Look At My BRAND NEW Vegetable Garden in May

In this video, Clare (formerly The Veg Plot Thickens) takes you along on a tour of her entire growing space, as she’s begun planting out her summer crops in her vegetable garden as she embarks on her quest to move closer to self sufficiency and less reliant on supermarket produce. The aim is for abundant harvests during 2024 and beyond.

In this episode Clare shows you around the whole plot, the polytunnel and the greenhouses so you can see what is growing in the kitchen garden allotment and asks for your advice on what to do with the some of the raised beds and the problems in the fruit cage. Any thoughts?

Clare and her family live on their farm in Staffordshire, England, where they garden 270sq/m of vegetable garden as well as trying to maintain and improve the previously neglected gardens around their farm house.

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Clare loves reading all of your comments, so go ahead and leave a comment, she’ll be sure to reply to you.

The fellow YouTube gardeners Clare mentions during this video can be found at the following channels:

@dogontheplot
@eliandkate
@AmirsAllotment
@TheGrowUpChannel

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#gardening #kitchengarden #allotment #plottour #latestgardeningvideos #allotment #allotmentgardeninguk #vegetablegarden #growyourownfood #gardeningvideos #garden #homegrown #kitchengarden #thevegplotthickens #rhsmalvernspringfestival

Metal Cloche Hoops bought from First Tunnels. Mine are the 1.2m width ones to fit my 1.2 x 2.4 m beds

https://www.firsttunnels.co.uk/spare-accessoriesDetail/heavy-duty-steel-cloche-hoop

[Music] hello welcome back to the channel my name’s CLA this is the fard Garden had a lovely week so far it started great with the weekend on Sunday because we were at rhs Mullin spring show got to meet up with loads of other YouTubers there so that was absolutely lovely I think Amir from amir’s a lot probably one best dress because that shirt you were wearing air was absolutely gorgeous thank you kri for the cinnamon buns that you cooked just loved it absolutely loved it did bring a few things home which I’ll show you in later videos because I haven’t done anything with them yet but no plans didn’t buy a single plant while I was there in my last video I promised that we’ do a plot tour this time I have planted quite a bit out probably since I last did a full tour because I don’t film everything that I do on the garden I just film little Snippets of it for you saying that not a lot of what I’ve planted out has been vegetables I had absolutely no idea that I would grow so many flowers on a vegetable garden but here we are so let’s get into it I thought we’d start at this end of the plot with the onion bed now I’m not going to take the cover off of this bed to show you because obviously I am concerned about aliam Leaf Miner I’ll bring you in for a closer look to see what you can see through the cover this half of the bed are the Autumn planted onion sets and they’re the spring planted ones so obviously these are going to be ready hopefully a few months before those ones and then this bed here has my garlic and shots in now the garlic is quite big and it’s quite chunky on the stems I’m no sign of any Scapes for me yet everyone said you harvest these on the longest day of the year but I don’t suppose they’re going to be ready that soon but we shall see if I come back towards these two beds here what I’ve planted recently have been the nerum and I have some zenas gladioli and Cosmos in this size these Nerium are the mounding type they’re not going to Trail everywhere they just go into nice little ball so I’m quite looking forward to seeing what they come out like over the archway I’m going to have the Scarlet Emperor Rona beans because I thought the nice red flowers there would be a highlight as well all I have planted in this bed are my swed and sweet fennel there’s nothing under these closes they’re just being stored there out of the way because they were covering the swed initially and then in this bed all I have at the top here are the beetroots I have the golden burpees and the what was it bolt Hardy I haven’t yet direct sewn any more beetroot into this side I thought I’d let them grow a little bit bigger first but that’s something I’ll do in the next couple of weeks nothing has yet planted here but I’m going to be having probably some dwarf French beans in here in this next bed I have my my broad beans that were sewn Before Christmas this is aquadulce and they are just starting to throw out some pods so that’s really exciting it seems like they’ve been in a long time I thought that they might have cropped earlier than this but I’m really excited for these one thing I didn’t realize was just how important early flowering crops like the broad beans would be for our bees it’s been so lovely to come across and just sit and watch the bees really enjoying the flowers on these beans I have allocated nothing yet to the rest of this bed which is probably quite a good idea to have some spare space because we’re always going to run out of room always going to forget to have planted something out so we’ll see what ends up in here the rest of the Year this bed is the infamous pea frame bed the peas are growing up here okay and they are starting to flower had a little bit of dying off on the lower leaves but they were like that when I planted them out and I think that was probably down to the weather they got a little bit hot and dry probably running out of nutrients as well in the greenhouse before I planted them out then this is a structure that has been on the plot for a while but I’ve put the net in up and I finally planted out my Alderman peas now I probably shouldn’t ignore the little chap next to me I have two of these scarecrows now on the plot these were birthday presents last year from my son and daughter-in-law and the granddaughters I’ve got some more peas to sew which will probably fill in this space later on in the season I think I have H is it h green shaft and I have the wave Rex Petty P to go somewhere and obviously these are going to finish and hopefully our succession SE those fingers crossed we’ll move on to the next bed this bed you’ve already seen me plant the salc out it was really quite yellow and pot bound when I planted it out if you remember and actually the new shoots are coming in lovely green color so it’s obviously quite happy to have been out here I’ve also planted the mounding nsts here as well the same varieties that are around the archway one is a hot pink color baby Rose I believe and then this one is Bloody Mary and I really liked the look of this one it has cream flowers with red sort of veining on them but as the flower matures the whole flower becomes fully red a deep deep red and I thought that looked quite nice to have the different stages of the flowering head in there but yeah they should only sort of grow like this you can grow them in patio containers so they shouldn’t Trail and take over everywhere the other end of the bed I have Cosmos I can’t remember whether it’s cupcake or dwarf Cosmos so that’s going to be a surprise more gladioli and then I have planted some nsts that side of the archway they are a proper climbing variety called milkmaid that have cream flowers on so they’re going to go up over the archway really pleased with these you saw me plant these sweet peas not so long ago and these are really starting to take hold to go up the archway I need to put some more string up to contain them shortly but they’re really thick strong stems I’ve been really impressed with them how quickly they’ve grown and changed since the they’ve been put in the ground then the rest of this bed is being given over to French beans lots of dwarf French beans here I have two or three different varieties and then I have Violet French beans which are the climbing French beans to go up here absolutely love French beans we how many times have I said French beans we absolutely loved the French beans last year I didn’t get to save any to freeze for over winter to have in the off season so the idea this year is I want to have quite a few of them just to make sure that I have more than enough French beans to put Sumer at least in the freezer to be enjoying them over Winter which is probably why I might end up with two beds full of these dwarf French beans because I need a lot of them we like them a lot the beds both sides closest to the poly tunnel are actually the ones which are giv me the most angst in decision making in my head I really want something that isn’t going to be covered with envir mesh in these beds so I don’t have to look at that when I come out of the tunnel I hate looking at the end beds where the onions are because of the Environ mesh on the cles just really dislike it at the top end of this bed though I have recently sewn a row of mix radishes and some little gem lettuces they’re just starting to germinate so I have put something in there just not sure that I want to make it a complete lettuce bed so if you can come up for suggestions on what you’d plant that looks pretty to walk out of the poly tunnel to I’d love you to drop those in the comments below as I make my way down towards the fruit cage you can see that those patio planting trees are doing okay they’re all in leaf no Blossom on them so I’m not sure they’re going to do anything like that this year but that is not a surprise they are very very young I’m just happy that they’re alive to be honest moving on from those Planters under what will be the pumpkin archerway I have sewn the baby boo the Jack bitt and the Uchi curri to go over this Archway they’ve come up now so that’s looking great we come to what are the two main pumpkin beds and here you will see my other friend the top of these beds are obviously having the climbing pumpkins I have SE loads of other pumpkins that I need to really work out just how big they’re going to get to know whether I can Trail any off of here or whether I need to plant them somewhere else because again could just put cetes in here if I really wanted to underneath Mr scarecrow we have more Cosmos definitely some dwarf and the taller cupcake variety and some more Cula trying to sort of get the pollinators to come all the way through the plot the bottom half of this side of the bed though is where I have put some out or tomatoes they’re all light resistance varieties I have Divinity Rose crush and Crimson Crush also put a little bit of Cula again at the bottom of this bed and there are some spare Basel in here it’s too cold for them clearly outside this time of year in Stafford here it might never be warm enough Outdoors for Basel actually but they really were just spare so it was an experiment to put them around the tomatoes to see how they do they’re hanging in there but they’re not looking very happy now I have chosen to plant the tomatoes here at this part of the plot because it’s not in the direct sort of Breeze line towards the poly tunnel so if these do become affected by blight I’m hoping that it’ll be minimal risk as far as possible to the ones that are growing in the poly tunnel now I forgot to show you what’s in the top half of these Beds which is why there’s no summer squashes going up here daers I had absolutely no idea that I’d be growing daes this year when I set this plot up last year my plan for this edge of these beds was actually going to be where the cetes were going to grow but no instead we’re having daas there again I do think that might be Ker’s fault from dog on the plot because she kept showing me all of her daas last year and well couldn’t resist them not sure how many of you are even interested in daas but there are different varieties here Clare obscure happy butterfly Tartan chimicum Davey that was the other one I knew there was another one I couldn’t think what it was called so I’ve got those each side of the archway what’s really exciting is this variety called CLA obscure has her first couple of flower buds forming unlike me this CLA is clearly an overachiever I’m not Sun’s just come out while I walk under the archway yet again how many times in one video can you walk through the same Archway anyway we’ll come to the two beds below the pumpkin beds asparagus bed exciting bed I do need to build a better structure to support the asparagus is these tree ties are not cutting it but they were only temporary now I have to admit that these aren’t the ones that I planted back in Autumn the top four completely rotted off I did have a good look at the crowns and they were just completely mushed so I bought some new ones from our local Garden Center that these were really really cheap they were only £3 or 3.99 I think it was for 2year old crowns as the wind is just blowing across them now you can see why I need to build a structure to support them so that is high on the to-do list however these baby asparagus are the ones that I planted last year that have done okay can you see that they’re like little and large aren’t they I’m really happy that they came up though it wasn’t a complete nut of failure this bed next to the asparagus I don’t know why I just absolutely love this bed and I’m quite excited by what is growing in here so at the back I have the dwarf the official truly dwarf arti chokes they will only grow again to about 65 cm tall they’re not supposed to be quite so prolific and invasive as the full siiz variety so we’ll see how that works out but they are contained in this bit of a raised bed so fingers crossed if I see Arch chokes popping up in the asparagus bed then I know they lied again in the center of the bed each side of the wind spinner that’s hopefully keeping the birdies away I have some nsts the mounding ones again yeah I sold the whole packet so they’ve had to go everywhere and then at the front on to the bed I have the really exciting crop to grow which is Oka something I’d not even heard of this time last year and I’ve never ever seen it in the shops so to be growing Oka in my own plot in my garden is absolutely amazing I’m really excited about those you saw me plant them in pots in the greenhouse not long ago but the weather was so nice last week I very quickly got them transplanted outside and I’m really really happy with how they’re looking moving along to the final bed down here this is probably the bed that needs sorting out next it’s the Brassica bed there are a few Brussels in there and a few purple sprouting summer broccoli but I really need to get on and get my Brasa structure sorted which will probably be in the next video and get all the rest of the brasas out because they are languishing at the moment in the poly tunnel I’ll just quickly show you that the fruit trees are doing all right on this section of the plot as well that’s an apple [Music] pear that is definitely Victor Plum and then my little birdhouse station and while we’re on the subject of fruit trees I’m very excited to say that their fig has finally burst into life I honestly thought it died I nearly dug it up a couple of weeks ago but this last few days we have life it’s so lovely to see everything Greening up now and I guess where I need to take you now is inside the fruit cage and there’s some good and bad bad things happening in here I start with the good cherry tree it’s been in Blossom starting to set a few little bits of fruit looks absolutely amazing I’ve been in here and done a bit of weeding this morning but look at that in the corner I’m really pleased with that if I move a bit closer and it focuses you can see that there are a few gooseberries appearing the current bushes are doing equally as well and you can see best from this red one that they are getting little Bunches of currants on them so I’m really excited about that it’s like I made that happen probably didn’t the soil made that happen but I’m going to take it as a win unfortunately the same can’t be said for the raspberry canes now I don’t think I’m going to blame where I bought them from because I did get them in late Autumn as bare Roots we had a very wet winter we had a few nights of really cold temperatures but I feel like there might be something else going on and I’d absolutely love your help on this one because I am at an absolute loss only two of these raspberry canes showed any signs of Life early in Spring they looked really nice and healthy early spring we haven’t had a frost since they came out but they’re dying back and there’s only that one and this one on the end here which is doing exactly the same thing yeah not quite sure what to do with this bed because the grap Vine is quite happy there’s only a couple of shoots coming and they’re all very very low down it was definitely dead higher up so that did get pruned off but at least it is alive final side bed in the fruit cage are my blueberry bushes so this bed is full of ericaceous soil not sure exactly how good a crop I’m going to get off of them because I think they need to be in sort of groups to have best pollination for prolific fruiting the center one does seem to be doing quite well though which is a single variety on its own of a blue blueberry variety the two on the outside are pink lemonade well they haven’t helped each other at the moment because the pink lemonade ones are yet to Blossom so I’m wondering if they won’t Blossom this year actually but there seems to be fruit now being set on that Center one so there should still be blueberries and Duncan loves blueberries he has them every morning on his breakfast I don’t like them on breakfast but I absolutely do love blueberry muffins so they’re going to be a hit on my list as well and finally we have in the center of the fruit cage the strawberry beds and wow I’m so excited so many flowers coming on them I need to get it mulched I’m going to buy some strulch for that um it is designed to put around your plants unlike horse bedding or the straw that we buy on the farm which I’m not sure if it contains any chemicals so I’m just going to go with stch because it’s safer but we’re definitely going to be having strawberries soon because oh there’s so many strawberries coming just cannot wait absolutely thrilled in case you hadn’t guessed I love strawberries this side of the tunnel just as it starts raining we have the parsnip and carrot boxes now four rows of parsnips here all different varieties Gladiator tender and true Victor and white gem that’s the last one carrot varieties that I sewed first we have Nance purple King rainbow mix and two rows of red Sun yesterday I added another row which is the red C chanton carrots here in this other carrot box I have some bissi afron Autumn King and some more red cord chanter the last box here just has Amsterdam forcing there’s four rows in there which leaves me space to multi- SEO some spring onions in there for a bit of companion planting that should help with the carrot root fly as well as the clush covers that I’m going to buy to put over them I did make a wooden box one but um I haven’t used it because I’ve sewn the carrots too close to the edges of the Box before I remember to put the Box on so I can’t use that now I don’t want to waste my carrots before I head in into the polyon I’d love to just take a moment to appreciate these aliums they are absolutely glorious teaming with insect bees wasps you name it they’re absolutely loving them so now the final destination is the poly tunnel now you only saw it last week because obviously I planted the tomatoes out but they’ve grown already and I’m really surprised let’s just say I’ll show you look at them look how well they’re all doing I only planted them 5 days ago so the complete novelty of opening the doors and seeing the summer planting layout is not lost on me yet it’s I’m finding it a wild Factor so I’m hoping that you’re loving it too got more companion plants to put in the local agricultural Merchant has been turning themselves into a bit of a garden center over summer and really really cheap prices so I’ve been going there picking up lots of things Duncan is furious with me for how much money I keep spending so yeah more to go in here yet we went last night but I haven’t planted anything out so so excited I’ve recently sewn my climbing beans these are dwarf French beans that are just coming up here these are my sisters spare Tomatoes now I don’t need them either but I’m hoping to offer them to people in the local Village when they’ve just grown on a little bit more just giving us chance to see whether any of ours die and we need the spares first really so that’s those there I have sewn some pumpkins these are my pumpkin seedlings coming up these ones are polar bear these big seedlings here these big ones here are Crown prints this tray here has some Scarlet Emperor runner beans for the art tray that I’ve already shown you and some Greek gigantes don’t really want many of those CU I think they are quite prolific croppers but I do have some more beans that I could sew if I need a few more this tray here is the Botti beans that’ll be going on a Archway in the main Garden that you’ve seen me put up before waver XPS just starting to germinate sweet corn looking a little bit yellow because it was overw waterer there was quite a bit of water in the tray that hadn’t noticed so I’ve tipped that out today and hopefully they’ll green up shortly but they need to get out soon just need to get a little bit bigger yet but I think the variety that I’m growing was called incredible F1 but I just put sweet corn on the label because I’m only growing the one variety I wasn’t that concerned but I think it was incredible F1 as already mentioned these are all the brassicas languishing wanting to get out we have calabos cabbage here brussel sprouts snowball Collies ketes at the back here looking okay and then I’ve got two trays of the tender stem broccoli part of the grow along with Eli these are my baby pumpkins Jack belittle and baby boo here I’ve only just noticed that only one of the chii curry have come up so I need to get some more seeds to plant some more of those got some leaks here these ones are called Northern Lights which is quite exciting and ironically apt considering we saw the northern lights for the first time ever across the farm last week I’ll just insert a couple of pictures for you so that you can see those muscle bur Leakes coming here now moving to the end of the Shelf these are the red little gem lettuces that I saw in the local garden center now I have bought some seeds since then it’s I believe it’s called a maze so I have sewn some maze seeds to see what that does but given some of the green lettuces of been lost to slugs or something outside but the Reds have survived and I love Little Gems anyway I’m hoping that these might be the answer so I’m really pleased with those they need to be planted out again I love them so much that I’m frightened of putting them outside so they may actually go in a veg Tru in the back Garden so I can keep a close eye on those and then the final thing that needs to get out on this shelf are the curly red kale and there we go finally to show you Luther the Luther is doing while in here leaving the plot behind us now we will make our way to the main Gardens the main mess it’s all getting a little bit overwhelming on this Garden because I’m spending so much time out on the plot that the weeds and things are taking over in here so it’s not looking its best but I will show you what’s going on so far all of my potatoes are now sewn so these are the main crop Saro mirrors in these buckets and this is my little herb bed just behind the herb bed is the structure for the climbing beans you’ve just heard me mentioning that I’ve got Botti and Greek gigantes to go up here so it’s ready when they are and then you may remember if you’ve been following me for a while that I have an experiment going where I’ve planted some potatoes in Grass cuttings have they done anything the answer to that is yes as you can see the bed is doing okay so I’m really quite pleased with those it is time to sort of cover them up another layer but what I think think I’m going to do is use hay because since I’ve filmed this I have actually had a horse become poly and we now have to buy hay in for that horse so I do have some dry hay that I could layer on top which may help if we get sort of the hot wet summer that we keep looking like we’re going to have then I don’t want it to get all sludgy under there so a little bit of hay to dry it out for a layer or so maybe on the cards as promised I have made the front of this big bed into a bit of a flower bed so at the back there are lers then there’s two different types of anti rhums there’s a Cardon in the middle I know they get quite big might have to rethink that one next year and then the little teepe that I need to put some string around so hopefully if they get tied in they will do okay and then look at this it’s only Tiny But looping about to flower outside the back of the house we have our potato tubs those three there are the pink fur Apple which need Earth up shortly but they are the first and second earlies at the back these two tubs are the oler specters that were done on St Patrick’s Day so they’re not going to be too far off being ready are they in the next month if I just come around the corner from the potato tubs you’ll see the flower bed that you saw me plant some shrubs and things out in recently and the fox gloves that I planted are just starting to put on a bit of a show for us look at them so pretty and then to finish off I will just head to the green houses with you I’ll go to the chili and pepper Greenhouse first there’s a lot of greenery in here there’s also a lot of peppers forming this is Black Knight then Buena malata is putting on quite a few chilies already these are my Sugar Rush long Peach these are supposed to be king of the north which I thought was a bell pepper shape but maybe not I can’t remember anyway King of the North it says on the label Tor Rosso or red sweet pepper yeah they’re all doing okay lots of fruit starting to be set down at ground level here we have the cape gooseb which seem to be turning into a bit of a jungle as you can see they are also setting fruit really pleased about them obviously moving next door into the main Greenhouse this is decidedly more empty than it was last time you saw in here mainly got the kirab bits growing so I have the butter bushes here another butter Bush here and then I think these are the Patty pans y the custard white Patty pans don’t know why I thought I’d need three or four of those so I’ll definitely be giving some of those away spare Tomatoes here couple of daers more sunflowers these aren’t big variety these are baby face so I’ll look forward to planting them out shortly these trays are my cucumbers they’ve all come up doing quite well but the thing that I’m most excited about in this greenhouse are these and these trays are my straw flowers now if you remember it’s not many weeks ago but I was complaining that they were doing absolutely nothing and they completely stalled well it seems they did just need a bit of warmer weather because look at them now they’re taking off I don’t know whether to plant them out yet or whether to pot them on into some bigger pots and leave them in for another few weeks but absolutely over the moon that these have started to do something and hopefully that means I’m going to get straw flowers this year can’t wait I’ve really enjoyed doing this may plot tour it’s reminded me of just how much I have done in the garden if you’d like to see the April plot tour that video is here and if you’d like to see how we got the poly tunnel ready for the tomatoes you can watch this video here thanks for watching I’ll catch you in the next one look after yourselves bye