You can’t help but be a little jeoulus of fellow gardeing friends you have that have a beautiful greenhouse ‘to play in’. It allows them to grow some truly amazing things for the kitchen for an extended period of the year.
It would be nice to have to get to grips of what to do with all that produce.
With a greenhouse, options open up and you can attempt to grow things that you’ve dreamed of growing in abundance: Borlotti Beans, Globe and Jerusalem Artichokes, Sweet Potatoes, an abundance of Salad Leaves, anything is perfectly possible to grow in a colder climate with the addtion of a nice greenhouse. And those that are either expensive in the shops, or lose their flavour between Harvest and Plate, are particularly valuable.
It’s one thing to sow seed, and in a straight line is not only admirable, but eminently preferable, but what many peoples forget, is ‘the aftercare’, and it’s not then wise to let all the weeds dominate the in-between bits between the rows of stuff you’ve lovingly sown, because you’re potentially ‘shooting yourself in the foot and it’s then a complete and utter waste of effort up till now to let it continue as such. This is as true in the greenhouse as out in the general garden.
Make your motto Mulch, Mulch, and Mulch – even in the greenhouse. When the soil is free of weeds, every time you mow the grass, put the clippings onto the bare earth. This deprives the newly unearthed weed seedlings of light, and lessens the chance of any of them germinating – then you don’t have to waste precious time spent doing weeding rather than other more important gardening duties, and as the grass clippings rot down into the earth, they encourage earthworm activity, and what’s called the ‘Humus’ content of the soil increases, which ultimately feeds your soil for free.
And when you’ve added a layer of rotted manure , it’s far better to cover the ground than leave it open to the elements over the winter, because the earthworms tend to be way more active with a covering, than not.
