Readying the garden for winter and preparing for next year

It has been a year of successes and failures on the plot in 2024, due in no small part to the ever-changing British weather. One thing that has occurred this growing season that I have never experienced before happened with my Strawberry plants. I cut back the foliage on my plants in early autumn after they had finished fruiting, and they grew back with a vengeance in the warm, wet weather we had through late September and October. I actually had Strawberries forming on the plants again in November! The first proper frost in late November appears to have done for them, no surprise, and I will now give the plants a second trim and a feed of chicken manure pellets to see them through the winter. 

The Runner Bean bed has been thoroughly weeded, lightly dug over and a compost bin full of compost (around 220 litres) added to the soil along with two 50 litre bags of Farmyard manure. The bed was raked over and has been covered in tarpaulin, weighed down with bricks, to hopefully keep it in place over winter. I will leave it covered until early spring whilst the worms and other crawly critters incorporate the new compost and manure into the soil for me. I am not quite ‘no-dig’ on the plots but I am experimenting this year with only lightly turning over the top of the soil to remove weeds and general debris adding the compost and manure and letting nature do the hard work for me, hopefully, over the winter months. On the main veg patch that same process has been completed where the Greyhound Cabbages and outdoor Tomato plants were growing this year. Eskimo Carrots and Gladiateur Parsnips remain in the ground on around a third of that patch to be pulled as and when required over the coming months. 

The Christmas Potato experiment mentioned in previous columns is beginning to concern me as the big day draws ever nearer. The three 30-litre pots containing the spuds have been in the greenhouse for a few weeks now to keep them frost free. All of the foliage had died back by late-November and I am worrying whether any decent sized spuds will have formed. Time will tell as I will have to tip the pots out and find out what lies within sooner rather than later………

If you haven’t already, now  is the time to order seeds for the coming growing season. Over the next few weeks I will be flicking through seed catalogues and though I have a rough plan as to what I want no doubt something new will catch my eye and I will end up growing something I had not planned to; happens every year! I will also spend some time over the coming weeks planning where to sow what on the vegetable patch come spring and possible alterations to the planting schemes in the flower beds.

 In late October I added some Allium Mount Everest to the front of the rather grandly referred to as ‘white border’ so that bed will have a slightly different look this year, hopefully, with the Alliums flowering at the front of the bed, Chrysanthemum Silver Princess behind and Tower Lily Pretty Woman and Lilium Casa Blanca Lilies at the back towering over everything else. I have the Lilies planted out as three Lilium Casa Blanca at either end of the bed with a group of five Tower Lily Pretty Woman in the middle, these growing the tallest of the two varieties. The smallest and most simple of additions such as this can make a huge difference to the look and longevity of interest in a flower bed.

My collection of pots in the gravel area by the back door will also have a different look this year. I have two pots planted with Tulip Fire Wings that have been overwintering in the log store at the end of the garden to keep dry; Tulips hate sitting in waterlogged soil. As the three pots containing Hellebores begin to fade the Tulips should be coming into flower so I will simply swap out the pots, moving the Hellebores to a more shady area for the summer with the pots containing the Tulips taking their place to keep a nice display going into Spring. I have been overwintering three Salvia Hot Lips cuttings in the conservatory, the cuttings taken from the one specimen I have in a pot already. These will, all being well, take their place outdoors in late spring adding three more pots to the collection.

Cheers 🍺