• Home
  • Features
  • Talks
  • Learn with me

Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: mulch

This month in the garden…

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by sallynex in kitchen garden, my garden, this month in the garden

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dahlias, hazel, Jerusalem artichokes, mulch, propagator, shallots, spring, tomatoes, Vitopod

snowdrops

Signs of hope are everywhere

Well. Hasn’t it got busy around here lately.

There I was, listening morosely to the tumbleweed (well, gales and splattering rain) and wondering if the winter would ever end. And then all of a sudden spring sprung. The frosts retreated, the snowdrops came out, and everyone emerged blinking in the watery February sunlight.

And all that sulking indoors has left a ton of stuff to do in the garden, so I’m already behind before I’ve even begun. And now that we can all agree it’s spring, there are garden articles to write and book proposals to hone and student assignments to mark and garden holidays to plan… Welcome to a new year!

Here’s what’s on my to-do list right now – all to cram into the remaining fortnight before it gets even more crazy in March. Wish me luck…

Hitching up the propagator: I think I actually love my Vitopod. It’s not often I say this about a bit of kit, but this has really transformed the way I can garden. It’s eye-wateringly expensive, but believe me: it’s worth it. The moment it comes out of storage each spring is the moment my year begins. 

Sowing tomatoes: See above. This wouldn’t be possible, this early, without a heated propagator – and a good one at that. I set mine to 20°C, and then once the seedlings are up switch the thermostat down to about 12°C to grow them on. Frost? What frost?

Sowing the earliest root crops: I like to get an early crop of the hardy stuff going as soon as I can (cue: heated propagator again. Sorry). It’s too cold to sow yet, even in an unheated greenhouse; my rule of thumb is 7-10°C day and night before I’ll risk it. But once the toms are finished, turnips, beetroot and kohlrabi go in at 12°C and germinate like a dream.

Planting Jerusalem artichokes: There’s planting to be done outside, too; this year I picked up some of the not-quite-as-knobbly Jerusalem artichoke, ‘Fuseau’, along with the seed potatoes. They’re tall, and have flashy golden sunflowers in summer, so they’re going straight into the ground in the exotic edibles garden. Just hope I can keep them in bounds, that’s all – I have tried (and failed) to curb their enthusiasm before…

shallots

Lovely fat Jermor shallots waiting to go in the ground

Planting shallots: Shallots go in earlier than onions, so mine are in the ground this month. As always, I’ve gone for a French variety, ‘Jermor’ – though I’d have preferred ‘Hative de Niort’, fiendishly expensive but the largest, most reliable and – most importantly – tastiest shallot you’ll ever grow.

Experimenting with new stuff: This year it’s Welsh onions – I never have any luck with spring onions, so I thought these perennial bunching onions might prove a useful substitute. Also Carlin peas, aka parched peas, thanks to a kind gift from skilled kitchen gardener and Charles Dowding‘s other half, Steph Hafferty. And tiger nuts, if I can keep them warm enough. All of which more at a later date.

Cutting hazel stems: You’ll find me swinging monkey-like among the thickets of hazel that line the back of our garden this month: they’re perched precariously on the side of the bank but produce some lovely long, straight stems. Cut at around 2″ diameter, just before the buds break, they supply all my beanpole and peastick needs.

Potting up dahlia tubers: What’s a dyed-in-the-wool veggie type like me doing growing something as fancy as dahlias, you ask? Well, dahlias are edible too, so they earn their place in my kitchen garden. Plus they’re dead pretty. I pot mine up in 2ltr pots this month to save them from the slugging they’d otherwise get in the open garden.

chitting

Ripe with promise: the potato crop chitting on my windowsill. Not strictly necessary, but I do like to get them out of their bags while they’re waiting to be planted.

Forcing new potatoes: The one time I bother with growing potatoes in sacks – otherwise an exercise in retrieving the minimum harvest possible from the maximum outlay – is in early spring, when I force a couple of sacks’ worth of new potatoes just for the smug value of eating them weeks before anyone else can.

Mulching & feeding fruit: The fruit garden gets a lot of attention this month: I’ve just about finished all the pruning, but right behind the secateurs are the spade and wheelbarrow. A good scattering of slow-release fertiliser – I’m a fan of pelleted poultry manure or Vitax Q4, but this year I have Carbon Gold to try too – topped off with a thick layer of mulch sets the whole fruit garden up for the rest of the year.

Autumn mulching

07 Wednesday Nov 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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?!

Covering everything in ****

02 Friday Mar 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

drought, feeding, Helianthus, hosepipe bans, mulch, watering

After spending a month pruning roses, I’m now spending a month shovelling sh**!

I’m a very big fan of mulching, especially lately since we’ve been having such terrible droughts in the summer. I’m certain that my deep mulch last spring saved most of my plants from certain death in the 30 degree temperatures and hosepipe bans last July. I didn’t water my garden once – not even the big herbaceous border – and it all pulled through bar one Helianthus (ah… my poor Lemon Queen… still sad about that one).

Mulching does such a lot of good. It holds the winter’s rain into the soil. It suppresses weeds for months: I won’t have to weed any of these gardens for a month or so now. And most importantly, if you use well-rotted manure (you can tell it’s well-rotted if it doesn’t smell – and if it’s well-rotted, you shouldn’t get weed seeds) then it feeds your soil all year long. I generally put down another feed – usually pelleted chicken manure – underneath the mulch to give plants a feed right away, since it takes a month to get the mulch moving down into the soil and the chicken manure feeds them in the meantime. And that’s it – low maintenance gardening that’s good for plants!

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006

Categories

  • book review
  • chicken garden
  • children gardening
  • climate change
  • container growing
  • cutting garden
  • design
  • education
  • end of month view
  • exotic edibles
  • France
  • Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
  • garden design
  • garden history
  • garden words
  • gardening without plastic
  • Gardens of Somerset
  • giveaways
  • greenhouse
  • herbs
  • kitchen garden
  • landscaping
  • my garden
  • new plants
  • new veg garden
  • news
  • overseas gardens
  • Painting Paradise
  • permaculture
  • pick of the month
  • plant of the month
  • pond
  • poultry
  • pruning
  • recipes
  • seeds
  • self sufficiency
  • sheep
  • shows
  • sustainability
  • this month in the garden
  • Uncategorized
  • unusual plants
  • videos
  • walk on the wild side
  • wildlife gardening
  • wordless wednesday

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Sally Nex
    • Join 6,909 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Sally Nex
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...