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Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: leafmould

This month in the garden…

05 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by sallynex in climate change, greenhouse, my garden, this month in the garden

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Tags

cloches, garlic, greenhouse, greenhouse insulation, jobs, leafmould, Musa basjoo, spring cabbage, tulips, winter salads

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Just-planted garlic

…it is getting cold. Seriously, properly cold.

Actually I can’t remember being cold before Christmas before (well, a bit chilly, perhaps, but not cold of the three layers and double socks kind just yet).

We have, I think, become a bit soft in recent years what with all this global warming malarkey. Things may be a little extreme in this respect at my end of the country, around 20 miles from the south coast and never the coldest of places generally.

But since the epic winter of 2010 (when we had about 10 winters’ worth of snow, hoarfrost and ice for a memorable three or four months from November to February) we’ve been lucky to get a frost at all. Last year the lowest temperature I recorded was around 1°C, in February; the previous year we dipped to an adventurous -2°C for one night only. It was hardly the second ice age.

Anyway, all this is by way of saying that this month in the garden I have had to get my skates on (not quite literally but you never know) in a way I have not been accustomed to doing, and do all those getting-ready-for-winter things I’ve previously been putting off till about January. So here’s what I’ll be up to…

Planting garlic I have had a bit of a garlic crisis this year: every last plant succumbed to rust. I am therefore launching an experiment: I’m replanting the bulbs from the garlic which survived the longest, in an attempt to select a strain that copes better with the (now endemic) garlic rust in my garden. I will report back with results.

Collecting leaves There are so many leaves. So, so many leaves. I watched them rain down the other day like a golden snowstorm. And so to work with my trusty rake and wheelbarrow to fill as many leafmould bins as I can before they all run out.

Putting the veg garden to bed The endless task continues: clear crops, cart off to compost heap, weed, mulch, cover, repeat. I am still only halfway down the veg garden and I’ve already run out of soil improver.

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Spring cabbage still going strong after around ten straight months of harvesting

Picking spring cabbage Yes, you read that right: spring cabbage. I planted it last August (that’s August 2015) and it has been going strong ever since, mainly through my laziness in not getting around to pulling it out, so it just sprouts again. A happy accidental discovery: I shall be doing this again…

Clearing the greenhouse The cucumbers are spent; the green peppers picked. Time to strip out the last of the summer crops and get the greenhouse ready for its winter role. I have only one this year, as we’re having to move the other: I am bereft.

Lining said greenhouse with bubblewrap insulation You save around 25% on the average heating bill by insulating your greenhouse, so they say. I know it keeps things much cosier, and often means I don’t have to turn on the heater at all.

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Winter lettuces, ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ spring onions, American land cress and a couple of rows of corn salad and radish seedlings tucked up safely in their plumbing pipe cloche

Planting winter salads under cloches Since I am deprived of my winter salads greenhouse this year I am resorting to planting out my greenery under cloches instead (or rather, one massive cloche made of blue plumbing pipe and clear polythene).

Wrapping bananas The Musa basjoo in the back garden has been going great guns this year, so the plan is to wrap it in the time-honoured way (chop leaves off, wrap in straw and hessian or fleece, big bubblewrap hat) and leave it outside for the first time.

Digging up pelargoniums My scented-leaf pelargonium collection is expanding all the time: I do need to bring it in for winter, though. This year they’ve been in containers on the front steps, making this particular job much easier.

Planting tulips Ah yes: there is some joy to be had this month. This year’s order includes ‘Ballerina’, ‘Jan Reus’, ‘Purple Prince’, ‘Violet Beauty’ and ‘White Triumphator’. I am looking forward to spring very much.

Trying to get it all done….

08 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

apple trees, leafmould, leaves


Blimey, where did those weeks go?

Here’s one answer: I’ve been a total slave to my leafmould bin since about mid-November. What with the painfully short hours of daylight, I’ve been grabbing my leaf rake every chance I get and not coming in till dark (that’ll be when the kids get home from school, then). And on top of that I’ve been planting the remainder of the tulip bulbs, putting the last few plants mouldering on my patio into the ground at last, and finally getting on top of my legions of weeds.

I get very obsessed by autumn leaves at this time of year. The bottom part of our garden is pretty much a woodland, what with four mature apple trees and a boundary with next-door lined with hazel, oak and ash. So the result is a blizzard of multicoloured autumn leaves which starts some time around October and is only just starting to die down now.

I raked through the whole lot in November, and then turned round and started again. Now I’m on the home run with only a few stragglers thumbing their noses at me from the treetops and a leafmould bin piled high with lovely crispy leaves. It’ll take a year to rot down into good soil conditioner (if you want it for mixing up potting composts, leave it another year) – and though it’s a lot of work and a long wait, it’s so worth it. Piles of the very best black crumbly perfection to add to your soil every autumn – you can almost see the plants plunging their roots into it luxuriously the moment you shovel it on.

Autumn mulching

07 Wednesday Nov 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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leafmould, mulch

At this time of year I get nothing short of obsessed by leaves. And I don’t mean just the lovely autumn colours – and this is a particularly lovely autumn, with oranges, reds, yellows and golds gleaming in the sunshine.

Leaves are my no.l free resource in the garden, and I’m constantly amazed how many people still pile ’em up and burn ’em. Leafmould might take a couple of years to rot down – but all the best things come to those who wait, and when you unwrap that old leafmould bin that’s been sitting in the corner of your garden doing nothing for I don’t know how long, you remember why you did it.

I’ve been doing just that this week in my garden, with a bin I’ve had stewing now since 2005, and my goodness it’s beautiful stuff. Dark, crumbly, and smelling of the forest floor.

Leafmould is a low-nutrient organic matter, which means you can safely use it at this time of year without worrying about stimulating plants into new growth just as the frosts arrive. You can mix it in with compost and sand to make a home-made potting mix, but I find that all a bit fiddly (even though it does save lots of money). I prefer just to use leafmould as an autumn mulch, tucking in my plants for the winter and keeping any stray annual weeds at bay (yes they do keep germinating even through the coldest months of the year). As well as looking great, it’ll be pulled down into the soil by the worms and bulk out my sandy loam – so it can hold in moisture more efficiently next summer, too. And people burn this stuff?!

Season of mists…

12 Friday Oct 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

chalk soil, leafmould, trees

There’s a definite autumn tinge to the air now. It’s been misty the last couple of days and the leaves are just turning that russety shade of brown that means any minute now we’ll be out with the leaf rakes and collecting what seems like tons of the things.

Which is why I’ve been sorting out the leafmould bins for one of my clients. She has a fabulous big woodland garden, full of lovely mature natives like beech, oak and whitebeams (one of the loveliest trees if you have a chalky soil – it has silver undersides to its leaves). Unfortunately, though she has two massive leafmould bays, they were full of roots and half falling down, so they took a lot of work to get functioning again!

I’m there now though, after a couple of sessions of digging out a mixture of nettle and tree roots and sorting out the rotted stuff – some many years old – from the new leaves which had been dumped on top. Now I have two bays, about 10ft x 10ft (I told you it was a big garden) made of posts driven into the ground with green wire chainlink fencing round it. You need plenty of air in a leafmould bin to make good mould, so things like compost bins, with more solid sides, don’t work: chainlink fences are ideal and last for years, though you have to have strong uprights which are well driven into the ground as the weight of the leaves can be enormous.

Now I have lots of lovely old leafmould to spread as a mulch on her borders. It makes a great autumn mulch as it’s low in nutrients so won’t spur plants on to put out unseasonally tender growth, and it still adds plenty of organic matter to the soil (desperately needed on her thin chalk). One of the many good reasons to have a garden in the woods!

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