Give your soil autumn love

Feeding the soil will benefit your whole garden, says Ruth

- Ruth Hayes

I’M slowly clearing the garden of this year’s summer annuals, and cutting back perennials that have flowered and are past their best. Our plot is starting to look rather stark and naked after the summer’s colour, but at least the extra space gives me the chance to improve the soil for next year’s flowers.

Just as we feel run down by periods of intense activity and stress, so our soil ends the summer depleted of many nutrients after months of growing and compacted by old roots.

Autumn is the time to put things right. If you feed your beds, raised beds and borders with a generous layer of organic mulch now, you can either dig it in or leave it on the surface as mulch to be broken down and incorporated by worms and winter weather.

You need to pick your time, though. Never add a layer of mulch when the ground is frozen as it will simply trap the cold in the soil, just as mulch applied to dry soil will stop rain getting down to where it’s really needed.