View from the Vegetable Patch
As the weather grows ever colder, there are still lots of jobs to do in the veg garden
Brussels sprouts should be growing strongly now but if a few yellow leaves have appeared then it is best to remove them, otherwise grey mould may become a problem.
In fact, now is a good time to remove all dead foliage from the vegetable garden including pea and bean stalks, but don’t remove the roots of these as they will do a valuable job of adding nitrogen to the soil.
If you are gardening on clay soil you may want to dig it over to expose the heavy clumps to frost, but the alternative is to opt for the no-dig gardening method of spreading a thick mulch over the surface and then allowing worms to do the hard work of incorporating this organic material into the soil below.
Mulch does a variety of jobs, from adding nutrients and improving the structure of the soil to helping to suppress weeds and the latter can be a real problem, appearing in autumn when the soil is wet and still warm and germinating in late winter before anything else has appeared.
Another way to tackle them is by sowing a green manure. These are fastgrowing crops that can be used to cover the earth over the winter and are then dug-in before the growing season starts in spring.
They act to lock up the nutrients in the soil and prevent them from being washed away. As well as smothering weeds they also stop soil erosion so they are an effective tool for keeping the soil in good health.
Green manure can in fact be grown at any time of the year, but for winter choose a variety such as grazing rye or winter field bean, both of which can withstand cold temperatures.
Meanwhile if you haven’t lifted all your potatoes, then it is best to get them out of the ground now. Store them somewhere dark, dry and frost-free. Apples like the same conditions but when storing these make sure that no two fruits are actually touching, otherwise mould can spread rapidly through the crop.
Mould may also be lurking in the greenhouse, so pick a dry day to empty this and wash it down, making sure that you clean in the corners and along the edges where the glass meets the frame in order to get rid of any spores that could affect overwintering plants.