When I first moved here many years ago, I discovered that it was a very windy spot.  That was something I had never thought about before when we lived in a house with a sheltered garden near the coast, where the climate was much kinder!  I love runner beans but I very soon learned that here, just as they were coming into full crop every August and developing a lot of beans, we would get such vicious autumn gales that they would all be flattened. Even if I built very strong structures for them to climb on, so that they weren't knocked over - they would still be so battered and bruised that they were badly damaged and stopped cropping anyway!  Growing them in a polytunnel wasn't a good option, because although a lot of bees come into the polytunnel in spring, there are not as many around at the time when runner beans need pollinating.  I did try growing them inside, but I didn't really get good enough crops to make them worth the space they took up.

Then the delicious French/runner bean cross 'Moonlight' appeared in the seed catalogues - and that was a real game changer for me.  Being self-pollinating, it doesn't really need bees at all, and crops very reliably in a polytunnel - although bees really seem to love it and spend a lot of time on it anyway.  The problem for me was that it is an F1 hybrid, so I couldn't save seed from it as I do with the other, open-pollinated  bean varieties which I grow, and I had to buy it every year. After a year or so of buying them, I remembered an old trick that my father used, which meant that I could actually keep the bean plants going ad infinitum. 

As runner beans are actually a perennial crop which form a tuber, like dahlias, the tops can be cut off about 5-10 cm from the tuberous roots, and these can then be lifted before autumn frosts turn them to mush.  Dry off any excess moisture by leaving them in the sun for a day or so, without letting them shrivel and get too dry, they can then be stored in a box or plant crate of some some old dry-ish, well-drained potting compost - just like dahlia tubers.  Like that they will keep very well all winter, staying plump and ready to go in spring.  Just inspect them occasionally to make sure they are not too damp, which could cause rotting, and also make sure that pests like slugs or snails are not eating them!  Then plant them in April or May the following year as the weather arms up, just covering the tubers with soil and watering only lightly at first until you can see shoots emerging.  You can use this clever, root-saving trick for any runner bean varieties which will grow outside - not just Moonlight.  Moonlight will in fact also overwinter in dry soil in the polytunnel without lifting, reappearing happily the next year - but most people will need that space for winter crops.
 
 
Over a few years - the tubers will form huge clumps, with many shoots, which can be cut or sawn (in my case with a bread knife!) into portions just like dahlia tubers, as long as each portion has a growing shoot at the top.  This is particularly easy to do if they are growing in tubs, which can easily just be stored on their side and kept dry overwinter, and then the roots lifted in the spring for division and re-planting.  Growing them this way, will you get much earlier crops, especially if you grow 'Moonlight' in a polytunnel or greenhouse...... So - you will have runner beans forever, without ever having to buy seed again!itum. 

Some fast-growing crops like summer spinach, Oriental vegetables, quick salad mixes, kohlrabi and rocket etc. will all crop by November if sown now - and may possibly go on cropping through the winter if it's mild. If you tend to get very hard frosts where you live you can cover them on cold nights with fleece but do uncover during the day to allow any dampness to dry off and hang the damp fleeces up to dry - then you won't get any disease which is encouraged by humid conditions,. Lettuce, land cress, lambs lettuce, loose leaf cabbage greens etc. are a little slower growing but must be sown NOW so that they can establish really good root systems and make enough growth to just keep 'ticking over' through the winter - these will be your mainstays - allowing you to pick leaves every few days, or every day if you have plenty of plants, and they'll give you a slow but continuous crop throughout the winter. This is why sowing into modules and containers is such a good idea. If you wait until after current crops are finished and cleared to think about sowing things, it will be far too late. Having good plants in modules or pots ready and waiting, to go straight in as soon as summer crops are cleared, makes the most efficient use of very valuable tunnel space. 

It will still be much too hot on any sunny days to sow or even plant many of the winter salads in the tunnel even if there is room - a couple of hours of very high temperatures can literally 'cook' them - so sowing outside in pots or modules is the best option. I usually do two sowings of my favourite crops as insurance. The only things I always sow in mid-late July without fail are Swiss chards and chicories as they are slower - everything else I sow from mid-August to mid-Sept., so that they are small enough not to bolt or run up to seed in a warm autumn but will still make a big enough plant to crop well through the winter - even a cold one! It's a fine balance, and will vary slightly from year to year depending on the autumn weather and also your local climate.  In the milder south you may be able to sow some things a couple of weeks later, in the north you may be better sowing a week or two earlier, but it's light that mostly governs healthy growth - so I find that's about right.

And most importantly - NEVER economise on good seed compost - doing so is a false economy as it can not only waste valuable seed but even more importantly at this time of year - may lose you valuable time!! If you lose seedlings now - for many it's too late to sow again!  And talking of which.....

The Value of growing Brassica (cabbage family) Undercover

 

The other brassica I always grow in winter is Green Magic calabrese/broccoli.   In a mild winter it will produce a large central head in the late autumn and then lots of smaller side shoots slowly, but steadily until the following spring. 'Green Magic' is the one I've found best for this - and it wouldn't normally grow at all outside over the winter. If you sow it at the end of July it will produce a really good tunnel crop in late autumn - but even sown now, it will still go on to produce small sweet shoots all winter that are delicious for picking raw or lightly steaming. Some years ago I found that following brassicas with sweet potatoes works very well - because sweet potatoes enjoy a little bit of hardship to start with!  If you're too kind to them when they're first planted they produce wild masses of luxuriant leaves - with very 

little in the way of tubers underneath later on. I experimented by leaving a row kale down the middle of the bed - it used up a lot of the nutrients and stopped the sweet potatoes growing too lushly at first. The kale can be left in the ground when you're planting the sweet potatoes - still producing well into the summer if they're watered regularly. If it gets too tall you can just chop off it's head with a pair of loppers. It doesn't mind a bit and will re-sprout lovely fresh young growth from the truncated stalks - even when it's quite hot in the tunnel. 

 

 

I love to experiment with different kinds of inter-cropping and overlapping of crops.  I often find unexpected things that work well as part of my rotations - which make the best use of the space and completely do away with the so-called spring 'Hungry Gap' everyone complains about. There's no such thing here - there's always something good to eat. The permaculture people have invented a new name for doing this - they call it 'polyculture'.  Essentially, it's exactly the same inter-cropping, catch cropping and overlapping of crops that I've been doing for well over 40 years now - growing all sorts of things all together, growing flowers and permanent top fruit in the tunnel too - making the most of every possible inch. This is even more important undercover, where space is at a premium! 

 

 

Making the most of your space under cover is all down to good forward planning - you should be thinking several months ahead to the following crops whenever you're planting anything. Valuable tunnel space should be as productive as possible all year round.

 

 

More on sweet potatoes

 

 

It's time to give your sweet potatoes a bit more TLC now. They need feeding with tomato fertiliser once a week from now on if they are to produce plenty of large tubers. 'Osmo' certified organic feed is perfect - again something I've been using for years now. Everything loves it and you never get any nutrient imbalances as you often can do with other, non-organic feeds. You could use home made comfrey feed if it's made from the high potash variety 'Bocking 14' developed by Garden Organic founder Lawrence Hills. Other varieties wouldn't be much good for this as they're far lower in potash. Sweet potatoes are dead easy to grow - the trick is not to feed them much at first but wait until the days start to shorten in August, because that's when they start developing their tubers. They're a fantastic 'break crop' in the tunnel rotation, because they're unrelated to anything else and the worms just love the little thread like bits of root left behind after harvesting. I always see a huge increase in worm activity after growing them in any bed. Worms obviously have a sweet tooth too! 

 

 

I've tried lots of newer varieties - but I always return to my old reliable 'Beauregarde'. I save a few of the tubers for producing 'slips' to plant next year. I did that very successfully again last year and gave them to several friends. I must hide a few so that we don't eat them all!. If they're stored above 50 deg F, they'll keep very well into next spring and beyond. I've even kept the purple ones for a year and then taken shoots or slips from them! Never keep sweet potatoes in the fridge as they actually die of hypothermia!  Many people don't realise that vegetables are still alive after they're harvested. How else do you think we grow potatoes? You don't necessarily have to grow sweet potatoes in the ground either - but they do like a deep root run, so they like a large container filled with well drained compost. I often grow them in recycled log/skip bags and they revel in them - producing huge crops.The foliage hangs over the edge, hiding the bags, and they look really decorative with marigolds and purple basil planted in them too - especially when they produce their beautiful, convulvulus-like mauve flowers..

 

 

Feeding Soil for Winter Crops

 

 

It pays to keep some your very best garden or worm compost for the beds where your winter salad crops are to grow.  Many of them have fine root systems which appreciate a little bit of comfort and if you're as kind as possible to them they will keep cropping for much longer in the early spring, before running up to flower. I just scratch a light covering in and then water it in lightly to firm the soil before planting. You could possibly add a very light dressing of a general organic fertiliser like 'Osmo Universal' granular fertiliser - which is certified organic - if you think the ground is particularly hungry.  It's available in several garden centres. Never over-feed winter crops though - just give them enough to get going without being starved. Lashing on manure, compost or compound fertilisers is wasteful, often polluting and can be counter productive - as there isn't enough light for the plants to photosynthesise efficiently in order to turn the available nitrates into sugars to give them the energy to grow. This has the result that crops can often taste bitter due to high nitrate content in leaves. Overfeeding can also promote soft, sappy, disease-prone growth that is much more attractive to pests too. I've thought for many years that overfeeding with nitrogen is why non-organic vegetables can taste bitter and smell really disgusting when cooked, especially in the winter. This is particularly the case with Brussels sprouts - and I think this is why so many people hate them! I've never had organically grown sprouts that taste bitter like chemically grown ones. Organic ones are always really sweet as long as they're not overfed with nitrate-rich manures too late in the season. 

 

 

Funnily enough many years ago when I used to have my small children's Montessori friends for meals - they would often eat things like spinach and cabbage here which they would never normally touch at home, if they weren't people who normally ate organic food.  An instinctive natural discrimination perhaps - an evolutionary warning not to eat things that taste at all bitter in case they're poisonous? And naturally - fruit and other wild things are far sweeter and have maximum nutrients when they are properly ripe. Perhaps this is why children seem to prefer chemical-free organic food, before their taste buds and instinctive discrimination are 'civilised', dulled and destroyed by junk foods?  I definitely think so - I never had any so-called,  'picky eating' problems with my kids. They ate everything!  Anyway - my children's schoolmates parents were all simply astonished - but when I explained that my vegetables were actually sweeter because they were organic - many of them asked if they could buy them, and then became long-standing customers when I started growing commercially. Most, more than 35 years later, are still committed organic consumers even though their offspring, like mine, have long since flown their respective nests!

 

Ventilation, careful watering & good housekeeping are essential now to keep diseases at bay

 

 

In this "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" it's easy to get so distracted with enjoying all the "fruitfulness" that one forgets that the "mists" can hang around all day - particularly in a polytunnel!  Only water if you absolutely have to - and if you do then do it in the morning if possible and do it between - not directly onto plants. This gives surface moisture a chance to evaporate before the night time closing of doors. Scrupulous housekeeping is absolutely vital now too. Remove every single scrap of dead or diseased plant material immediately to avoid fungal diseases developing that could infect the winter crops you'll be planting over the next month or so. Good ventilation is absolutely essential too, I only close the doors at night (necessary to keep out foxes and badgers that are particularly partial to the strawberries and late peaches that are still cropping well) and I open them again first thing in the morning. as long as it's not too windy.

 

Save money by saving your own seed

 

 

A truss of 'Pantano Romanesco' - the largest 4 fruits weighed 11-14ozs each!

 

Now is the time of year for saving tomato seed. You can save a lot of money doing this - and you don't need to go to a lot of fuss and bother soaking, washing or doing anything else.  Just do what Nature does - let it rot!  Nature doesn't rinse seed in chlorinated water. The natural ripening process and then fermentation as the fruit starts to rot is what the seed needs to overcome any innate germination inhibitors.  Pick the ripest possible fruit - put it on your kitchen windowsill in the sun in a yogurt pot or something - and just leave it to fester!  Put it somewhere where mice won't get into it and the inevitable fruit flies won't bother you - and do remember to label it!  Sorry if you're of a delicate disposition - but it does pong a bit!  if you're one of those people who has to have ghastly, asthma-inducing air fresheners everywhere to mask perfectly natural smells, then you probably won't be reading this anyway! When it's really smelly and rotten - then you can just squish the seed out into a small sieve, rinse under a running tap for a moment stirring the messy flesh around a bit to get rid of any fleshy bits, pick out any remaining skin and then tip onto a couple of layers of kitchen paper towels. Then put the paper towels onto a cake drying rack or something similar somewhere for a few days to dry. If you're doing several varieties at once - then write the name of the variety onto the paper towel with indelible marker immediately!  When everything's completely dry - then just fold up the paper and put into a marked envelope. Simple! It works a treat, and the seed lasts for years stuck to it's piece of kitchen towel from where you can peel off the seed individually. If you don't even want to rinse the smelly flesh off - you can in fact just squish the seeds straight onto the paper without rinsing at all and this is just as successful! 

 

 

Do bear in mind that you can't save seed from F1 Hybrid varieties, as these are crosses made between two specific known parents. If you do save seed from them, they will just produce hundreds of different mongrels - mostly tasteless, possibly even bitter and usually not worth growing!  In a normal tunnel environment though - non F1 tomato seed will normally stay true to type - so you can save seed quite safely from those varieties and save yourself lots of money! Google them to check if they're F1's if you don't have the seed packet and you're not sure. The gorgeous-flavoured Italian beefsteak variety Pantano Romanesco (my desert island tomato!) pictured here, is one you can easily save seed from.

 

 

 

Tunnel fruits in abundance still

 

 

This is the sensational late peach that I bought quite by accident! I have no idea what variety it is - I got it in Lidl labelled as a nectarine, but it's the best flavoured peach I have!  It ripens a bit more slowly than the early summer one does which is better, and means we can eat more fresh over a longer period, rather than having to deal with a huge glut all at once. The only problem in a very wet autumn is that the fruit can tend to split with all the water at their roots though - which they're doing now - so they still need to be dealt with fast to avoid wasting them!  I'm currently dehydrating the last of the peach crop as fast as possible - as since the field beside the tunnels was harvested - we also now have a plague of hungry mice and our useless cat was no deterrent whatsoever - so it's now been re-homed to a very sweet old lady who lost hers and was delighted to have our very fussy and affectionate lap-cat!  By the way - the cat's also delighted!

 

 

 

The potted autumn raspberries are still fruiting exceptionally well in the same pots with very little feeding! They have the advantage of being both totally safe from marauding blackbirds and also from autumn gales and torrential rain - which often batter and ruin late crops outside here. I'm loving the Sugana raspberry from breeders Lubera - which is incredibly productive and really delicious. Although expensive to buy initially - it's already more than earned it's keep in huge crops of enormous fruits which also freeze well! I'm also growing my favourites 'Joan J' and 'Erika' in pots too - again hugely productive and which I think just have the edge on flavour. It's a way of stretching the season which is very useful. One big plus that 'Joan J' has in its favour is that it's stems are completely smooth and spine free - important when working at close quarters in a tunnel or if you have small children who like raspberries!

   

 

The grapes are ripening fast now too and again we're eating as many fresh as we can. Mice are particularly fond of grapes - especially the best seeded black ones like Muscat Bleu and Black Strawberry.   As they ripen - all the grapes will be frozen loose for smoothies etc. or made into sultanas or raisins by dehydrating in my Sedona dehydrator. The spring-sown cape gooseberries are ripening fast and will keep on going until December now all being well with the occasional high potash feed. They keep well for months in their little paper lantern cases which so far the mice conveniently haven't discovered!  I wonder how long that will last?

 

 

The Albion and Mara des Bois perpetual strawberries are still reliably producing their delicious berries - people must be tired of me saying what wonderful strawberries they are.   They won't stop fruiting until it gets really cold in November. Sticking to my rule of never wasting an inch of precious polytunnel space - at this time of year even my propagating benches get re-purposed as yet another fruit growing opportunity!  Albion is on there right now producing more strawberries in large pots and tubs!

 

 

Don't forget bees need winter food too!

 

Do think about planting some winter flowers like winter-flowering violas and pansies for non-hibernating overwintering bumblebees and any other vitally important pollinators that may happen to be around if it's a mild autumn. You'll be surprised how many will regularly come into your tunnel once they know you have flowers in there all winter, and it's great to see them and know you're helping them to survive! Without them we wouldn't have much food! Keep annual flowers like marigolds, borage, scabious etc. flowering for as long as possible now by deadheading or cutting back a bit so that they don't go to seed - there's lots of hoverflies, butterflies, moths and bees still about which are really appreciating the nectar and clearing up any pests. There's also plenty of young frogs now busily hopping along the 'frog corridors' of weeds which I leave between the boards at the back edges of the side raised beds and the sides of the tunnel. They appreciate the damp conditions there and the abundant small insects, as well as their little 'pond gardens' I make in plant saucers at the ends of the tunnel. They are great for clearing up those nasty little grey slugs that get into lettuce hearts and ruin them. I just keep the weeds clipped to bed level, between the bed and the side of the tunnel to stop them seeding, rather than pulling them out - and find that far from encouraging pests - leaving those wees there actually encourages the creatures that eat them!  Leave one or two Marigold and Tagetes plants to seed though - so that you'll have some for next year. 

 

 

 

A few years ago a listener called after our August radio show to say that it sounded more like the Gerry Kelly Food Show than 'The Late Lunch Show' because we literally ate our way round the tunnels!  I think that's why Gerry suggested we should change the title to 'From Tunnel to Table' a couple of years ago and do a bit of cooking as well - or rather his clever producer did!  The polytunnels don't just grow food for us to eat though. The stinging nettle 'butterfly nurseries' that I showed Gerry in the corners of the tunnels earlier in the year have produced their annual crop of butterflies once again. I love them so much - they are magical, and so good for the soul!  There's been a succession of Painted Ladies, various Fritillaries, Peacocks and Tortoiseshells - and now in the last week or so a lot of Red Admirals have hatched. They're now fluttering around the tunnels enjoying all the nectar in the flowers. They kept landing on us as we walked around last year - one even landed on Gerry's microphone while we were recording the show - a definite seal of approval - I hope that means some good 'Karma' for us!

 

 

Organic gardening isn't just about growing healthy, chemical-free food for us!

 

 

It's also about encouraging all the wonderful wildlife that helps us to do that without chemicals and helping it to survive.  A healthy chemical-free garden sustains so many lives that matter in the whole web of life - not just ours. Growing food without using pesticides that harm nature helps to preserve the earth's incredible biodiversity in all it's incredible richness. The tunnels are such a joyful celebration of Nature's abundant generosity at this season. It's biodiversity brought to richly-productive and beautiful fruition.  

 

 

At the moment in the tunnels with all the beautiful colours of the crops and flowers, so many gorgeous butterflies fluttering around everywhere and happy bees buzzing - it truly is like "walking into the magical land of Narnia" - as Irish Times journalist Fionnuala Fallon so kindly remarked a few years ago. It does seem a bit like a fairyland - with delicious food and incredible beauty everywhere you look...........If I ever go to any sort of heaven - I really hope it's like this!

 

 

 (P.S. I really enjoy sharing my original ideas and 40 years experience of growing and cooking my own organic food with you. It's most satisfying and naturally also very complimentary if others find "inspiration" in my work......But if you do happen to copy any of my material, or repeat it in any way online - I would appreciate it very much if you would please mention that it originally came from me, as it's the result of many years of hard work and often hard won-experience. Thank you.)