Grow Your Own Magazine

GYO has teamed up with Thompson & Morgan to offer a £10 seed voucher to every forum member who has a gardening tip published in our next Subs' Club newsletter.

We'd like to hear your advice on protecting edibles from frost and snow plus any suggestions on preparing a plot for spring.

Spread a thick mulch of compost, manure or leafmould onto your beds now and allow the worms to take it into the soil overwinter, ready for spring.

Use canes and fleece to protect tender plants or if possible bring them into a tunnel or greenhouse.

Tubers such as dahlias if not lifted can be protected by covering with 6" straw and covering that with a layer of compost or manure.

Cover empty beds with black plastic or membrane which will stop nutrients leaching out and also warm up the soil ready for spring.

Lift rootcrops and store in an old fashioned clamp or in damp sand in a box in your shed.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

Some people grow in containers and should take advantage of the possibility of moving them about.
Choose the south aspect which will give maximum sunshine and a good few degrees of difference in temperature. Place the container against a wall if possible. That way heat taken in by the wall during the day is given back out at night - like a storage heater.
Cold air falls, so the higher you can get your containers the more advantage you will get. There can be as much as 4 degrees of difference between ground level and window cill height (which weather forecasts are based on. That's why you can have a ground frost when the air temperature is 4 degrees.) So I put the containers up as high as I can get them - on a table, jacked up on a few bricks or whatever. And off course you can buy or make little fleece tents to go over containers - the heavy duty stuff will protect against 7 degrees of frost with one layer and it's not expensive.
Anyway that's how I do it and get salad through the winter and spring crops off to flying start.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

If you have an empty unheated greenhouse, then why not sow some winter gem lettuce. It'll give you some nice crisp little gem's for late winter. Or sow them thicker and cut them off smaller, wonderful baby leaf gems a bit earlier. Yum

When I was a kid they used to tie up young fruit trees with the straw to protect them from frost(and hungry rabbits as well).I don't know if they still do it.

I don't like seeing greenhouses or polytunnels sitting empty during the winter when plants are struggling against adversity outdoors!

So why not grow at least some of your outdoor winter veg indoors?

I'm trying this as an experiment this year and so far it's looking good!

My greenhouse is looking fuller now than it was in the summer. The difference between growth patterns indoors and outdoors is also notable!

If nothing else I will have a succession of potted vegetables indoors which will mature earlier than those outdoors and because they are in a controlled environment they should be cleaner and less prone to pests and diseases!

Harvest outdoor crops as required and apply a thick mulch of farm yard manure or straw and plant another dissimilar crop through the mulch straight away! This will keep the soil in good heart, and if you've plannned accordingly you will always have plants available and ALWAYS have something growing in a given area.
Come Spring, weeds will be suppressed by the mulch, pests will find it harder to get to the crop,the soil will be full of fauna busily incorporating the mulch into the surface layer, drainage will be improved,the crop will have a supply of micro nutrients to feed off and the mulch will be contributing to the long term benefit of the soil structure.

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

The polystyrene sheets and blocks that come as packing materials are very good insulators. If you have plants such as dormant fuschias or dahlia tubers to get through the winter, use the blocks or sheets to make a container, or line a box with them. Then put the plants inside, packed with slightly damp compost. Make sure you have removed all dead leaves. Cover with another sheet of polystyrene and put in an unheated garage or greenhouse. For added protection, use bubble wrap packaging material as well. Check occasionally that all is well, and remove any moldy plant material. In spring check for new growth and bring out the plants as soon as they start to shoot.

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I could not live without a garden, it is my place to unwind and recover, to marvel at the power of all growing things, even weeds!

http://potagerplot.blogspot.com/

Thanks for all the great tips. Please keep them coming!

Try to get areas that need to be dug done in time for the frost to help break up the clods - esp if you garden on clay. I put compost down around feb as apparently nutrients can wash out if it's laying too long. The asparagus and rhubarb get a big bucket load of compost too.
Dig a bean trench now and you can start filling it with kitchen compost ready for next year.
Enjoy the seed catalogues....

If you have a coldframe, you can use it for overwintering hardy seedlings like broad bean (Aquadulce Claudia) and sweet peas sown in toilet roll tubes or root trainers, ready for earlier crops and flowers in the spring. If you don't have a coldframe, make one! They are really useful.

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Dwell simply ~ love richly

Snow is actually a really good insulator, preventing frost getting into the soil and lifting newly-sown onion sets, and is also a pretty good slow release nitrogenous fertiliser. In fact, the late spring snow is often called "poor mans fertiliser" because it gives a boost of nutrients to overwintering crops at just the right time of the year.

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Dwell simply ~ love richly

Preparing for spring:
I like to sow/plant Limnanthes as a green manure for over-wintering. Having a ground cover reduces soil erosion etc.
When I need the space for my veg, I just cut it (it's got shallow roots) and toss it in the compost heap.

In spring its flowers provide early food for bees and hoverflies. Plant it under your broad beans, and hopefully the larvae of those hoverflies will eat the bean blackfly.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

I'll be starting off my bean trenches again. They worked brilliantly last year. I dig a trench were I want my beans to go and layer rotted contents from my compost bin plus vegetable kitchen waste and ripped up cardboard and paper to help retain moisture. Each layer I cover with soil. In the spring I have a wonderful rich soil which my beans love. Great for pumpkins ans squashes too.

I live in a very wet area of the UK (North West), so after planting my autumn garlic I usually cover the whole bed with cloche hoops and a perforated plastic cover, pegged down and also weighted with bricks so it doesn't blow off. This stops the cloves from rotting in wet soil, but still allows some water to get through, and air to circulate.

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Sarah

http://www.hypermobility.org


“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

If you're planting out garlic or other young plants/seedlings try building up walls of earth around them to protect them from winds and frosts until they get going.

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www.alifelesssimple.wordpress.com Up-dated Regularly

Don't compost all those runner beans plants, dig them in and add the last of the comfrey leaves too. Then cover with a layer of mulch from the compost heap to make next season's onion bed, ready to plant out all those Boxing Day sowings.

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A Year in the Veg Plot

I bag up all the fallen leaves in the garden now in perforated black bin bags & leave them at the end of the garden behind shrubs & by next year they make a nice leafmould mulch to put around any overwintering crops. I also put a perforated polythene cloche over my autmun sown onions, garlic & shallots as Sarzwix does to protect from the worst of the wet & frost.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

If you're growing olive trees & they're still quite small & in pots you might want to give them some protection for the worst of the winter. I've got a couple in pots & I put them in a plastic zip up growbag greenhouse, I used to bring the first one I got indoors over winter until I found out that they need a cold spell with the temperature dropping below 5 C in order to flower & produce fruits.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

If you, or someone you know is getting rid of an old divan bed, don't throw it away. Strip all the material and card from it and you'll be left with a ready made cold frame "frame". Paint it with wood preservative and it should last a bit longer. You can then simply use the plastic that the new bed comes wrapped in to cover the frame of the old one. For added insulation staple sheets of bubble wrap to the inner sides and off you go.

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

http://haywayne.blogspot.com/ - 1st update of 2009 - 6th January

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If you are using a cold frame to protect your plants try placing polystyrene blocks or bales of straw around the outside of the frame. This is great insulation, has a minimal impact on light (unless you cover the lid!) being outside means they don't take up room or harbour pests

Hot beds (raised beds filled with fresh dung covered with a few inches of soil) are also great in greenhouses or combined with a cloche, especially for hardy salad leaves, spring onions and as an early seed bed. You can even stand pots on them if you need to vary the soil type to suit a particular plant.

In unheated greenhouses raise any potted plants up as high as possible on staging etc and insulate well. If you have a problem with condensation try insulating with fleece rather than bubblewrap, it is almost as good an insulator and much more "breathable". Remember to leave a flap over any louvre vents or windows to allow ventilation on mild days

For winter cauliflowers tie the outer leaves over the curds, leaving room for these to grow, and cover in fleece if a heavy frost is forecast.

Warm up the ground ready for spring planting by laying some black plastic down for a few weeks (clear plastic will just make the weeds grow).

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Spring frosts can damage early fruit flowers, eg strawberry and plum. Have some fleece handy for snap frosts.

for extra early strawbs, pop a cloche over a few, or pot some up and bring them into a greenhouse.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good