Getting the plot ready for a new growing season

Winter is a time to catch up and to get everything ready for next year. 

Last year's failures and disappointments can be left in the past as we optimistically plan for the year ahead, a year of bountiful sunshine and rain in perfect proportion, a year where we finally keep up with sowing schedules, remember to keep seedlings watered but don't drown them, keep on top of the weeds, keep up with harvesting and even keep on top of succession sowing and planting.

And that will all start with getting the beds prepared in plenty of time for spring. For some that will mean digging over so the frost can (allegedly) break the soil down or rotavating to start the year with lovely, clear beds. The conscientious will work in manure or ample compost. 

None of that for me though. I want to keep the soil covered to protect it from being beaten down by the worst of the winter weather. It won't be turned, but protected from the elements it will emerge from the winter with a crumbly surface. Most of my annual beds are currently covered with homemade compost or, when there wasn't enough of that, for there never is, a deep layer of straw. This was a choice which was made for me thanks to the cheapness of straw in this area - we should always aim to use whatever is locally available. If it's not sufficiently rotted down by sowing time, I'll rake it off the surface and add it in to the compost piles. 

Rhubarb is already coming up, though it may get nipped back if we get anouther cold spell

In the forest garden, most of the herbaceous plants have retreated under the surface for the winter. But as the rays of spring sunshine hit the ground strong, fresh shoots will appear. For the moment I am keeping the perennial beds well mulched. For this I use woodchip, which I now have in more than plentiful supply. 

Plenty of woodchip and logs to be getting on with!
Can you spot the robin?

Under the fruit bushes I am actually using freshly shredded leylandii. It's still producing a lot of heat, but this will quickly dissipate once it's spread out over the ground. The primary purpose of this is to suffocate the weeds, starving them of light and stealing their nitrogen as the decomposition bacteria get going. Keeping on top of weeds, especially grass growing up through thorny gooseberry bushes would be a nightmare without mulching. 

Woodchip makes an excellent mulch for the raspberry beds.

It will decompose quite quickly and put its goodness back into the ground. I won't need to dig it in, for the worms will do that and its nutrients will be made available to all my plants by the magical processes which are allowed to go on in the soil when it is not repeatedly turned and disturbed by constant upheaval. I'm talking not just worms and minibeasts, but fungal mycelia and bacteria. For the cycle of nutrients, with a little encouragement from us, is much more efficiently handled by nature. No need for simplistic additions of fertiliser backed up with liberal dowses of herbicide and pesticide to eliminate all 'competition'. Nature achieves all of this in a much more complex way. I don't even need to completely understand everything that goes on, in the same way that I don't have a clue how my car or this computer actually work.

Logs and woodchip are now being delivered to the smallholding with alarming regularity! I don't want to turn it away and have plenty of use for it, especially the woodchip, but it is keeping me busy redistributing it around the whole smallholding. It might help me with my resolution to shed a few pounds.

The logs will of course be handy for heating the house, but some are just too big to handle so they will be left for wildlife. Much of the wood needs to season too and I am not keen to use the leylandii in the woodburner. It needs at least a couple of years of seasoning otherwise it's guaranteed chimney fire! Given the amount of wood now coming in, I won't need it for this, so we have multiple woodpiles appearing all over the smallholding. The wildlife will love it. 

I've found another great use for the leylandii logs though. It makes a great edging for perennial beds. It's not too formal but does just enough to define the areas so they don't seem too messy amd random. I don't really do formal, but a degree of organisation and layout is necessary to aid tending plants and harvesting. 

I have decided to create some beds which come somewhere between annual veg beds and forest garden. These are my beds for perennial veg. Here will live Jerusalem artichoke, Turkish rocket, herbs, perennial kales, 9-star perennial broccoli, Chinese artichoke (crosnes). Many of these don't need the intensive input of labour demanded by annual crops, but they don't really fit into the randomness of the forest garden, especially as the canopy closes over and sunny edges become more limited.

The only things that stop me getting more done during the winter are the limitations of my ageing body and the frustratingly short days. 

But as you can see, I've been a bit busy. Before I know it though, the sowing schedule will be ramping up. At the moment it is mainly perennial seeds which are stratifying, the process by which they are sown early enough to experience a protracted cold period. In nature, they need this before they germinate. It is nature's way of making sure that seeds shed in the summer and autumn don't germinate too quickly before spring arrives.

My seed potatoes are arriving this week, which is a sure sign that the main sowing and planting season approaches. Fortunately hours of light increase roughly in line with the amount of work which needs doing... thinking about it, it's probably the other way round, it's the increasing light which heralds the need to prepare beds and get sowing seeds.

And so 2023 is under way!

Good luck everyone.

Our mini rainforest

Strange as it may sound, the key to a forest garden is the network of paths which provide access. These can have a habit of disappearing into the emerging vegetation. They not only provide access, but they invite people to explore. 

Originally I edged the paths with any spare branches I had from work around the smallholding, but now that we have an almost endless supply of logs and chip, I decided to refresh everything. Leylandii logs are not ideal for burning in the log burners as they contain a lot of sap, but they are ideal for substantial path edging. While I was lugging logs Sue was barrowing woodchip, topping up the beds with leafy woodchip from a poplar tree. I filled the pathway with coniferous chip.

This is not just to make everything look neat and tidy, but it is protecting and feeding the soil as well as depriving grasses and weeds of light.

When I reviewed the photos I took, it is all rather reminiscent of trekking through a rainforest - although maybe not on such a grand scale!

While Sue and I were busy doing this, the dogs were being helpful by digging up the grass path by the compost beds tracking the underground journeys of moles or voles. Here's Monty with a chicken overseeing operations.

Wonderful woodchip and lovely logs

I have spent many an hour on my hands and knees weeding. At times it's a pleasant mindful exercise. At times it is a back-breaking, soul-destroying chore.

If you believed all the no-dig hype, you would be wondering why I need to do weeding. After all, you just cover the soil with an inch or so of compost every now and again and hey presto! no more weeds.

This works in theory, if you can possibly get enough compost and if your compost has heated up enough to be weed-free.
But unless you have a close relative rich enough to keep cattle and donate a constant supply of cow manure, producing enough compost to keep your garden covered is a Herculean task. Make no mistake, I make a LOT of compost. Nothing goes to waste and we have plenty of poultry bedding to keep it active and topped up, but still it shrinks down and by the time I have covered a third of my beds the weeds are coming through again and I have run out of the precious compost I so lovingly accumulated and tended over the previous few months.

So what's the solution?

Well I may be moving closer to having one. I have steadily increased the number of growing beds which are perennial and the new forest garden area has rapidly expanded this. The perennial beds can take a mulch of woodchip rather than compost. As time goes on the canopy in the forest garden will close over, the young shrubs will grow and there will be fewer and fewer weeds to conquer.

A Word about 'Weeds'

At this point I should acknowledge that many plants referred to by others as 'weeds' are not considered weeds by me, but I won't deny that some plants are most definitely not welcome in certain places. Dandelions are a classic. Welcome throughout the smallholding EXCEPT in my veg beds. The only reason for this is that my observations tell me that every dandelion root harbours a slug. If it weren't for this, they could happily co-exist next to my other crops. I'm sure somebody will tell me that dandelions can be a useful crop too but the reality is that I probably will never get round to harvesting the roots on a regular basis.

My worst weeds are grasses and creeping buttercup which invade the veg beds relentlessly. Next come nettles, welcome in many corners of the smallholding but too painful to accidentally meet on a regular basis, dock, just because it self seeds so readily, though it does unfailingly grow alongside nettles and provides a welcome soothing relief to the stings, then creeping thistle which is remarkably tenacious. These weeds I do try to eradicate from the veg beds, but it is an ongoing fight which neither of us ever wins!
Lesser weeds are dandelion, plantain, willowherb, cleavers, feverfew, fennel, chickweed. These are all tolerated, even encouraged in moderation, but need taming as all self-seed with abundant enthusiasm.

Besides the basics of pulling and hoeing, covering the ground in the veg beds with compost is definitely the best option.

Wonderful Woodchip

So why have I chosen this moment to write about woodchip?
Well if I can use woodchip as a mulch in some areas of the garden, then I can save the valuable compost for the annual veg beds and I might just have enough to go around.

After ten years trying to find a reliable source, I am finally getting regular loads of both woodchip and logs dropped off at my smallholding. It does a favour to the landscape guys and it is very useful to me. I just hope it continues. At the moment I am getting a couple of van loads a week!

What am I going to do with all this woodchip? 

Firstly, woodchip can be added to the compost pile, especially if it is chipped thin branches, known as ramial chip. This is why I have willow coppice and elephant grass growing. Leafy chippings also add good volume and body to the compost. Woodchip heats up incredibly quickly, to the point of being almost too hot to touch, so it is a good accelerator on the compost, the heat produced by bacteria in turn hopefully treating the compost by killing weed seeds and pathogens.

If the regular supply continues, I will give one load to the sheep for the winter. Although they are incredibly hardy and can easily take a thick layer of frost on their wool, they aren't averse to a heated bed either!

I can use the heat generated to give background heat in the polytunnel too or to create a hotbed early in the growing year.

Woodchip makes a wonderful ground cover for the fruit bushes

My main reason for wanting a regular supply of woodchip is that it is great on the perennial beds. The insects and worms slowly take it into the soil and create a rich top layer which is full of life, insects, fungi, worms and plenty of smaller stuff going on which improves the health of the soil no end.

I am also using it as a mulch in my willow holt, where I have struggled to stop the grasses competing with the willows without resorting to landscape fabric, which I hate using. 

And if the flow of woodchip still keeps coming,  I can fit lorry loads of woodchip into the chicken pens. They will love scratching around in it and it will stop the pen getting muddy in the winter.

With the woodchip comes loads of logs. These will be most welcome to use in the wood burners and should save us a fair bit on the oil bill. The pines aren't so suitable for this, but they will make excellent edging for paths, rotting down to provide habitats too. 

There'll be plenty left, so a stumpery is in my plans, plus a giant log pile somewhere just for the wildlife.

And when just the right logs come along I'll order in some mushroom spawn and get that going.

Finally, shifting barrowloads of woodchip and logs around is keeping me very fit!