ALLOTMENT PLOT JOBS FOR THE WINTER MONTHS / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Hey guys Emma here, welcome back to my allotment videos. In this video I'm going to be sharing some things that you can do on your allotment plot over the winter months. Now winter is does sort of feel like a bit of a dead time so if you want to just stay home in the warm with a nice cup of tea and not go to your plot until the springtime comes and the sun comes back out then that is well within your rights. But if you're like me and you're a bit of a doer you want to get out there and get some things done. Winter's a great time for that it's the more jobs that you do in winter the easier your spring and summer on the allotment will be. So I'm just going to go through a few things that I'm going to be doing over the winter months and I hope that you find them helpful. So if you do go down to your plot at the moment you might find that a lot of your neighbouring plots have covered over their beds and this might be with some plastic ground sheet, it could be with cardboard you can see some pallets over these ones. Why do they do it and should you be doing it too? I've actually decided to cover over all the beds on my allotment plot that don't have anything growing in it over the winter time this year. It's the first year that I've ever done this it's a bit of an experiment. Now the reason why you should cover your beds is so it keeps in all the nutrients and goodness in the soil which can be lost if they're not covered. It can actually also help to keep weeds down so as the springtime comes around you'll notice a lot of weeds start to spring up everywhere and so if your beds are covered with something that's less likely to happen if at all, who knows? And another reason of course is that it can help to warm your soil up a bit earlier so you might find that you actually get to do some spring planting earlier than you thought because the soil will be nice and warm and ready for plants. If you're not happy to use plastic you don't have to, you could use a nice thick layer of cardboard and cardboard has the added benefit that it's actually quite good for your soil and you don't have to just pull it up again, you could cover it over with a nice thick layer of compost and then when the springtime comes you could grow straight into it. If you do do that just make sure to water it really well and that will just help it to break up and make sure all the roots of new plants can go through it so that's an added bonus or of course you could mulch your beds really thickly. If you've got Christmas tree cuttings or clippings or an old Christmas tree that you're getting rid of that's a really good thing to mulch your beds over with. You could also use fallen leaves from the tree, some manure, a bag of compost, whatever you use just make sure it's a nice thick layer and that will just do all the good stuff that I said about earlier. Winter is of course the perfect time to put in any bare root plants, bare root fruiting plants I should say, things like raspberries, rhubarb, blackcurrants all of these can go in now over the winter time. They look a bit scary don't they when they come like this as bare root plants because you just think how on earth is that going to grow into anything but they do, they really do. So the general rule of thumb when you're planting bare root fruit bushes is to bury it twice as deep as the roots and three times as wide and I guess that's just to help it get going a bit and make sure that it's really in the ground and it's got room to wiggle about and spread its roots out but twice as deep three times as wide that's all you really need to know about them, just whack them in. I like to feed the birds all year round, if you're not feeding the birds in the winter what are you doing with your life? It is one of the most rewarding jobs on my allotment plot is just feeding the birds and all the wildlife really and looking after them. You can be creative, I made these little apple bird feeders which turned into squirrel feeders because the squirrels absolutely loved them but that's all good. Whatever you feed the wildlife at this time of year they will be so thankful for because obviously food sources are a little bit sparse at the moment and yeah they'll just be really happy for whatever you can give them. Fatballs are also a really great thing for birds, it fills them up and it gives them all the nutrients they need to get through the winter months but let's not neglect the habitats. So I made this little wildlife tripod which was a little bit fiddly but I got the hang of it, you just make a little tripod with sticks and then fill it with lots of dead material, leaves and sticks and things, it's a great little habitat for wildlife and if you have a wildlife pond do make sure that you are breaking up the ice so that your all your creatures that come to your plot can get a nice drink. Keep composting, if you don't have a compost bay now is the time to make one guys, trust me I made that mistake of not having a proper composting area for years and I finally made one this year, it's a great time to keep topping it up if you've got any old vegetables from Christmas or any crops that need chopping up and throwing in there. I've added a great big pile of manure as well which is a great thing to add because it really helps to heat up your compost and I'll get in trouble if I don't say this but leave it alone, cover it over and let it do its thing. It's a good idea at this time of year to clean out your gutters around your sheds and stuff and make sure that the water can get through and then fill up a great big water thing like that, now this is just an old bin it's not a water butt so I need to cover it in the spring time when it gets warmer to stop it from evaporating but also I need to put a little bit of netting or something over it to stop animals from drowning in there, so what I actually might do yeah is use netting, let's get some netting, yes there we go, right there we go, we've got the chicken wire, the garden mesh over it, it's all working, good. It's also the perfect time of year to go around and fix anything that needs fixing, take a little look at your shed roof, make sure it's not got any holes in it, hasn't fallen in, if it has it's a good time to start replacing things, I always have to put my raised beds back together again because they fall apart but this is just the perfect month to get all of those jobs done so that it's looking good and ready for springtime, it's also a great time of year to prune any fruit bushes or fruit trees that you have, so I've got an apple tree here which I've pruned but my fruit bushes are a little bit young yet so I'm not going to touch those but it is a great time if you've got any fruit bushes that are more, you know, advanced in their life cycle, it's time to start cutting them back and pruning them. It is a good time of year to move any perennials that you've got or fruit bushes because they're not in active growth, and my advice if you're going to do this is don't overthink it, don't overthink it, dig around it, dig a big hole, try not to break the roots as you pull it up or break as little roots as you can but just do it, just whack it in because you know what, it's got time to recover before spring so do it now, don't overthink it, just pull it up and whack it in a new spot, do you know what I mean, the plant will just have to cope, just have to get on with it, toughen up, toughen up, you know, it's got to make your plants a little bit tougher. It's also a good time to plant any perennials so if you buy one in the garden centre now's a great time to get it in the ground and guys it's not too late to plant in your tulip bulbs if you haven't done it as well. In this bed behind me here I planted in about 150 tulip bulbs but I did it very early. A thing about tulips is that they need to go in a bit later, they need to go in when the weather is cold like now and because of our weird, crazy, confusing, don't understand what the weather's doing anymore weather it doesn't seem to get cold until at least January so I've sort of put all my tulips in in November thinking oh that's you know that's bulb planting time and actually it was probably too warm for the tulips to go in, I think it would be worth it in the springtime, I think I'd be happy I did it. Right, tulip bulbs, really really simple to plant so it's tulip bulb, that's the tip, that's where it grows, flat bits the bottom where the roots come out, needs to go at least three times its depth so one, two, three. I don't always do it three times the depth, I think just quite deep is really what you need to think. I mean a lot of people panic about things like numbers, like depth and stuff, I think you know just quite deep and also if you haven't done it quite deep enough get a big bag of compost or some mulch and just just layer up the soil and do it that way, do it the opposite way. So I hope this video has given you some ideas of a few jobs you can do over the winter months and of course if you've just got a brand new allotment plot this is the perfect time to be down there clearing it all, putting in all the structure, sorting out your beds, topping them up with some fresh compost ready for the springtime. It's honestly, it's the best time to do it so when the spring comes around you'll be ready to grow into it and you'd have done all those really tough, muddy, horrendous jobs which is what I was busy doing this time last year. So I hope you've enjoyed my video, I'm going to be doing another one next Friday on all the seeds that I'm going to be sowing in the month of January so join me for that, subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and I will see you again next time. Thanks for watching guys, bye!