How To Prepare Garden Beds for Winter (Without Using Compost

This is how to prepare your garden beds for winter without using any compost because you're not going to be growing anything in your beds for about four or five months so just cover your compost bins and follow this method instead because this is going to protect the soil and slowly feed soil life over the winter months and then you can in spring use compost as a precision tool. This is a step-by-step video so the the goal is using organic material rather than organic matter because organic material creates a much better insulation and it's going to keep soil life a lot more active particularly worms which are going to be bringing in that material and it's going to help reduce any compaction issues so you're kind of hitting spring on the front foot. So there are two main tools that you need shears and a fork you might need a trowel but these are usually what I use and the first thing to do is just have a look at what's in the bed already. I've actually got a couple of these self-sewn korean mint which is which are a perennial so what I'm going to do is cut the tops off and because it's a perennial I actually don't want this in this bed so I am going to go lift this up as a root ball shake off the worst of the roots and that is something that I can plant out into my borders so anything like that I'm going to remove any perennials but in terms of annuals like this here this rocket what I'm going to do is actually cut it back to base level because the idea is with the rocket is that this actually has fairly small roots so it's going to the roots are going to create some soil structure to help stabilize it over winter and gradually break down and I'm not taking any of this material to the compost bin that's the most important thing now if you do end up having something that might have large roots like a brassica or sweet corn or something that is when I would probably pull all of the roots out just because in spring it can be a bit of a pain trying to plant around a real mat of roots so I'm just going to continue getting any of the perennials out and cutting the annuals to base now the other core thing about this is that I want living roots in the ground for as long as possible so I'm not really going to clear my beds until I've had the first major frosts and we've had two or three this week particularly last night which was kind of more like minus three minus four so it's a perfect opportunity then to clear because soil in its natural state it wants plants growing that's what like soil is designed for it's designed to have a relationship with plants and so there's no point taking out plants prematurely because then you're you're stopping that biological process so having a bit of patience being okay with it being a little bit messy is okay because you're just helping to keep the soil in the state in its natural state that it wants to be in now the other thing is that every so often a little bit of disturbance in soil in nature is a natural thing you don't want to do it multiple times a year but you know once a year if you are kind of clearing out that's fine and the reason why I am going in and loosening is because I have a weed here which is creeping buttercup and creeping buttercup is a bit of a pain so it's actually something that I am going to remove because it has these long roots that like to spread out and take over something like dandelion I will actually keep the material here for the next step but if you've got something serious like creeping buttercup or couch grass then it's actually best to just get that out so instead of trying to like turn over the whole soil what I usually do is put a fork in and kind of prise up just to help loosen so I can get the roots out like that and then I'm not kind of turning it or upending the soil and just a little tip for these roots is when you're pulling the plant out of the ground just give it a bit of a shake and it'll just help to tease it all out so the whole goal is to mimic what happens in nature in a woodland leaves fall onto the floor they create this carpet and that is how woodlands kind of function for just thousands of years as a process in terms of the the nutrition and that carbon and so we want to mimic that by chopping up all of this plant material as if it's fallen to the ground but chopping it up so it's smaller like leaves are and it'll also help it break down nicely over winter so there isn't actually much left come springtime so what I'm going to do here is chop up and I've got some plant material here which is a bit green I've got some which is brown so a bit of nitrogen a bit of carbon brilliant and then I'll just lay that out equally over this part of the bed so remember just the more you chop it up the quicker it's going to break down but another thing is try not to put your feet on the soil it's not the end of the world but when soil is a bit wet and then you have pressure that is what can cause compaction so I'm just going to work around and that's why I kind of go for this kind of width of bed about a meter to 1.2 meters so I'm not stretching too far into the middle and it's easy for me actually to just walk around to the other side to do a bit of work I'm just mixing up all the ingredients don't think it'll make a good cake though and the idea is instead of taking all of this plant material putting it on the compost bin letting it break down waiting time and then bringing it back you're actually just leaving all of the the nutrients and also all of the carbon in place in situ so what I'm going to do now is just mix it up a bit just so I know I have a bit of coverage with the greens and browns and I'm now just going to spread it out so it creates an equal layer don't worry if it doesn't cover all of the soil but you're just creating a roughly equal layer of this material across the bed so the rule of thumb that I use is you want at least two to three inches of plant material so that's uh that is five to seven centimeters I usually do it the other way around but there we go of plant material and the idea is that that creates a nice insulative layer that will be effective over winter but it's not too thick but it's also not too shallow it's kind of the goldilocks zone but sometimes just with chop and drop you're not going to get enough material to do that I did yesterday when I was clearing out that bed with mashua and ochre and other things I think there's enough material there I can always top it up with other stuff later on but with this what I'm going to do is use a material that's very available to me which are leaves but there's so many other things that you can do you could even use wool you can use a straw just make sure it isn't sprayed you can use things like grass clippings like in the um like kind of the outer islands in in Scotland the Outer Hebrides they very often just use seaweed as this or it could just be other plant matter that you might have from borders and stuff and the next thing I'll be experimenting is ramiel chip wood so I'm going to go and I'm going to collect some leaves to then finish this off because I'd say there's just just about an inch um so I want another couple of inches another five centimeters just to cap it over the top now if you're a place like a an allotment where it's hard to source materials like this then you have a few options one is to save the chop and drop and if you do want to put compost down put it down but then at least cover that with some organic material because that's going to be much better than nothing at all the other thing I'd consider is actually it's it's kind of cheaper to buy in things even like organic straw as like a bale that hasn't been sprayed and putting that down than buying all of that compost and what what I found is that I'm only really needing to use compost now for the hungrier plants when I'm planting at the base of the hole rather than ever having to put down that amount of compost so the homemade compost that I'm making is enough to power my garden and that could be the same for you so what I found with using just organic material like this is that I just see so many more worms now in my garden which is a very good sight indeed and all of this material is a bit like a sponge so we have a lot of rainfall and if you have just bare ground rainfall can lead to compaction so this it softens the blow and it creates a nice warm insulation because compost isn't really adding any warmth or insulation so even today when it is like really really cold at the bottom of the layer of the leaves there were still loads of worms that were active so this just helps to keep everything ticking over I could leave the weeds in if I wanted to so there is that kind of living plant material but it's just much easier to start spring with a blank canvas and we have to be realistic and practical about gardening so what I'm going to do now is just mulch this it's just worth noting there are some trees that have leaves that either have potential toxins in them or might be really slow at breaking down so just look out for those but usually going with your your kind of like native trees is the best option this is using sycamore which has naturalized and sycamore is totally fine now I know that a lot of people are going to ask like you're putting down these leaves when they just blow away so these were put down a couple of weeks ago and we did have a storm but what happens is after a good like rainfall or a good watering they kind of just like bind together so maybe you might lose a few off the top and that's okay but really it it kind of binds together as one kind of core body and if you're using something like grass clippings then these really aren't going to be blowing away now you like me might have some plants that are going to be staying in over winter until spring this here is a kaolette the focus here is just work around it just work around any plants that you might be keeping in so all of the soil around is protected it's actually going to help them keep the roots a little bit warmer keep the biological life around the roots around the rhizophere actually more active so you are going to also be benefiting these plants but then everything else all around can also get to work so very simple I've been amazed every spring by how beautiful the soil is as a result now if you're worried about slugs late winter early spring you could always rake off any kind of large bits but most of it's going to be broken down and it means that if you put organic material now and focus on protecting the soil and feeding the soil then the organic matter later which is both broken down in the bed but also in your compost bins that should also be protected from the rain that is when you get to planting and if you want to find out more about my reasons for not using compost in autumn I've got a couple of videos either side