Wild About Winter

The all-new resilient gardener, with Kim Stoddart

- Kim Stoddart

It’s that time of year when we really start to notice the leaves falling from the trees and the daylight hours reducing. Our thoughts slowly but surely turn to the winter months ahead. In the natural world, for many beneficial creatures such as birds, this means eating enough to see them through the harsher weather and scarcer pickings, food-wise. Whilst for others, such as a new queen bumblebee, this will mean finding a nice compost pile or bank in which to hibernate until spring. Ladybirds (the queen of the aphid eaters) meanwhile favour old nettles or a nice pile of leaves to see them through. So a meticulously cleaned-up veg patch hardly encourages these hugely helpful critters to hang about.

It’s just one example of why it really is best to let your plot grow more than a little wild over winter. If you rigorously cut back and clear away seed heads and old spent crops then you are removing a potential source of food and shelter for many of these gardening helpers. In addition to this, bare ground is terribly vulnerable to erosion over winter and can exacerbate the leaching away of beneficial nutrients and minerals, which will in turn diminish the quality and productivity of your soil. Heavy rain is the worst offender and, without ground cover to help bind the soil together, much of the goodness can be washed away all too easily.

Build greater resilience in your plot over winter

_Keep your soil well-composted as it will enable it to absorb more water.