11:14 - 10 January 2011
Winter can be a good time to take a look at your soil care regime. A hard, cold winter doesn’t necessarily mean doom and gloom in your garden. Cold, frosty and icy weather can help to break up the garden soil making it easier to cultivate.
Digging
Winter digging is a great way to work off the excesses of the festive season, though it’s important to make sure you don’t overdo it, especially if you are not used to strenuous exercise, be sure to warm up first and stretch your muscles gently. Tackle a small area at a time and treat yourself to a lovely hot bath when you have finished.
Winter digging is a great way to prepare your garden soil for the season ahead. While much of the garden is dormant you will be able to dig up and remove a wide variety of perennial weeds and their roots, reducing their impact for the season ahead. If your garden suffers with nettles, docks, dandelions, bind weed and more; a good deep dig over can make great inroads into weed populations.
Choose a day when the soil is not wet and claggy and choose a digging tool that is manageable, a large spade will lift several kilos of soil and may be too much for you to handle. If the soil sticks to your boots in great clumps then it is too wet to work it and you would be better focussing your attention on other garden chores.
Digging the soil over and leaving large clumps on the surface allows the action of frost and defrost to break up clods and make the soil more friable.
Don’t forget the soil in your greenhouse and polytunnel borders. Winter is a great time to give this a revamp too. If possible dig it out into a wheelbarrow and cart it out to use on another part of the garden. Replace the old soil with a quality, loam based potting compost and improve with a well-rotted, nutrient rich soil conditioner. The secret to healthy plants and gardens lies in the quality and health of your soil. If you want to keep greenhouse pests to a minimum it’s probably not a good idea to use garden compost as the warmer, protected greenhouse environment may encourage weed seeds and soil pests to prosper and multiply. Instead invest in some quality, screened compost from a reputable supplier.
Soil Improving
Although plants can and do manufacture food within their leaves, they also draw upon nutrients in the soil to boost their growth and flower or fruit potential. If you spend a fortune each year on plant food, it may be time to take a look at the health of your soil. While there is nothing wrong with supplementary feeding, you may find you get much better results from feeding the soil, which will then, in turn, feed your plants. The most obvious way to feed the soil is to add well-rotted farmyard manure. This not only adds vast amounts of nutrients to the soil but it also increases the organic content of the soil, improving soil structure, enhancing moisture retention and attracting a wide variety of beneficial soil organisms such as worms and beetles. Anther great soil improver is garden made compost, the compost that you make from recycling garden and kitchen waste into a rich, friable soil improver. The great thing about this is that it will contain vast amounts of beneficial microorganisms that helped compost the material and in turn will improve the growing environment of your soil. It should also contain rich numbers of earthworms. If you think your soil is depleted in beneficial microbes then consider using a product such as Root Grow, which you add to the soil when planting, this contains populations of healthy soils microbes that will enhance the health of your plants.
Mulching
Winter is a brilliant time to mulch over bare areas of garden soil. For beds and borders where the soil cannot be dug over or worked for fear of damaging plant roots or disturbing vast swaths of bulbs, a garden mulch is the perfect alternative. You can choose to use homemade garden compost, well rotted leaf mould or invest in a proprietary mulch product from a reputable supplier. Natural mulches will break down over time and work their way back into the garden soil. This will improve the soil structure and make the soil more attractive to beneficial soil microbes and organisms.
