Win a gardening gift voucher with GYO magazine and Thompson & Morgan

[Sara]

GYO has teamed up with Thompson & Morgan to offer a £10 seed voucher to
every forum member who has a gardening tip selected to be published in
our next Subscribers' Club newsletter. Winners will be contacted and
asked for their name and a photo, so you'll even end up with your
picture in print!

All you have to do is let us know your advice for getting the plot ready
for winter. Whether you're going to be sowing, clearing, planning or
something altogether more offbeat, we'd love for you to post your tips
below.

[poozie]

I plan to make a few low hedges of sticks and branches covered in chicken wire and filled with fallen leaves. Along with a small pile of logs and rocks i'm hoping it will provide shelter for all my beetles, spiders, toads and other useful allotment friends over the winter.

[kernowyon]

at the moment I am collecting cardboard from anywhere I can find it, then late autumn get a load of manure from the local farm and spread it over a couple of beds and then cover with the cardboard and leave it well alone so the worms do their job. In late spring I cut a few planting holes for pumpkins, squash and courgettes. this saves on mulching and weeding.

[Birdie Wife]

It's a good time to make sure your shed is fit to last through the winter gales - give it a coat of wood preserving paint if it needs it and make sure the felt on the roof is secure, with no holes or rips. Repair jobs are no fun in wet freezing weather.

[SarzWix]

My allotment usually spends the winter half occupied with growing crops. The other half is 'tucked-up for winter', with a blanket of manure or spent mushroom compost & covered over with weed suppressing membrane or thick cardboard, which is put on as the summer/autumn crops are harvested. The beds which will be used are gradually planted with over-wintering veg, raised in pots or modules & planted out as other things are harvested, such as savoy cabbages, brussels sprouts, kale, swedes, leeks and over-wintering onions & garlic.

[Flummery]

My plot gets ready for winter by having the summer crops removed, the soil beefed up with any rotted manure or compost I have and planted up with winter crops. I already have black and red kales, purple sprouts, red cabbage - I have leeks and early purple sprouting broccoli ready to go in as I clear early crops - I have recently sown spring cabbage and romanesco which will go in too when ready. I think the soil is much better covered with a crop than covered with weeds.

[pigletwillie]

Get your compost heaps turned so that come early winter you can top dress your beds with a good helping of well rotted allotment compost for the worms to take into the soil.

Ten minutes spent on the lottie in winter is worth 60 in the spring when you are faced with planting and sowing as well as keeping down weeds. Being prepared keeps the workload down to more reasonable levels.

Make use of your cold frame by sowing a broadcast crop of "early" carrots such as amsterdam forcing so you can pull fingerlings all through the winter.

Cover any unused beds with plastic or membrane to keep stop the nutrients being leached out by winter rain and also to keep it a bit warmer ready for spring.

Remove all old crops and their brash to prevent diseases and pests overwintering in the nooks and crannies, in addition put up insect hotels for the good guys to overwinter so you have some early reinforcements on site to combat pests.

Propogate, propogate and propogate some more. Most soft fruit bushes, figs, and lots of perennials can have cuttings taken from now till early winter. All can be overwintered in a sheltered place if you dont have greenhouses or cold frames.

Build a cold frame for your tender plants and to overwinter crops in.

Plan for next year, get the seed catalogues in and organise your crop rotation and almost as importantly organise your crop succession to keep the beds full and productive.

Contemplate, spend some time looking at your plot, what worked, what grew well and build on that for next year. Its important to sometimes just enjoy the plot and not lift a spade at all.

Arrange to see other peoples plots and gardens to glean ideas from. Its amazing how a simple idea can really transform how you do things. You will have all winter to put them into action.

Prepare to preserve. Now is an ideal time to dry, jam, pickle, bottle and freeze your seasons work to give you a taste of summer all through the winter. I dont believe people who say you can have too many courgettes, they just have a limited imagination.

[Jon B]

As sowing for winter/spring crops tails off and watering becomes less of a chore, I am on the continual scavange for compost from wherever I can get it to cover bare patches over the winter. This is particularly important for my sandy soil. A particularly good source can be churchyards where in distant corners, grass cuttings, raked leaves and dead flowers from church arrangements & graves are often piled by the churchwarden/gardener and has been piled up over the years.

[SueA]

I tend to leave my veg. patch over winter with a topping of compost from the bin & I cover it in late winter with a hooped cloche of polythene to warm the soil up. This way you can sow some 'all year round' lettuce in part of it & warm the soil up for early spring sowings next year.

[lottie dolly]

this will be the first over wintering on my new plot,i plan to clear the ground as crops are harvested,and deal with the persistant weeds,then cover with mypex/black polythene,a must is to sort out more rain water collection,ready for the start of the spring growing season when our tap water is not turned on,also check over the plant pots/seed trays ext,will they do another year ?,have a general tidy up,ready to put our plans for next year into action,take a look in the seed books,carry on tending to the crops still growing,and continue to enjoy what has been freshly harvested.

[Gwen11ian]

With only containers to garden in (the allotment list is so long they haven't taken any new names in two years and running) I will make a list of what crops worked and what didn't to refer to when ordering and seed-swapping for next year, put the spent compost in a friendly neighbors compost heap and scrub pots clean, fill some of the newly cleaned pots with compost and start lettuce and herbs on a bright indoor windowsill for fresh winter crops, and follow the forum on GYO to get my gardening "fix" over the long months until next spring.

[Winged one]

I will have one half of the plot still growing - brussels sprouts, purple sprouting brocolli, a few cabbages, lots of leeks, garlic, salad, and some overwintered peas (meteor) and broad beans (aquadulce claudia) - both of these for early crops in April/May rather than winter crops. I hope to get a cloche set up as well for a few slightly protected crops like some other salads and carrots.

The other half of the plot will be gradually emptied out as the crops finish up from summer, and covered with black plastic. If I can get some, I will put down some farmyard manure, or else just the contents of the compost bin (and some of the compost from the garden dalek transported to the plot as well).

I will take the quiet time over winter to do the heavy digging in small bits - uncovering a small area annd recovering once dug. This will allow me a greater chance to get rid of the couch grass (as we have a lot and I rarely have enough time to totally clear any one area - let alone the whole plot - during the busy growing season). I will also try to get the potato drills and some bean trenches dug in advance - with the bean trench filled with lots of lovely moisture retaining materials - paper, weeds, veggie peelings - so that I have everything properly spaced for the busy spring sowing time.

The winter will also see me doing a proper plan this year - so that I have a successional plan, everything rotates properly and I have plenty of crops next summer without any gaps (unlike this year!!).

The last thing I plan, which is the luxury if I get loads of time in reasonable weather up there (so all the digging is done), is to put in some permenant bean and raspberry supports and also create a permenant strawberry patch and asparagus bed.

I like the plot in wintertime, as so few people were actually about last winter it was lovely and peaceful, and yet there were still harvests to be had and rewarding work to be done. Without over-exerting myself.....weedy girl that I am!!

[Skotch]

A very simple one I wrote about previously:

Use old tennis balls and bamboo canes to create a cheap cage for brassicas and fruit - saves a fortune on the modular systems available in some shopping magazines

Skotch

[Flummery]

A particularly good source can be churchyards where in distant corners, grass cuttings, raked leaves and dead flowers from church arrangements & graves are often piled by the churchwarden/gardener and has been piled up over the years.

Brilliant tip - my plot is behind the churchyard!

[nemo]

i have made cold frames from glass and clear plastic shower doors. being shower doors the frame is rust proof and the doors can be opened in warm weather. i just use two shower door to form a v shape with 2 aluminum brackets to keep it all together. its great for most crops i can harvest lettuce 10-11 months of the year i grow a variety called Kelly. another free cold frame i get the glass windows from washing machine i grow radish and oriental leaves under the glass window from a washing machine. don't leave bare soil uncovered because bare soil will lose valuable nutrients due to the rain washing it away. i use seaweed to cover bare soil .the seaweed ends up washed up on a near by beach a 50mm layer of seaweed blocks out the light so weeds cant grow its a good soil improver the worms do most of the work and whats left is easily dug in the plot in spring.
collect the ash from wood burning stoves etc its a great source of potash which helps flowering and fruiting plants
home made comfrey, nettle, seaweed and manure liquid feeds can be made for little to no cost even if you only make one comfrey is a must its easily done but there is a down side once you open the container which holds the comfrey leaves and water the smell of it is quite bad
add seaweed to your compost heap it breaks down very fast