:It's maybe every couple of months which actually is quite good because that's about how often you might be feeling like changing a few items
Zoe:in your Yeah and there's like a little maybe a little of weather or seasonal change going Yeah, on after a couple of
Pippa:I don't really do shopping of new things, new clothes. I think it was about fifteen years ago I decided to go for a whole year without buying anything new. And since I completed that year, I've really struggled to buy anything I new haven't really needed to either with charity shops and clothes swaps.
Zoe:Yeah, well the clothes swaps, that's very much within the kind of zero waste ethos, isn't it? Of your lifestyle, which I am obviously loving.
Pippa:And how about you? What have you been up for?
Zoe:Well, we have some good news this week. We have a new patron who is helping us support the podcast. That's been making me happy this week. Big thanks to Heather.
Pippa:Thank you Heather.
Zoe:For buying us the coffee that keeps this fueled. If anyone else wants to either just join the Patreon for free or wants to help support us financially and keep it going, keep our overheads down, you can go to patreon.comcanidigitpodcast. That's where you can see what's going on. And you can pepper Pippa with questions, we'll get But to a bit beyond that lovely news, no, I've had a good week. It's been busy.
Zoe:It's been quite social. I've gone for like drinks with friends, coffees with friends. So that's been really nice. Subsequently means with skint, because Pat's also, my husband's also been doing the same. Also I'm just having this like, I don't know if it's a seasonal thing, but I just have this deep, deep desire to get rid of anything that we're not using.
Zoe:Do you know what I mean? Maybe it's that like it's post my birthday and the kids birthdays, there's more stuff knocking about. But pre Christmas, I just wanna get rid of anything. I opened my wardrobe and I was like, I don't wear most of this. Partly because I've changed body shape a bit and my tastes have changed.
Zoe:So I had a bit of a clear out and I've been selling some clothes and shoes. So that's been good. And yeah, just making podcasts and mumming. I did have a mental health day on Sunday where I went away on my own for a few hours.
Pippa:Oh, luxury.
Zoe:Oh my God, it was so good. Had a little brunch, took my notebook, did some planning. So that's it, really? Yeah.
Pippa:Sounds fun. Yeah, I know what you mean about the clear out thing and I wondered whether it's partly because I know that I'm going to be spending a lot more time indoors and I'm just falling over stuff because we just have too much stuff.
Zoe:Yeah, obviously I feel like most other people are the problem.
Pippa:Yes. Yeah. And what have we been up to in the garden
Zoe:this Okay. So I have had a little clear out in, I found a, I think it was on the mental health there and I came back, I'm like, I'm still not here. You may be able to see me, but I'm not here. And it was kind of dry and fairly mild on Sunday. So I went out into our yard here and I had a big clear out.
Zoe:I sorted out some more of the things that were kind of dead, like the raspberry canes. And I also took it to heart. I think it was, I don't remember if it was last week, I think maybe, sorry, last episode or maybe the episode before, when there was a question, I think it was from Louise about how their raspberries weren't doing very well. And you were thinking that maybe some of the answer might be to do with the nutrition of the soil. I took that to heart and I got my, because I've got two compost bins, I know, flex.
Zoe:One of them I have been ignoring for so long that it's like, right, let's see what's in there. So there was some compost in there, there was lot of twigs as well to be honest, so cleared those out. And there was some good compost, not loads but So I spread that all over the kind of what I call fruit corner where I've got one rhubarb crown and my raspy canes are. So that's good. Now the neighbor cats are obviously loving that, it's a big toilet, but anyway.
Zoe:I also made a decision about the honeysuckle. I was talking before about how my honeysuckle just was like this year, it just didn't really do anything, it just went a straggly mess, didn't actually produce any decent flowers, it wasn't really contributing to the pollinators like it had done in previous years. Wasn't sure what to do with it. Anyway, I made a decision and I have cut it. I'm pulling, I haven't pulled out the roots yet, because also the trellis that it was on, that had all rotted and was coming apart.
Zoe:So I wasn't gonna be able to replace the trellis without really removing the honeysuckle anyway. And I've just decided that because there's not much space there anyway, like I want to get that out because the root system's quite big. And I want, I've been so inspired by a whole food forest thing. That I want to make my little yard here a little bit more of a kind of pollinator and human food forest. I mean, we're talking, says very small space, very small What my dream is, and I say this every year, but next year it's definitely gonna happen, is just to have my yard as a nice place to sit.
Zoe:It's not been that for So that is my kind of long term goal with that. Yeah, that's it, that's it. What about you? What's been going on in your garden this week?
Pippa:I've been really busy with work and I've used up most of my energy on other people's gardens, is must be so
Zoe:fit and healthy.
Pippa:No, think just permanently exhausted. I do think, you know, my life could do with a bit more sitting around, but anyway. Me too. Yes, the frosts are, this week in particular is forecast for lots of frosts. So I have been digging up some of my tubers.
Pippa:So there's I don't know if you've heard of ochre or mashua. So they are like little tubers and they kind of came over to The UK about the same time as the potato. So they've been around a long time, but I think the potato was so easy to grow because you get nice big tubers and things that the potato kind of just became the popular one that everybody grows. But actually ochre and mashua are just as easy to grow. Are they tasty?
Pippa:They are tasty, yeah they are tasty. So oka is a little bit like potato with a hint of lemon. Oh that does sound tasty. Yeah they are tasty. I'll have to post you some.
Zoe:Yes please.
Pippa:But the problem with them is that they don't start forming the tubers until really late in the year, so up north here you kind of don't get the best crop. Probably where you are you could get quite a good crop, but it's a bit borderline because the frost comes and kills off all the leaves just as they're starting to like make big When
Zoe:you sow them then?
Pippa:You plant the little tubers like you would a potato. You plant them around about kind of April May time so because they don't start making tubers till quite late in the year, you don't need to like rush to get them in the ground early in the year.
Zoe:They're lazy, you could be lazy.
Pippa:Yes, absolutely. No rushing needed. But yeah, it's more this end of the year where you know you want to try and keep them going as long as possible. So as I knew that loads of frost were coming they were going to get killed off and actually I need the space that they're in to be planting out some onions so I just decided to dig them all up. I always really love digging ochre up because they're I'll put some pictures on Patreon but they are like the most beautiful looking.
Pippa:It's not like potatoes which are just kind of brown and boring. They're like really beautiful kind of pink pink shiny little tubers they look absolutely gorgeous.
Zoe:How do you eat them?
Pippa:You just roast them or you can slice them up and put them in stir fry. I suppose if you put them in a stir fry it'd be a little bit like having a water chestnut or But something in then if you roast them they kind of do go a bit more like a potato kind of texture. They're really tasty. Really tasty. Yeah they are.
Pippa:They're lovely. And I will be growing some more of those next year. So I've been digging those up. Did you have
Zoe:a good harvest of them?
Pippa:I did actually, yeah. Considering that we had, say, the worst drought in one hundred and thirty five years in Yorkshire and I didn't water them at all. I was actually surprised that I got anything at all. I was really thinking that I might just dig them up and there'd be literally nothing there because we had such a dry year. But I think maybe partly because they start to form the tubers later in the year that actually through the drought period they weren't trying to make any tubers.
Pippa:It didn't matter so much that But it was dry now that it's been raining the last sort of couple of months, then it was just perfect for them. So yeah, so that was lovely. So I've been doing that and I've been lifting a couple of plants out that were in the wrong place and putting them in another place.
Zoe:Is that a good time to do that kind of thing?
Pippa:Yeah, so any time between now and spring you can lift things Mess and move things around time.
Zoe:Absolutely. Mess with them that it's gonna be okay.
Pippa:Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, so that's what I've been up to mainly.
Zoe:How would you categorise your wins and fails then?
Pippa:Well, I think my wins are that there was loads of ochre, which I wasn't expecting. My other win has been that there's loads, like the kale is doing really well.
Zoe:So jealous!
Pippa:I've got loads of kale, so that's another big win. I'm eating lots of that at the moment. I have really low iron levels, so kale is like one of the best things for that. I'm eating lots of kale. Good.
Pippa:So yeah, so that feels like a really good win. And the mashua as well, which is, it looks very similar to ochre, but it's not actually related. It's actually related to nasturtium. Oh. You can eat the leaves and flowers just like you can with nasturtium, but it also makes these tuber roots.
Pippa:And I planted the tiniest tiniest one. It must have been like a centimetre across. It was so tiny and it got a massive harvest. It was amazing. That was That's
Zoe:very exciting.
Pippa:And in terms of fail, it's mostly that the rest of the garden has been entirely abandoned because I've just been so busy doing some book promotion stuff, do my YouTube videos, know, just general birthday things. Yeah. So yeah, I've got lots of plans, but at the moment I'm just leaving it to itself.
Zoe:It's fine. It's fine It's out not going anywhere.
Pippa:How about you, what have been your winsome fails?
Zoe:I guess I'm gonna take the win that I actually had some homemade compost to spread around.
Pippa:Yeah, that is a big win, yeah.
Zoe:So I spread maybe two thirds of it on the fruity bit. And then I had saved an empty compost bag or like, you know, potting compost bag from earlier in the year and put the rest of it in there to either spread over the rest of the garden or maybe take it to the allotment. And then I've now kind of closed up my second compost bin and put a big stone on it to remind us that's not the one we're using at the moment. And have started using the Dalek one to fill up. And so, put lots of foliage and bits and bobs and started putting all my veg scraps and waste paper and cardboard and stuff in that one.
Zoe:So that's been the swap over. I can't actually claim any other wins.
Pippa:Compost is a great win.
Zoe:I'm gonna take that,
Pippa:take that.
Zoe:My fail, I haven't been to the allotment since the last time we spoke.
Pippa:Oh, yes.
Zoe:It was a combination of just not having time and the weather. It was like very, very wet and Yes. Now it's So I have not finished clearing out anything and I have not done the rhubarb crown splitting and relocating that And I I guess another kind of more overarching fail that I'm really feeling at the moment, because we're really skin at the moment. And like last night I was trying to make a dinner out of like basically nothing. And I was just thinking like, oh, but Pippa could just open up her freezer and she's got beans in there and tins of tomato sauce and dried things.
Pippa:I have some, I have some. I don't have as much as I used to have when we were at our previous house and we just had loads and loads of stuff all the time because partly because our garden isn't as big anymore and I don't have the storage space. But yeah, did, I made pizza last night and it was really nice to take out some homegrown tomato passata to make the sauce out That does feel really nice. Yeah. But yeah, I know what you mean.
Pippa:I have been craving more salad the last few days, which is funny because I don't normally crave salad when it's cold. I just really fancied a really nice salad and pretty much the only thing that I really had outside that I could have put in it was still some nasturtiums. And I probably could have shredded up some kale, but this time of year it gets a bit tough and it's better just to cook it than put in the salad. So yeah, I know what you mean. Just this time of year, particularly around Christmas time when you could just do with a load of free food out of the garden.
Zoe:Absolutely, absolutely. And I was just listening back to our episode on pumpkins and squash. I wish I had some pumpkins and squash too. Yeah. To kind of bulk out our meals a bit, you know?
Pippa:It has been really good actually to have the pumpkins. We've started, well we try our best, we're not always that organized, but we try our best to take homemade soup for lunch.
Zoe:Oh
Pippa:nice. Because partly just because when it's freezing you just really want, you you don't want it like cold sandwich, want something really warming. Our neighbor Rani had just made the most delicious pumpkin curry and some dal as well. And I was just thinking, you know, haven't got anything to sort out for soup tomorrow and I'm just really tired and can't be bothered. This was like 11:00 on Sunday night.
Pippa:And so actually, I'm just going to take the leftover bit of curry and dal, add a bit of chicken stock, and there's some soup and it was so delicious.
Zoe:Oh, that's a massive Yeah, massive win. Nice. Alrighty, let's get cracking because we have a big topic to discuss today. What are we talking about, Pippa?
Pippa:Yeah, so we're talking about getting the garden ready for winter. And just as most of us, you know, don't really necessarily want to be out spending lots of time in the garden.
Zoe:Not naming any names.
Pippa:Yep, winter is actually sometimes the busiest time of year for me work wise, just because it's when I'm doing lots of kind of infrastructure stuff. So I might be like creating a new bed or rebuilding some bed edging, you know, like woven willow bed edging, things like that, and pruning and cutting back and all those kind of things. So it's actually quite busy for me this time of year in the run up to Christmas, partly because if I don't get some areas cut back before the bulbs start coming up, and nowadays the bulbs are coming up way, way before you would normally expect then them I'm trampling all over the newly emerging bulbs. But what I thought was we would just cover why it's best practice not just to abandon your garden. Oh no!
Zoe:But then there's gonna be a caveat where you're suddenly gonna say, yeah, but there was one year and I ignored everything and it turned out it was fine.
Pippa:Yeah, and it was fine. Yeah, absolutely, and that is absolutely true. Yeah one year when I got COVID at New Year, I was in bed until about March and I was really really ill and yeah everything was fine. It was all fine.
Zoe:I love this is the message basically of everything we talk about. But we will talk about best practice and
Pippa:why Yes,
Zoe:we don't want to do that,
Pippa:exactly. So why it's best not to just abandon your garden, but equally if that's what you want to do, that's also true. One of the main things is just that particularly if you're looking at your annual crops and you've just dug everything up and then abandoned your bare soil, that is like the perfect conditions for weed seeds to now germinate because you know you've taken all their competition away, you've left the surface bare, open to the sunlight, and so of course all that's where all your weed seeds are going to germinate. That just makes it harder for you. I mean equally, if, and we did talk about this about your allotment, if all the weed seeds germinate and you have a bed full of weeds, could just think of it as acting like a green manure.
Zoe:So when, yes, but I mean, then are they not taking nutrients out of the soil that you might want in the soil for when you plant things in the spring?
Pippa:They are, but if you then hold off the seedlings or if you then mulch them out with cardboard or something and you're leaving you know you're leaving all the weeds in situ then actually it's just like cycling the nutrients.
Zoe:Or you could do chop and drop couldn't you? Yeah, chop and drop. Absolutely. Okay good.
Pippa:But it's really just about keeping the nutrients there by having plants growing in the ground and using them up. Also, you know, the soil life is happier when this thing's actually actively growing in there as well. So, know, actually green manures are really brilliant for all those reasons. And if it happens to be that your weeds are your green manure, mean, it's not ideal depending on the weeds, it can be hard to get rid of them. But I think worst case scenario, if you come back in spring and your beds are full of weeds, know, actually maybe just think about covering them in cardboard and planting through them.
Zoe:So I'm thinking maybe not leave the horse tail or the mare's tail or the what's the other one? Bindweed. We went Bindweed, yeah. But maybe anything with like shallow roots that aren't so invasive. Like that, what was it called?
Zoe:The prickly oxtail thing?
Pippa:Oh yes, That I've got where we would have The thing that you've got that doesn't seem to grow anyway. It's like
Zoe:a sort of weird anomaly just to my allotment. Yes. Well, I'm embracing it.
Pippa:Great, great. Yes. So but equally, if you're doing no dig, you just cover as soon as you've dug a crop up, then you're putting a mulch down. So then there isn't time for the weed seeds to germinate because you've already covered them up. You've already taken away that sunlight and smothered them out and that mulch is then going to be sort of slowly rotting down and nutrients going into the soil.
Pippa:So if you can just put a mulch on top and it doesn't have to be a mulch of homemade compost if you don't have enough, know, it's quite hard to make enough compost to cover an entire allotment. It could be cut grass, it could be some leaves. My absolute favorite is when you're mowing the lawn, like usually kind of the last cut of the year, and it's kind of a mix of grass and leaves that have fallen off trees, that is my favorite because that just makes a really nice emulsion compost.
Zoe:Yeah, yeah, the fig, my fig tree all the leaves have fallen off of it now I'm like good! Go on the soil and stay there!
Pippa:Yeah and stay there yeah absolutely so it could be a mix of leaves and grass or just leaves or just grass or it could be something like straw or if you can get hold of some well rotted manure.
Zoe:I know I was thinking of going to because we've got a park down the end of our road and scooping up a load of all the leaves that have fallen off the trees. I've only got the fig tree in my garden and just kind of stealing theirs.
Pippa:Yes absolutely and you know offer to take some off your neighbour's driveway or lawn or you know, get hold of some mulch of some kind. And that is the best thing that you can put on your soil. And then you know, things like worms that are in the soil, even if you've not got plants growing in there, they've got plenty of food because you've just put a load of fresh organic matter on the soil. You know, they'll be busy eating that over the winter. So that would be perfect.
Zoe:Awesome.
Pippa:And also it stops like quite often in really heavy rain over the winter. It can sort of almost compact the very surface layer of your soil as well, so it's best not to leave it bare.
Zoe:Right, okay. Come on everyone, let's cover our soil with something. Something, yeah, something. Mean, as you say, even cardboard probably isn't
Pippa:Even cardboard, yeah. If you've got nothing else, cardboard is good as well. Okay. Just not ideally not plastic, because plastic doesn't let it doesn't let any water get into the soil, so your soil is going to be drying out, which means all of your soil life is going to be drying out. And I mean, also it can degrade and you get bits of microplastics all over the place.
Pippa:So yeah, not plastic, cardboard in preference to plastic if you haven't got any mulch. Yes. And then, I mean, all the winter crops that you might have still in the ground. So you might have things like kale or leeks, parsnips, winter cabbage, if you're organized. Yeah, so we have an abundance of kale.
Pippa:I don't have a massive amount of leeks because we planted a small amount in the front garden. I think I've maybe got like 12 leeks or something like that, But all the ones that were meant to go in the back garden was where that bumblebee nest So we had to abandon our leek crop in the back garden. But they've moved out now, so I will be creating some beds there. But I will be creating a mound of brash and things somewhere else in the garden so that hopefully bumble bees might nest in that next year. Nice.
Pippa:Because I don't want to take away all their habitat, so I'll make a pile similar pile somewhere else.
Zoe:And put up a little to let sign.
Pippa:Yes, yeah. And then, so once you've sort of covered your soil and that's all right, it might be that you have some crops in the ground that might need a bit of protection.
Zoe:Okay.
Pippa:And it depends what you're growing really, but you might have some kind of hardy salad crops or something like that out in the garden, or maybe some broad beans or something like that that you're wanting to just give a bit protection to. You can put on things like fleece or cloches, but you know where I am it's really windy and it's just really hard to put anything like that out because yeah, it just gets blown away. So I just go with, you know, they'll have to tough it out.
Zoe:I'll have
Pippa:to tough it out.
Zoe:You do have a bit of a tough love policy with your guard.
Pippa:I do. I do. Yes. No Molly coddling here. But you can, you know, if you have things in pots that are maybe not fully hardy, like quite often even rosemary will die back where I am, know, in a really cold winter year I've got it.
Pippa:So things like that. If I've got it in pots, put it in the greenhouse or polytunnels, it might be you've got a few things that are kind of borderline going to make it through the winter, so you could move those somewhere a little bit more protected, a little bit warmer, and even some things because I think people forget sometimes that things in the ground, their roots don't get frosted because the frost doesn't penetrate the soil very far unless we have a really cold winter. But if you've got it in a pot, of course the roots can get frozen solid because they're above ground the cold can penetrate through a pot. If you've got something really tender you might want to put something like bubble wrap around the pot as well just to try and insulate it a little bit just to keep the roots frost free. But you know, like I say, I'm not one for really growing crops that need that much attention because I'm just too busy.
Pippa:I'm too busy to be going around and bubble wrapping my pots. Absolutely. Or even moving them. Yeah,
Zoe:that is not preserve of this podcast.
Pippa:No, no, definitely not. But yeah, I mean, for me personally, I just think I like to grow the really hardy stuff, leeks and kale and things like that, that can just be out all winter and do fine. I mean, do have some kale and Swiss chard in the polytunnel, mainly so that when it's really, really cold and everything else has stopped growing, plants that are in there will just give me a bit more of a crop. Oh, nice. So that's quite nice.
Pippa:We will maybe talk about hotbeds in more detail in another episode.
Zoe:Yes, I have questions.
Pippa:Yeah, we build a hot bed in the polytunnel as well and that just keeps the temperature on the hot bed. It's a bit like putting them on a heat mat. Last year we grew pea shoots and coriander and salad leaves all through the winter, even through the coldest, even when it snowed for a week and didn't melt at all for a whole entire week and everywhere was frozen solid, could still go in there and be picking pea shoots and tiny coriander leaves and nice fresh salads. That was really lovely.
Zoe:We'll get into that more another time.
Pippa:Yeah, and of course by next year you'll have your greenhouse fully Will fully built and ready to I though, knowing what we know about me? We can hope, we can dream.
Zoe:We can dream, we can do something Yeah. Might What about all the fruit business people love in their gardens?
Pippa:So there's, I mean, I don't do a lot of fruit pruning to be honest in terms of my apples and pears and things like that. I grow usually sort of dwarf, semi dwarfing fruit trees, so they're not massive. Actually there is some evidence to say that less pruning is actually better rather than feeling the need to go in and prune it. You know, they say to let air to flow through and light to get to the fruit and keep an open goblet shape on your tree. And actually there's some evidence to say that actually just don't even bother with all that and probably you'll get a really good crop anyway.
Pippa:It's once again the message of this podcast, if
Zoe:you don't you'll probably be fine.
Pippa:Absolutely. So actually we don't tend to really prune our stuff. Maybe once we've planted it in the first few years just to make sure it has a nice shape, but after that we more or less leave it unless it's getting too big or there's sort of a dead or diseased branch or something like that. Things like stone fruits, like cherries and plums and things like that, actually you don't prune those this time of year anyway. There's something called silver leaf and if you leave any open cuts now you risk the silver leaf getting into the wounds and then potentially killing off your trees.
Pippa:So now is not the time to be pruning those. Things like raspberries, so you get autumn fruiting raspberries and summer fruiting raspberries. So the difference is autumn fruiting raspberries will grow from the ground, put up a cane and fruit all in one year because they fruit a bit later in the year. Summer fruiting raspberries, there isn't time for them to grow a whole cane and to flower and fruit in the summer. They fruit on previous year's canes.
Zoe:Should I not have just cut all my raspberries down?
Pippa:Well I assumed that was because you knew that yours were all I competing know
Zoe:they All
Pippa:right okay. Well maybe by the end of this you'll know the answer. So if there's summer fruiting raspberries they will have some canes that will have fruited and then they'll also have new canes that are coming up that will fruit the following summer.
Zoe:Okay.
Pippa:And you can usually tell with summer fruiting raspberries which ones are the old canes and which are the new ones because the old canes will have like you should be able to see where where the fruit was so like the the newer canes will be just sort of whippy and straight without any branchy bits. Whereas the old canes you should be able to see like the branching bits where the fruit were.
Zoe:Sure.
Pippa:If that makes sense. And they tend to turn brown as well. Once they've fruited, the canes tend to turn brown. And so you take out the old canes that are fruited and then you leave the canes that will fruit next year and you can tie them in either on a frame or I don't like to have frames in my forest garden because it doesn't look very natural. So I tend to just actually grab some of the canes and tie them up together make almost like a kind of self supporting obelisk type
Zoe:thing. And
Pippa:as we discussed last time, you can lift and divide your rhubarb now as well. So you go. If manage to make it down. Okay,
Zoe:that's my goal, stretch goal, try and get that done for next time.
Pippa:Yeah, and so I thought I'd just talk a little bit about pest and disease as well, just briefly, because the old fashioned way of thinking was that old leaves and dead stems and things, you know, that's where pests and diseases can overwinter. But actually, the way of doing things now is actually that by leaving organic matter in your garden, like by doing chop and drop and just leaving the dead plant material around, actually you're building, you're helping to build a healthy soil ecosystem. So actually I would say unless it's something that's a disease or a virus or something like that that's likely to carry over in the soil, even blight of potatoes, you know, that's an airborne thing and it doesn't survive the winter. So all of these things can be composted. I just tend to do sort of chop and drop, leave organic matter on the soil.
Pippa:I'm not going to be super tidy. In fact, if anything, I'm leaving extra piles of stems and branches around to encourage things like beetles and hedgehogs and things like that to come and help me with pest management in the garden. The only place where maybe I might do the opposite of that is somewhere like a polytunnel or a greenhouse. And that's really just because pests and diseases can kind of get a bit more rampant in there because you're kind of enclosing it anyway and it's already a bit more difficult to keep a healthy ecosystem in a space like that. Things like, you know, red spider mite or scale or, you know, all these different things are a bit harder to control in that kind of So I think just be a little bit tidier in your greenhouse or polytunnel, that can be just keeping an eye out, know, being vigilant and checking if there's an issue starting to form, you know, if you start to see signs of red spider bite or something like that, know, try and keep an eye out for it because it is a bit trickier to say in situations.
Pippa:Yeah. Other than that, I mean, like I say, if you if you just are very busy and you you know, you are a fair weather gardener and you don't like being cold, you could just abandon your garden and it'll still be there in the spring and it won't be the end of the world. But if you want to make your life a lot easier in the spring then those things will help. Well
Zoe:what can we be plant is there anything we could be planting now that will give us like a head start for a crop for next year?
Pippa:Yes, so you could be planting things like garlic now and broad beans. You can plant them in the spring, but you can also plant them in the autumn. We did chat in a few episodes ago about different broad bean varieties. It was one of our Ask Pippa questions. There's some different varieties that will grow really well through the horrible weather.
Zoe:I've always done those is it Acordulce?
Pippa:Yes, yeah. Also some onion sets you can get some kind of hardy onions that you can plant now and then they will grow. You'll get an earlier crop next year.
Zoe:Nice.
Pippa:And then if you've got somewhere either if you're in a mild area or you've got a bit of a microclimate or you've got a polytunnel or a greenhouse, you can sow some things like lamb's lettuce or rocket or some of the oriental salad mixes now and even some hardy peas like Duce Provence will you can sow them now to get an early crop next year. So there's still things that can be going in.
Zoe:Okay.
Pippa:Yeah. Cool. If you're really, you know, don't want to venture out into the garden, then some nice indoor jobs that I will be doing when it's sort of frosty and snowy and sleety outside is cleaning and sharpening and repairing all my tools.
Zoe:Oh wow!
Pippa:Because I like to Be a grown up? Yes, to be a grown up. I mean, do, I'm not particularly good at keeping on top of sharpening my secateurs, which I should do way more often than I do.
Zoe:How does one sharpen secateurs?
Pippa:Well, can get like a sharpening stone. You get sort of special angled ones as well that make it really easy to sharpen secateurs.
Zoe:I forget that you're a pro because I'm like, what? How do you know this? I was like, yeah, it's your job.
Pippa:Yes. Yeah, I had a whole training session when I was training with the RHS on how to sharpen secateurs. Can if you want. Maybe gardening tools should
Zoe:be a whole other episode.
Pippa:Well yeah, it could be. You can also send them off. Certain places will sharpen and repair all of your tools for you if you want. So there are places that do that, particularly secateurs. You can just post them off.
Pippa:Or if you have like I have Felco secateurs, so they're the ones that I got as a trainee many years ago, about fifteen plus years ago now. What I love about them is you can buy all the spare bits so you can just buy yourself a new sharp blade as well if you want. And I'll be doing things like sorting through my
Zoe:seeds. Or like seeing what's missing before the first seed swaps?
Pippa:Absolutely. What I've got so much of that I can give away at seed swaps and doing a bit of planning. Although at the moment I'm sort of thinking about planning rather than actually That's
Zoe:not jumping to planning right now. We've got too much sorting to do.
Pippa:Yeah, definitely. Cool.
Zoe:Awesome. Okay, that's very exciting. Well, that's lots for us to keep us out of mischief, isn't it? All right, so let's move on to the section that we call Ask Pippa, AKA Pippa help. Right, so the first question comes from Kristen.
Zoe:Kristen says, Hi, Pippa. I'm in the middle of moving and I'm going from New York City gorilla container gardening on a concrete courtyard to having a 1.5 acre backyard that leads into a forest. Amazing. Yep. Both amazing.
Zoe:I have to say, I think both of those situations are very cool. I'm both so excited and dreaming about all the things I might be able to grow and also very overwhelmed about how to begin. I also want to be very intentional with my relationship with this new land and take the time I need to get to know it. We're moving into hibernating season so it seems like a good time for some planning but I don't know where to begin. I'm wondering if you could speak to how you like to get to know new land that you are living or working with.
Zoe:And also if you could give me one or two concrete things I could do first to get unstuck from the overwhelm. This is such an amazing question!
Pippa:Yeah, well, I just think what an exciting move to make. So Amazing to have been doing some brilliant gorilla container gardening in But the first
Zoe:don't you think that that's gonna be like, because Kristen's already been doing that, this new possibility of all this space, you can really imagine how overwhelming, but also like the sense of freedom that comes with that.
Pippa:Yeah, and I think that's the thing, isn't it? Sometimes you're so excited, but at the same time, it's just feels too much. Like there's just too much excitement that you just don't know it to begin. So whenever I am taking on a new project, and it was the same when I'm, you know, our garden that I have now is still relatively new and I'm still figuring it out. But the first thing that I say to do is just try and like start small.
Pippa:So yes, there's one and a half acres, but you don't need to do it all at once. And the same with any garden really, like our own home garden is not massive but we started by just putting some raised beds in the front garden in the first year that we were here and just kind of left the rest of it without just sort of feeling like we had to have it all done in one go. So I would say start small. And the second thing would be, you know, in permaculture design we always start with observation. So ideally, the, you know, the ideal would be to observe and look at your land or garden for a whole year, so that you get to know it through all of the growing seasons.
Pippa:But we all know that when you get a new garden you just want to get started.
Zoe:Of course you do!
Pippa:So I'd say some small, you know, raised beds or something like that near to the house so that they're easy to and yeah, you so that you can see them all the time and something temporary as well. So we talked about building raised beds with like those pallet collars or not even necessarily raised beds you could just mound some soil to plant into so that you're not making any permanent decisions. Good idea
Zoe:because you might suddenly realize oh actually that's where I'd like to have a little sitting area and actually
Pippa:And get that the very much in our own garden our plans changed so much from when we first moved in what we actually ended up with now. And so I think that if you can spend a whole year, you know, just sort of observing, and particularly if you have something as big as an acre and a half, like every part of that is going to have a slightly different microclimate, a slightly different feel to it. And so one thing that I like to do, and we did this just in our, even in our own small garden, do it to keep taking our chairs and just kind of putting them in a different part of the garden and sitting and having a cup of tea and a chat. And what does it feel like to sit here? And what, you know, if we planted a tree here, which part would it shade?
Pippa:And so just actually like taking some small picnics all over, you know, This
Zoe:is lovely.
Pippa:Every week or two, sit in a different part of your land and just have a chat. Well, what do we think would be nice to have here? And actually, if we put a polytunnel here, would that spoil our view of the wider landscape? Or maybe we should put one over there. You know, all these sorts of conversations that you can have over the space of a whole year that will really mean that in the long run your garden will be way way better.
Pippa:So not having to like, people often rush into planting things like trees because
Zoe:you think oh they're going to take ages so let's get them in quick!
Pippa:Yeah. But they're also the most permanent and least movable thing. So actually they're the things you want to take the longest to decide over. So I'm not saying like wait ten years before planting one, but maybe just wait a year before you plant them so that you can really have thought about very carefully about where you're going to plant things.
Zoe:Cool.
Pippa:And also getting to know your soil. Just go around digging what's technically called test pits, but basically holes.
Zoe:I'm digging a test pit!
Pippa:Because you might find that in one part of your garden that you dig a hole and actually it just fills with water instantly because the water table's really high. Right. Or you might go to another area, and this happened with my very first forest garden that I planted. I'd made this brilliant plan I was so excited about. And then when I came to dig some holes, turned out that about a quarter of the field was so stony that you couldn't even dig a hole.
Zoe:Oh, wow. So this
Pippa:was right at the beginning of my food forest career. And so actually digging some test holes to see what the ground is like. Is it dry? Is it solid clay? Is it a bog?
Pippa:How deep should a test hole be ideally? Somewhere around 40 centimeters, something like that. 40 to 50 centimeters. I mean some people, depending on your conditions, you might not be able to dig more than about five.
Zoe:Right, sure. It just
Pippa:depends what your soil is like. And this is the same if you get a new allotment as well. Know, doesn't have to be an acre and a half. I would say the same thing if you just had bought a new house and you had a new back garden or had got a new allotment is just to dig around and see, because then you can know, like actually, if you dig around and there's one area that's really stony and you just can't dig a hole at all, maybe that's a good place to put your shed or your compost heap or somewhere that you don't need to plant, you
Zoe:know. One
Pippa:of the gardens that I work at has really terrible stony soil. It's really quite shallow. And then they decided to put in a shipping container office, which is great.
Zoe:That's cool.
Pippa:But when I went to dig out some plants from that area, it turned out that the area that they designated was like the best topsoil ever. So now there's like this shipping container Oh, right over you know the most that? Amazing Well, was too late by then because planning permission had been granted and everything. So, you know, doing these
Zoe:simple Would you recommend that Kristen maybe like drew a kind of plan of their space? And then like when this research is being undertaken there and you can make notes about all this bit
Pippa:Yeah, And it doesn't have to be like a to scale map. It doesn't have to be anything beautiful. It can just be like the basic shape, any like features. And then yeah, just take notes of, oh actually in the winter this bit doesn't get any sun, or this bit's very sunny all year round, or this bit's really boggy in the winter. And it just really helps when you come to planning.
Zoe:That's cool. That's really cool. Oh, I'm so excited for Kristin. Kristin, please keep us updated.
Pippa:Yes, I'd love to see some pictures
Zoe:as please well. Send us pictures. I'll put them in the community chat space on the Patreon and then please keep us updated with how it all pans out. Cannot wait to follow along.
Pippa:Yeah.
Zoe:Okay, here's my question. Well, it's a two part question that are not in any way related. The first bit, I'm just gonna say, so in terms of that whole can you leave things as green manure? Nasturtiums are taking over my backyard, can I leave them? Please say yes.
Zoe:Yes. Thank you. Otherwise it's gonna be bare soil under there and I don't want that.
Pippa:Yeah, you can just leave them and they might self seed but maybe that's a good thing.
Zoe:I think they are gonna self seed because I once planted a nasturtium about four years ago and every year they come back. But I don't mind them because they look cool, they're pretty, they're pollinator friendly and they're quite easy to pull out if you do decide you
Pippa:wanna Yeah, make a Yeah, you don't have to dig or anything either, you just pull them
Zoe:straight out. Exactly, just pull them straight out and the roots aren't that deep and they're not a problem. Cool, okay, thank you. The other thing is very much linked to what you were talking about earlier in the main part of this episode. Okay, so my fig tree.
Zoe:I planted a fig tree in, I wanna say four years ago now when we very Not first disappointed by the position. And this year it did so well. It's taken a few years get going, but this year, my goodness, the figs were like tennis balls. Was eating about two a day and I was very, very happy for several weeks. But the tree is getting big.
Zoe:It's starting to block a bit of our neighbor's garden. I know that they're gonna start to get annoyed. And it is starting to encroach into where we would maybe like to sit have laundry hanging and things like that. So is now a good time to prune it and cut it back a bit?
Pippa:Yeah you can prune it now. Things like figs and mulberries and things that are quite sappy, they can be quite sappy. It's best not to prune them in the spring when the sap starts to rise otherwise they can just be like oozing sap So for yeah, now you can prune it back
Zoe:here. I did ask for one of those kind of pruning saws.
Pippa:So Oh have
Zoe:one, it's still in its How do I even go about it? Like how do I know what to cut and where?
Pippa:Well, you've got to kind of think where do you want it to grow to eventually? Quite often people will prune things back to the size that they want it to be. Yeah. But then of course the second that it starts growing, it's immediately too big.
Zoe:Sure, that's a very good point. Yeah, yeah. I think I want it to be like, yeah, like I don't really want to be too much higher than the fence.
Pippa:Yeah, so maybe cut it back a bit below the fence and then you're giving it a bit of space to grow into. And then when you're cutting back any plant really that's kind of like a shrubby plant, you want to cut back fairly close to like where it branches or where there's like, call it a node on the branch. Do you know what I mean? Like that where maybe where there used to be a leaf or there used to be a bud or something. You want to cut it back to one of those points because if you just chop it anywhere, then you've got more chance of that bit.
Pippa:It will naturally die back to the next node.
Zoe:Ah, okay. So am I cutting slightly, just ever so slightly in front of the node?
Pippa:Yeah, so you're not cutting through the middle of it, but just Yeah. A bit above So because if you leave a big bit it will just die and then you've got more chance of sort of diseases and Is
Zoe:now a good opportunity, I mean, I'm looking at it now. So like some of the branches are really low and I kind of think I may, can I get rid of those altogether kind of right back to the main branches? Getting a bit more tree than bushy.
Pippa:Yeah, so you can take some branches right back to the main bit. If they're growing right out in a place that you don't want them, can cut those right back. And I think with pruning sometimes it's just about I remember my first attempts at pruning. I had the RHS guide to pruning. This is how much training I had at the time.
Pippa:No one had ever taught me how to prune. I just took this book, I looked up the relevant plant, and then I would just go for it. So I would say whatever plant it is that you're wanting to prune. Obviously now the internet has loads more information on, so you can just like Google it or whatever. And so, you know, have a look at your specific plant because different plants will be wanting to be pruned at different times of the year.
Pippa:But then just go for it. Like you might end up with, if you do it wrong, you might end up with a slightly oddly shaped shrub, but you're not, you're very
Zoe:unlikely Which would be to fine when it grows leaves again anyway.
Pippa:Exactly, exactly. You're very unlikely to kill it. Okay. So you should be fine. But I think it's just about taking it back to the size that you want it, or just a bit smaller, cutting off any branches that sticking right out in the wrong direction that you don't want them, but just don't like just randomly chop bits off because then you might find that you're cutting off all the bits that are gonna give you your fruit.
Pippa:So I think you have to accept that when you prune something you are going to lose some of the fruit. Yeah. But if you sort of cut it quite hard back now to be about the right size, then hopefully you won't have to do much hard pruning over the next few years.
Zoe:Okay, awesome. I will report back. So I've got a really important question to ask that we forgot to ask in the last episode, which is my bad. Pippa, if we only have time for one thing this week, what should we be doing?
Pippa:I think it would be going around and just double checking if you have anything that is frost tender and making sure that you have protected it in some way or taken it into your greenhouse because it only takes one frost to kill it off. So as we have quite a lot of cold weather on its way in The UK here, then that would be my one thing to do this week.
Zoe:Okay, all right, cool. So we're going be talking about next episode.
Pippa:So I was thinking that next episode we might be talking about planning for next year.
Zoe:Oh, that's exciting!
Pippa:Yeah, because, well, as I say, I've been thinking about planning. Planning planning but I feel like, yeah, I think it's that time of year to start, yeah, going through your seeds, thinking about what you might want to grow or move around in your garden for next year, because then you've got a bit of time to do any of the groundwork you might need to do or to know what seeds you might be on the hunt for or plants you might be looking out for at seed swaps and plant swaps.
Zoe:Nice, okay, I'm very excited about that because I hope that all of us, those who make this podcast and those who listen to this podcast and those who support this podcast, I really hope that we have an awesome growing season next year fulfill many of our growing dreams. But to make that happen, we need to know what those dreams are, don't we? So that's what we can talk about next week. I love it. Awesome.
Zoe:Well, you so much for sharing your extensive knowledge with us and can't wait to talk to you very soon.
Pippa:Yep, looking forward to
Zoe:it. Bye.
Pippa:Make sure you hit the subscribe, favorite or follow button so you don't miss an episode and head to patreon.comcanidigitpodcast where you can join the podcast community for free and submit your questions and queries.
