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March:
Preparation of the Soil in The Kitchen Garden
by Barbara Pilcher March 2002
If you are gardening on
the flat, it is sensible to leave cultivation
of the soil as late as possible so that it is
beginning to look dry and friable before you begin
working it. However, with deep bed cultivation
you can make an earlier start, as the raised soil
drains more efficiently and cultivation is done
from the sides of the beds without any need to
tread on the soil.
Early spring is the time to incorporate compost
and manure into the soil. Followers of the "no-dig"
cultivation simply spread the compost over the
surface of the bed. Now I find my compost is a
bit coarse for that and it also tends to prove
a bit weedy, so I find it best to make a couple
of shallow trenches down the length of the bed,
shovel in the compost or manure and draw the top
soil back over. It's neatest to do one trench
at a time.
That done, I cover the whole bed or row with a
black polythene sheet, so that the rain does not
leach out all the nutrients. Polythene needs to
be well weighted down with stones. I turn the
edges under if required for a nice fit and place
bricks or stone around the edge so the wind doesn't
catch the sheeting and blow it away. My first
beds to be treated in this way (I have them labelled
in advance in situ, for convenience) are the broad
bean bed and the potato beds. They should be nicely
dried off and warmed up by mid-March when I begin
to plant out the beans and sow the chitted potatoes
- two of the most pleasant tasks of the spring,
now that all the hard work has been done! The
remaining beds are done when time, energy and
a supply of compost become available.
Besides
the deep-beds in the rotation system, several
permanent beds are worth installing for crops
such as seakale, rhubarb and asparagus. These
can last for years before needing to be re-sited
in fresh soil. All can be planted now from crowns
or container grown plants, asparagus and seakale
may also be grown easily from seed. Seakale
and rhubarb, while they produce useful crops
in the ordinary way are greatly improved by
a little intervention of the traditional kitchen
gardening style. Thus, before the buds start
to expand too much, forcing pots are placed
over the crowns. With an established rhubarb
bed, this is simply a matter of finding a crown
that the pot will fit over snugly. Settle it
in and replace the lid and after a few weeks
you have that special treat - beautiful crisp
pale pink stalks of forced rhubarb, weeks earlier
than the rest of the crop. If you have no blanching
pot, use a black bucket or bin, something that
will exclude the light. You can cheaply put
together your own terracotta forcer using a
large sawn-off flower-pot and a pot saucer for
a lid.
Seakale is treated much the same way, but try
not to force the same plant two years in a row,
and have a supply of new plants coming on. Check
from time to time (this is where the lid comes
in handy) and remove any slugs or slaters. This
year I am mulching the crowns with gravel as
a slug deterrent before placing the pots over.
Asparagus needs little attention in spring apart
from weeding; hoeing is risky because of the
danger of damage to the developing spears. When
the fern begins to grow later on, a little top-dressing
of fish blood and bone is beneficial, and if
you have any rain-washed or composted seaweed
to hand, the asparagus bed is the place to put
it!
Even
on cold blustery days there is plenty to be
done in the more sheltered parts of the garden.
There is always space to plant a few hazel and
willow in a hedge or an odd corner, and a clump
of bamboo for canes. All these may be obtained
locally and planted now. It聮s a real boon
to have access to a few hazel and willow rods
and canes for the kitchen garden. In the small
hazel copse I have been coppicing my nine hazels
in a rotation. Each year a few get cut down
right to the base, so I have an annual crop
of small, medium and thick wood. This is invaluable
for a multitude of purposes: the finer twiggy
pieces make great pea-sticks (a few pieces with
catkins saved for flower arrangements with daffodils
in the house), the straight one- to three-year-old
make good weavers and split weavers for hurdles,
thicker pieces make great bean poles and wig-wam
supports for peas and sweet peas, with willow
withies for very pliable weavers. February is
a good month to cut these for making garden
structures. Then there are paths to be cleaned,
tools to be maintained, compost heaps to be
turned! With all this activity, time will fly
and, before we know it, the kitchen garden will
be well on the way to full production once more.
Planting
a herb trough|
Compost
heaps, seakale and rhubarb | Harvesting,
drying and storage | Extending
the season for fresh herbs
| Autumn
Kitchen Garden
| Winter herbs |
February sowing
|
Soil
Preparation |
April Kitchen Garden
|
