Mulch ado about nothing? It’s time to improve soils, plant onions and ripen tomatoes
It’s time to plant onion sets, leaving the tips exposed and netting the rows to prevent pigeons from pulling up the bulbs.
Garlic can also be planted now and, like the onions, it will survive quite happily through the winter months so long as it grown in freedraining soil in full sun.
If you have heavy soil then it is best to start it off in small pots and keep these somewhere sheltered, or in a cold frame, before planting them out in spring.
Garlic needs a period of cold exposure in order to trigger growth but don’t be tempted to try growing it from the bulbs that you find in the fruit aisle at the supermarket, because these are most likely a variety that is unsuitable for growing in this climate. Better alternatives are available from the supermarket or from seed companies.
As areas of the vegetable patch are cleared of spent crops, cover them with a thick mulch of organic material. You don’t need to dig it in as the worms will do the job for you. However, if you have very heavy clay soil then an alternative is to dig this over, exposing it to frosts during the winter, which well help to break it down.
Over time, the level of soil in raised beds will fall and here again a thick mulch is needed to restore the height of the soil and to replace nutrients. Spent mushroom compost is a good alternative if you don’t have enough of the homemade stuff and regular applications will eventually turn even the poorest soil into the sort of crumbly loam that most gardeners dream of.
There’s limited time left for tomatoes to ripen on the vine, so if you still have a lot of green fruit then it is better to bring them indoors and place them in a brown paper bag with a banana. Bananas give off a gas called ethane, which promotes ripening and as the banana turns brown the tomatoes will become red. Bananas themselves are always harvested when still green and then shipped to this country where they are ripened in huge packing sheds by exposure to ethane gas.
Meanwhile, greenhouses will still need ventilating during the day but make sure to close windows and vents in the evening as night-time temperatures are now starting to fall.