Category Archives: Winter protection

Winter ready perennial kales

This week I’ve spent a lot of time preparing various less hardy plants for winter, laying down blackberry canes and covering with leaves and jute sacking to hold the leaves in place and similarly with sea kale which is marginally hardy here.
Even though it was under -5C it was dry and quite pleasant to work outside raking leaves from the wild part of the garden.
I was a bit late this year, the cold spell with 10 days below 0C every day means that there’s already 10cm or so frozen solid in parts of the garden, so crossing fingers that I wasn’t too late.
Here’s part of my collection of perennial kales which are marginal here even with the roots protected. In my world, kales are of the least hardy vegetables :)

The canes of my 30 year old blackberry are almost as long as the south facing wall of my house:

…and my 35 year old seakale bed, covered as maybe 1 in 10 winters they wouldn’t survive!

 

 

Webinar on winter perennial vegetables!

Thank you Emilia Rekestad for putting last week’s webinar on winter perennial vegetables up more permanently on youtube. Emilia first introduces the webinar and the polyculture project through which it was organised!
I hope you find it useful and please help us by sharing with friends and relevant groups!!
 

Forbord illuminations, long dig and leaf piles

An active weekend in the garden digging a trench for the Internet, moving and stacking firewood and piling leaves over less hardy plants…before the next freeze with air temperature forecast to be below zero for the next 10 days…