Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: BumbleJo on October 23, 2017, 13:41
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Hi folks
I am leaving one of my raised beds compost and manure free for root veg in spring. My question is should I cover with membrane fabric, cardboard or nothing? The soil is pretty light and free draining so given the likely winter rainfall should I cover it with something? I understand black plastic harbours slugs and don’t need any more of those!
Cheers.
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Personally I would never cover a bed, if anything I would sow a green manure to help protect it over winter and lock the nutrients in.
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I'm with Aidy - green manure or nothing.
Took over an allotment last January which had a large area which had been covered for a year. It's only just recovering after a season of work on it.
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Just shows how if you ask a question you'll get several answers at odds with each other 😂
I cover empty beds with weighted down black plastic for three reasons, or is that four?
1. Protects the soil's surface against erosion and gives the worms extra shelter ... (if you have added leafmould or manure etc that is quite handy)
2. Reduces the amount of nutrients diluted by Winter rains
3. Stops the ground getting waterlogged
4. Warms the soil come the Spring, for sowing seed/planting out small plants
Works for me, but each to their own
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In reality, half my Winter plot is covered with kale, brussels, PSB, Japanese onions, garlic, standing parsnips, leeks in a good year, spinach, broad beans and various dormant perennial fruits and herbs. Winter isn't necessarily the empty plot some have.
The rest is a mixture of covered dug beds earmarked for particular crops, mulched with rotting crops, green manures, and standing seedless weeds that I assume also lock in the goodies just as efficiently as "non weeds". I keep trying to increase my green manured beds, but it's not easy, and rely on quick Summer buckwheats and the like. This year, probably only 50 square meters of a 400 square metre plot is green manured.
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I probably didn't make it clear that like you, VP, a large number of beds are filled with Winter/Spring crops growing away. No empty plots here, you know!! We eat all year round
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I’ve got packets of green manure seed but dare I confess I’ve never used it, not sure why just never really know what &when & how
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I probably didn't make it clear that like you, VP, a large number of beds are filled with Winter/Spring crops growing away. No empty plots here, you know!! We eat all year round
Absolutely Sunny. One year I hope to have banished the "hungry gap"
It's a plan I'm going to try next year which involves a small polytunnel, or more likely a couple of cloches, better use of the greenhouse not letting the tomatoes and cukes dominate for so long, and a slight change in my diet. Being vegetarian, it will involve a lot more dried beans next season, and a few late/early cusp covered cops I've avoided up until now. Looking forward to the challenge and organisation.
Once I've achieved my goal, I might just let a lot more of my plot lay fallow and manured for a year, as a thank you.
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I mulch with anything I can find - cardboard if I have some, manure, rotted leaves, home made compost, seaweed, mushroom compost. It all helps keep the weeds down.
I've only ever used black plastic when I've had a bed with a really bad perennial weed problem and I've covered it for a year or longer. I've got enough spare space I can do that.
My plot neighbour covers with black plastic over the winter and it seems to work for him.
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Just shows how if you ask a question you'll get several answers at odds with each other 😂
Yep and this is what make interesting :lol:
I don't use raised beds for various reasons :lol: :lol: and like most I do have a lot still growing etc but those that are empty I do green manure as our soil is sandy and the Fylde winds can strip the top over winter, I have found this the best method.
I have yet to see a green manured bed going flying in the gales unlike one who bought shed loads of cover only to have it blown off his plot in a major gale :lol: :lol: :lol: may I say along with his netted tunnel that wasn't secure enough.
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Thanks for your thoughts everyone. I have used green manure before but thought that might make the soil to rich for roots? I have got winter crops growing in some of the beds but there are only so many brassicas we can eat and my other half isn’t keen on them. The site is pretty exposed and any covering would have to be very secure so although I tend to agree with Sunshineband’s reasons for covering I would worry about stuff blowing off. Some of the brassicas are already leaning at a very precarious angle after Brian!
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You need to either buy the pegs that are sold for fixing the sheeting down, or use bricks, wood (heavy like old fence posts/ walking boards) or large plastic milk bottles filled with sand/earth. All of these are used with success on our windy site :)
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You need to either buy the pegs that are sold for fixing the sheeting down, or use bricks, wood (heavy like old fence posts/ walking boards) or large plastic milk bottles filled with sand/earth. All of these are used with success on our windy site :)
Will do Mum, thanks!
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Really interesting thread all, as for the first time I'm considering covering half my plot for the winter.
(Parsnips etc still in the other)
Cheers
Aled
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My plot is very windy and also very wet - can be pretty much waterlogged in winter - so I worry that covering with black plastic will just leave me with stagnant beds.
I'm on clay as well which doesn't help with that.
So green manure or mulch really works for me.
And also makes it much much easier to weed in the spring.
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I'm on clay as well which doesn't help with that.
Me too and I find covering with plastic leaves a green covered, totally sodden soil to dig into in spring. I'm not far away from Sunny as the crow flies and while we both have heavy soil, her plot drains way better than mine.
If your soil is light BumbleJo, you should be fine to cover, but plastic or cardboard will attract slugs. They sit wet on the soil surface, whereas membrane dries out.
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If your soil is free-draining the winter rains are unlikely to leave it waterlogged in spring even if you don't cover it, although being free-draining most of the nutrients in the upper region of the soil will be leached downwards and therefore out of reach of your spring planting.
Having said that, sandy soils like mine are not naturally fertile anyway, and will therefore always need more feeding than most other types.
Apart from encouraging slugs, covering with black plastic seems a very unnatural thing to do to a complex ecosystem like soil - I only cover my soil when I have something growing in it I'm trying to kill (like a previously rampant Fargesia, for example ::)), and even then I use weed control fabric to give the soil at least some chance to breath.
I reckon there's a lot to be said for green manure, but not if you're a lazy type like me! ;)
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Put the first cover of cardboard down today.
Cheers
Aled
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I cover with seaweed after the first winter storms then dig in during the spring.
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After years of not covering, last winter I covered some beds with a thick layer of composted manure and others (for root veg mainly) with plain compost then weed matting (not plastic) held down with plastic pegs and a few bricks for good measure. It was so successful I’m in the midst of doing it again this year. The reasons were Sunny’s 1, 2 and 4 reasons above plus my third reason of keeping the weeds down until I want to sow seeds/plant out. It made my life SO much easier in Spring and enriched the soil/helped its structure. It also had the added benefit of weakening the perennial weeds (horsetail and bindweed) as light was excluded for some time.