Over-winter soil improvement

In the last post I covered vegetables that can be grown, and more importantly harvested, in winter.  The post was quickly followed by a unseasonal chilly spell, sorry about that guys! :)  The cold snap might have persuaded you that you really don't want to be gardening over the winter months or like me, you might not think you will need all of your vegetable beds for your winter veggies.  Rather than letting it all go to weeds I've been researching some soil improvement tips as things don't seem to grow quite as well in one half of the patch for some reason. It gets the same amount of sun so I'm thinking it will benefit from some TLC.




My veggies are pretty tightly packed in and it is fairly intensive vegetable garden, so a rest and adding back some nutrients and organic matter will do it some good. Next year I can swap and do the same to the other half.

So after reading a lot of internet and magazines and books here is my plan ...

1. I've cleared this area, luckily all the things planted here have finished now.  I'm going to dig in a some sheep poo today.  I'll give the soil a good dig over to check that there are no lurking potatoes and work in the sheep pellets.
2. In a week or so I'll get rid of any weeds that have appeared and then sow some blue lupins as green manure (I guess sheep poo is brown manure!?).  This was a new thing for me but apparently if you chop up and dig the plants under the soil in Spring, a few weeks before you want to plant your seedlings they will enrich the soil with goodies for your spring plantings.  Other options are mustard and broad beans too, I chose lupins just because they are pretty!  Get green manure seed in the big packets rather than ornamental lupins.  This will also keep the soil aerated and make digging easier in spring, no wet compacted soil for me! :)
3. A lot of my garden goodies are grown in containers as well, I'll go round today and have a bit of a tidy up of those too.  Most of my herbs will keep over winter, but I'll empty out all those that need replacing. The outdoor tomatoes are looking a bit sad (understatement) so I will be ruthless and get rid of those too. I'll give the pots a clean up and put in the shed until spring (sob, sniffle). 

Green and brown manure ready to go

So a little bit of work now and then it seems like you can relax and pat yourself on the back for a job well done and stay by the fire all winter if you aren't planning on keeping the growing going! :) For now though I still have lots of chillies, tomatoes, lettuces and strawberries coming through so I am planning to enjoy as much as I can of 'summer' while it lasts!

Any other good idea out there for the winter months?

Right I suppose after all this talk I'd better get on with it!