Good morning/ afternoon/ evening (whatever time you read this)
So I was going to do a poll to see what you good people do over winter to your beds that are empty.
A few on our site often laugh/ pull faces etc at some of our older chaps/ chapess for leaving their plots like our infamous beaches down the road, we tut and wonder how much damage will the winds, rain etc do over the months and how much top soil will vanish with the gales.
For me I have always been an avid fan of green manure, mainly grazing rye, yes it is a little work cutting it down, leaving a spell before digging (lots of digging) and then running the tiller over but in my mind, the rye has locked the top soil, extracted nutrients and now rotting to creat some structure.
However of late I have read more on the subject of how much benfit will actualy give you on our small scale operations? It has been proved on large scale farming areas, and it is easier than some alternatives on that scale but what about ours?
I read many an article where the no dig method works just as good, rotted mulch then covered and of course less work digging in, I have alway steered clear as we have armies of slugs and when people have pulled the sheets back on site there have thousands hiding and probably breeding as well.
Our beds are sandy, very sandy in fact just like the beach down the road and until the last decade pretty much the same colour of old. so we do need to protect the beds from the gales we often have here on the Fylde coast.
So what say you lot, I am intrigued to know how many of you use green manures, are we a dying breed in the allotment world?
Have you switched from green manures to a different method and why and has it achieved the same or better result?