Living in London, we have a typically heavy, clay soil. Last year when we first decided to create the veggie garden, the soil was double-dug then bolstered with organic matter and we tried to improve the drainage by digging grit into the subsoil.
Now that the Autumn has arrived and also due to our recent ground work creating the new back border, we have decided to try a winter crop of green manure to help improve the soil further and to supress the weeds. We are using hungarian rye which, according to my veggie book, is a good variety for winter use and we have sown some seed last weekend in the back border. Once the jerusalem artichokes are lifted at the end of the month, we'll sow more green maure seed in their place and therefore covering the whole back border. This will be cut in spring then dug in a left to settle for a couple of weeks before we start planting into it. From the pictures it looks a bit like tufty grass so at least we'll have something green to look at!
On Gardeners' World last week, someone had written in to ask how to speed up their compost which was in a standard plastic compost bin. I had been wondering the same thing myself and was very pleased to see that the example plastic compost bin Monty had on GW was exactly the same black bin that we have. So, it seems the art of compost making lies in the turning. This is easy enough on GW as they have five enormous bays which they move the compost in, not so easy when you only have about a metre square to manouvre in. The GW suggestion, and one that hadn't occurred to me, was to lift the bin off the compost heap, move the contents, put the bin back in place and then shovel it all back in again, thus turning it. As we were away last weekend we haven't had a chance to do this yet, but it is definitely on the agenda for tomorrow.
Another great way of improving the soil is through lovely leaf mould. Now I know the words 'lovely' and 'mould' do not usually find themselves in the same sentence, but leaf mould is absolutely wonderful stuff for the garden. As we have a tiny garden with a fairly small amount of leaves falling, we are happily providing a home for the leaves falling from a tree in a friend's garden up the road. He wants to rake them up off his lawn before they damage it and we want leaves to fill our leaf mould container.... perfect! So today we brought back a large bin liner full and will be doing the same thing again next weekend.
Now that the Autumn has arrived and also due to our recent ground work creating the new back border, we have decided to try a winter crop of green manure to help improve the soil further and to supress the weeds. We are using hungarian rye which, according to my veggie book, is a good variety for winter use and we have sown some seed last weekend in the back border. Once the jerusalem artichokes are lifted at the end of the month, we'll sow more green maure seed in their place and therefore covering the whole back border. This will be cut in spring then dug in a left to settle for a couple of weeks before we start planting into it. From the pictures it looks a bit like tufty grass so at least we'll have something green to look at!
On Gardeners' World last week, someone had written in to ask how to speed up their compost which was in a standard plastic compost bin. I had been wondering the same thing myself and was very pleased to see that the example plastic compost bin Monty had on GW was exactly the same black bin that we have. So, it seems the art of compost making lies in the turning. This is easy enough on GW as they have five enormous bays which they move the compost in, not so easy when you only have about a metre square to manouvre in. The GW suggestion, and one that hadn't occurred to me, was to lift the bin off the compost heap, move the contents, put the bin back in place and then shovel it all back in again, thus turning it. As we were away last weekend we haven't had a chance to do this yet, but it is definitely on the agenda for tomorrow.
Another great way of improving the soil is through lovely leaf mould. Now I know the words 'lovely' and 'mould' do not usually find themselves in the same sentence, but leaf mould is absolutely wonderful stuff for the garden. As we have a tiny garden with a fairly small amount of leaves falling, we are happily providing a home for the leaves falling from a tree in a friend's garden up the road. He wants to rake them up off his lawn before they damage it and we want leaves to fill our leaf mould container.... perfect! So today we brought back a large bin liner full and will be doing the same thing again next weekend.
