00:33:19 (someone): I would never touch them until probably around late March or mid March because that dead straw material of the original plant will protect the crowns of the plant, the roots of the plant from any late frost or dampness so that's probably the best way. It's a natural protection, you see it in the wild so use it in your own garden as well.

00:33:36 (someone): And is it within frost, is it the cold that's the problem?

00:33:39 (someone): I think it's very often a combination of cold but probably more damp actually. So yes, frost might kill the stems of the plant and certainly might kill the tender crown that Chris is talking about, but the dampness is very often the killer, especially plants that like free-draining soil, perennials that like that.

00:33:56 (someone): Which most of them do, which is a majority of them, they all like that sort of free-draining, nice loamy soil.

00:34:01 (someone): And the old stems from last year's flowering can look very beautiful on a frosty morning with the light catching them and if they've got seed heads don't forget the birds will like the seeds on the seed heads as well.

00:34:11 (someone): Would you collect leaves from around it? Would you pick the leaves up hands-on?

00:34:15 (someone): Generally it's a good idea to pick up the leaves because they can sort of let things get sort of quite moist and damp under there but you do need to check for wildlife as well. Certainly in my garden I've got a hedgehog nesting behind one of the plant pots so just let that pile of leaves go undisturbed and we've also found frogs and toads under those piles so yeah check what you're lifting up.

00:08:16 (someone): in recent years haven't we become a bit more exotic in our approach to gardening, obviously influenced by the fact the climate's changing slightly, but they will still be vulnerable so maybe some hessian, wrapping some hessian around it, make sure you protect any trunks or any crowns, that's quite important and what you described there about how frost works, you get a thing called physiological drought basically, that's what it is where the ground freezes and the plant can't take up the water and that isn't apparent usually until the spring comes, so say you've got a big rhododendron that you love and it looks fine all through the winter it's frosted on the ground and it looks fine because what's happened as soon as the spring comes and it comes out of dormancy it tries to operate and start photosynthesizing and then you get the damage, the whole plant starts to flag So if you are in a really cold place like up north in Scotland or whatever it may pay, it breaks the rules a little bit, but it may pay to put down a nice thick mulch that could be an artificial one maybe a mypex or something or hessian or it could be an organic mulch but just protect those surface roots from that permafrost.

00:09:16 (someone): I think that's a really good tip and I've used leaves and straw in fact to protect for instance dahlias. I no longer dig up my dahlias because I don't get that bad of frost anymore And I've been able to protect them by putting this layer, this mulch of dried leaves and bracken over the top of them. But one word of warning, I have to say, sometimes with some plants, it's the damp, not the frost that kills them.

00:07:27 (someone): Well, what happens is every plant has got water inside it, inside the cells, and this is carried up through the plant cells. Now, what happens is that water freezes when the temperature drops. That will break the cell walls, which means they can no longer carry the plant's nutrient juices, the sap, the water, or whatever, and that means the plant's going to die. So, not only does a frost kill the plant, but quite often a prolonged frost will also freeze the ground so that the plant can't take up water. The ground is too hard and too ice bound. So those are the dangers. So what you've got to do is protect the ground sometimes and certainly protect the plants. Now you can do something as simple as put a cardboard box or a pot over a particularly precious plant. Chris you've got other tips as well haven't you?

00:08:16 (someone): Yeah you can, if you've got, if you're a lover of tree ferns or any of these big, in recent years haven't we become a bit more exotic in our approach to gardening, obviously influenced by the fact the climate's changing slightly, but they will still be vulnerable so maybe some hessian, wrapping some hessian around it, make sure you protect any trunks or any crowns, that's quite important and what you described there about how frost works, you get a thing called physiological drought basically, that's what it is where the ground freezes and the plant can't take up the water and that isn't apparent

00:42:01 (someone): The roots will get in through to the clay, let the soil through, let the air through, break down those clay molecules and break up the soil and make sure you can grow stuff in it. Traditionally, I suppose, we would have also dug it over in the autumn. I would have gone in with a mattock, maybe chucked it over and left the frost to it, let the frost get on it to break it up. But nowadays, that's probably, and certainly in the south of England, that's not such a good idea because we just don't get those kind of winters. Maybe the further north you go, that's still an idea. If you've just moved into a place and you're looking out the window and you think, I really want to do a garden and it's all stodgy and clay and puddled and looks terrible, there are some emergency measures you can take. I would normally go and put in what I call a soak away. You tend to find on new properties you might even have clinker and old bricks in the soil anyway. But dig a big one square metre hole right in the lowest point of the garden and then just fill that with clinker, with brick and anything like that and that means the water will gravitate towards that lowest point of the garden and soak away. Another thing you can do which is really important is actually put some grit slits in. We're down about half a metre and back fill them with gravel, horticultural gravel and that will again aid drainage. So there is some emergency measures you can do.

00:05:40 (someone): sort of exotic garden, Logan Botanic Garden up in Scotland's got a very exotic collection. You'll see they'll stuff the crown with insulator and then wrap it in hessian and that'll stop the frost and the wet getting into the crown. If you've got stuff in pots hessian wrap the pot because once that frost gets into the pot you're in big trouble and you'll lose your plant.

00:05:57 (someone): I mean, this is the thing with pots, isn't it? I've got an olive tree, not a very big one, sort of next to the house outside the back door. I mean, they say it'll be okay down to minus five, but it's been a lot colder than that. Is it a question of just covering the top or covering the pot and the top? What would be your advice?

00:06:16 (someone): Well, I'd cover the whole pot, I'd wrap the whole pot and the top, because obviously it might be in clay, for instance, and clay is porous, frost can get in through clay. In fact, even the pot itself can be damaged by frost. So I would wrap the whole thing. It's always worth having a roll of hessian in your tool shed for when these cold snaps go along. So if you wrap that up, it will just stop that frost penetrating the pot, damaging the container itself, but certainly damaging the plant roots.

00:06:39 (someone): It's interesting that because I fleeced some bay trees couple of years ago, I put a piece of fleece sort of over the top, they're kind of a lollipop shape, so I put a piece of fleece over the top, left it for three or four days and the weather warmed up and I took the fleece off and what happened was all the leaves turned a sort of

00:16:52 (someone): sowing green manures, you're still in time to sow those now, we've just sown some phacelia at the demonstration garden here today. And also looking out for crops that you know can withstand certain weather conditions really, or perhaps trying your hand at perennial veg instead, that could be a good alternative sometimes. So just to dig in a bit, Ho Ho, would you dig in that organic matter or would you lay it on the top? Well, that really depends on whether you are a no-dig or a dig gardener. So as you know, personally, I love to dig the soil because I just like the feel of it and the, you know, the way it makes me feel really. But if you're no-dig, you put it on the top as a layer of mulch. If you like to dig, you can just lightly turn it over into the soil, but you don't really need to be digging it down because during the autumn and the winter, The worms and the microorganisms will take it down. The weather helps it go into the soil. It just depends on how fish are feeling, really. And we talk about green manures a lot, but which ones would you recommend this year? If you're sowing it now, as I've said, the phacelia is good because it germinates quite quickly and we've found that actually it will germinate in this heat. Winter tares are quite good. Vetch. If you're no-dig though, you want to try and use some that you can chop and drop on the soil. We've tried that before with the rye grasses and buckwheat and chopped them Or alternatively, if you are going to use something like trefoil or clover, you need to chop them down before they start going into flour. OK, anything you would recommend, Chris, in terms of preparation for next year?

00:31:21 (someone): do this idea of mulching and then covering, I used cardboard in fact weighted down with bricks and it was remarkable after a year I could pull the bindweed out as easily as you pull a string of spaghetti out of a bowl.

00:31:34 (someone): And what about rotavators Anton, when you want to clear and unlock them?

00:31:37 (someone): Well obviously it's a very tempting thing to do because it turns the soil over and makes it look tidy just for a short time but this will actually make the problem a lot worse and basically you're chopping up all those perennial weed roots and multiplying up those plants so if you've got anything like bindweed or bramble roots you're basically making a problem ten times worse. And also you can, especially if it's sort of wet, you will be sort of destroying the soil structure. You create what's called a soil pan just underneath where the sort of blades of the rotavators are pounding and that creates a hard layer which roots find very difficult to penetrate. So I would steer clear of them.

00:32:14 (someone): Tempting but at the same time to be avoided.

00:32:17 (someone): Yeah. Okay great, thank you. So the next question is asking about frost. What's the best way to protect tender perennials from frost?

00:32:25 (someone): Well it depends which ones you're talking about Hannah. I think the big sort of tender perennials we think about is maybe Dixonia's like tree ferns, these kind of really exotic plants we've brought into our landscapes and we've planted over the last sort of decade or so.

00:45:43 (someone): When it flowers it starts to get quite woody and then it will be lower in nutrient content and it will take a much longer to break down. So just keep an eye on it really. I can't sort of say a calendar date to dig it in. It's really sort of using your judgment. But I would say you need to plan forward and think what your next growing. So if you've got sort of transplants or something like that, you can be put sort of incorporating it about three or four weeks beforehand. You might want to leave a little bit longer, sort of four or five weeks if you're going to be sewing stuff directly because Vetch, when it decomposes, it does actually release a chemical which stops seeds germinating. So you do need to leave a sort of four or five week gap between sort of incorporating it and sowing seeds direct.

00:46:30 (someone): And Anton, do you dig it over or do you just cut it down and leave it on top of the soil?

00:46:35 (someone): OK, so a lot of people are getting into sort of no dig growing and some people say, well, you can't use green manures because you have to dig them in. Well, that's not actually true. There's other ways of dealing with it. But I certainly find if you just chop it up finely and leave it on the surface, it tends to dry out and form a sort of thick mat. So what I do is I would then cover it with some leaf mold or compost and that will stop it drying out and help it to break down. And then you've got that nice sort of lush layer of leaf material breaking down and releasing its nutrients.

00:44:23 (someone): Chris you're our houseplant expert what would you say?

00:44:26 (someone): Yeah, I think that we're probably entering a bit of a period of jeopardy in the winter for most houseplants, especially if you're not that comfortable looking after them. I wouldn't say stop watering them completely, because obviously they still need a drink from time to time, but it's certainly a good idea to mist the leaves now and again. The important thing is to not keep your houseplants too near a heat source, so if you put them in a radiator or fire, temperature fluctuations, that can cause leaf drop and it also can cause, you know, you get that browning around the edge of the leaf. You've got a big cheese plant, you get this brown line all around the edge of the leaf, That's where the plant's transpiring faster than it's taking up water and you get cell death. So they're little indications just move them away to appear away from any heat source and that's prevent that but misting also is very good for red spider mite which is a nemesis of our house plants and they get into the bottom side of the leaves and suck the sap out and you get this kind of washed out look on the leaf. So misting down is a really good way. They like dry conditions, they don't like it damp at all. Years ago I looked after a big citrus collection in a greenhouse and we used to mist it down three or four times a day to prevent the red spider mite. So that's two good reasons why you should mist. And would you just mist with water? Yep, don't need to put anything into it at all.

00:45:41 (someone): And I suppose the place to start here is whether that's the case. So should we be avoiding having bare soil and if so, why? Anton, is that something you can enlighten us on?

00:45:50 (someone): Yeah, certainly. I mean, bare soil is probably the worst thing you can be leaving over the winter, especially with our sort of really heavy rains that we're having. It just washes a lot of those hard-earned nutrients out of the soil, and so the plants can't get at them next year. The worst thing you can do is actually digging the soil over, because what that does is it stirs up quite a bit of the organic matter, and it releases nutrients from a sort of bound-up form into a more sort of soluble form that will get washed out even more easily. So really want to avoid doing that sort of digging stuff over even if it looks tidy. So yeah bare soil is definitely not what you want to be leaving over the winter. So the ideal thing you want to be doing is growing a green manure to take up those nutrients. So something like veg, field beans or grazing rye are very good ones to grow over the winter. And there's more detail on our website on how to do that, on how to grow green manures and pick the best one for growing over the winter. I appreciate that that's not always easy for everybody to do because you do need to get your green manures in by September and perhaps people are still harvesting things at that stage. So the alternative is perhaps to cover your soil with a mulch. So Chris, have you got any sort of experience of using mulches?

00:06:46 (someone): I think that's quite important too. And I think you're right about certainly snails, because if you leave stacks of unattended pots somewhere, you will get snail, a snail city without a doubt, yeah.

00:06:58 (someone): Talking of frosts, I haven't seen one yet but I guess they've had some up north and certainly up in Scotland. You never know, November can bring and should bring those first frosts. So just be wary. Watch the weather forecast like a hawk because frost usually happens overnight when we're all tucked up in bed. And if you've got tender plants, then just take care to protect them. I've sometimes gone out with a cardboard box, something as simple as that, and put it over a plant just to keep the airborne frost off it. You've got other tips, you've got other ways of dealing with frost, haven't you, Chris?

00:07:31 (someone): I do have sensitive plants. I do have cannas. I also have a tree fern. I'd even protect the crown of the tree fern if I thought it was going to be a cold winter by actually strawing it down and then tying it up so you've got it all closed together. Anything tender, definitely look at protecting the crown, the actual crown, the centre of it, and the root ball. If it's perennial, the crown. If it's herbaceous, the root ball. Make sure you cover those areas and it'll get through the winter.

00:07:56 (someone): Great.

00:14:42 (someone): And my last question, Chris, is I'm going into my first winter with my new pond. I don't have any fish in it, but any top tips about the kind of planting that I can make sure that there's still some sort of leaf cover or whatever there needs to be? Give me some, you know, ponds in the winter. What should I be doing?

00:15:00 (someone): If you've got marginal planting, I prefer to leave that as dead leaf, a straw leaf, personally, because obviously all those insects and all that wildlife can nest in there. It gives them cover for the winter. If you've got a tree near it and it starts to fill excessively with leaves, I'd maybe get a springbok or a lawn rake at the back of that, turn it upside down, fish out the excess leaves. But I do it quite carefully. And a good tip is, if you fish out leaves, leave them on the side of the pond for at least three or four hours so any wildlife in it can make its way back into the pond and also make sure if they're frogs and stuff about they've got access a little corridor runway to get in and out the pond but mainly I would probably if I was going to do a pond tidy up I'd kind of leave it till early spring because all that sort of dead material will give excellent cover for the wildlife. Brilliant, another case of less is more I think. Exactly, exactly. Thanks Chris. All right cheers Fiona, lovely to talk to you.

00:15:29 (someone): the pond and also make sure if they're frogs and stuff about they've got access a little corridor runway to get in and out the pond but mainly I would probably if I was going to do a pond tidy up I'd kind of leave it till early spring because all that sort of dead material will give excellent cover for the wildlife. Brilliant, another case of less is more I think. Exactly, exactly. Thanks Chris. All right cheers Fiona, lovely to talk to you.

00:15:55 (someone): And now, after all that chat about harvesting, seed saving and planning for spring, it's time to move straight on to opening the post bag. Chris and I are joined by Garden Organic's Head Gardener, Emma O'Neill. So the first question, ah gosh, drought, it's really been on all our minds, hasn't it? The recent drought hit my garden really hard. I lost lots of crops and plants as a result. Is there anything I can do now and throughout the autumn and winter to set me in better stead for next year?

00:16:25 (someone): What do we think about that? Emma, have you got any thoughts? I think that the key thing is about soil preparation, really. So you need to have the right soil for the crops to be able to withstand these sorts of changes in temperatures. The climate change is very real. This year it's been a drought. Next year it might be that we're faced with flooding. So soil preparation is key. So adding plenty of organic matter to it during the autumn. sowing green manures, you're still in time to sow those now, we've just sown some phacelia at the demonstration garden here today. And also looking out for crops that you know can withstand certain weather conditions really, or perhaps trying your hand at perennial veg instead, that could be a good alternative sometimes. So just to dig in a bit, Ho Ho, would you dig in that organic matter or would you lay it on the top?

00:07:26 (someone): But of course there's, you know, good things to frost. I mean, we all need it. It's all part of the cycle of life and all that. But just talk us through what it can do in a positive way for soil health.

00:07:38 (someone): Yeah, well, you know, it's obviously frosts come for a reason. In fact, when we don't have them, they cause us all sorts of problems. First of all, I think frost is important for heavy soils, and there's a lot of heavy soil in this country. So if you've got a clay soil, nice, you know, really solid, it forms big lumps or it cracks up when it's dry. A frost is ideal because it'll break that clay up, it'll break the molecules down, it'll break it up, make your soil much more friable. So a lot of gardeners, what they'll tend to do is turn over the clay in the autumn and then hope for frost to come in and break all that clay up and make sure it's a better soil come the following year. So that's one reason and obviously when it's breaking up that helps all the microbes and all the other stuff that lives in the soil to carry on the process. The other thing as well is it has to kill off pests doesn't it? We've had a lot of really mild winters, and that means things like blackfly, particularly on my allotment site, it's been absolutely rife come the spring because nothing's checking it, nothing's keeping it back. Slug eggs and snail eggs, if we want to stop them being in excessive amounts, we want the frost to come in, prune the numbers back, keep the numbers down and form a more natural balance in our garden. So frost, incredibly important to the garden. And also, I mean, there's nothing more beautiful on a winter's day than everything being coated in that amazing silver.

00:03:49 (someone): the snow falls. Tell me why it's a good thing. Well, I don't mind the snow because it's what it is. It's an insulator. It's almost like a blanket on top of the soil. So it keeps the soil warm. So it helps protect root balls. So if you were, you know, a bulb or you were a basis perennial, maybe say if you were a rhododendron and you've got these roots that could be affected by by heavy frosts, the snow will protect it, it forms this blanket, keeps the soil warm and helps protect the roots. So as a gardener I'm not really bothered by snow, I'm far more concerned about how the frosts behave and how they're going to affect the roots of my plants. Yes and of course there's different types of frosts that we've got to be a bit careful of, not so worried about a ground frost are you, but it's more the permafrost. Yeah, when it sort of penetrates the soil and gets into the soil, especially with the, we grow a lot of exotic plants these days, don't we? Formiums. I mean, rhododendron, I've mentioned that already, is quite an exotic plant. So we grow a lot of this stuff that wouldn't naturally be here. So they're very prone to permafrost. So permafrost could get down into the soil and sit there. And what happens then is you get a thing called psychological drought, which is very apparent in evergreen plants. So the plant looks fine, it comes to spring, it tries to take up water, its roots are damaged, and the whole thing will flag. And that's called a psychological drought.

00:42:42 (someone): I think it also encourages you to eat things that you've never tried before as well. I mean, I sort of knew of kohlrabi beforehand, but I often get that in my in my share now, and it's absolutely delicious. You know, you cut it into matchsticks, put it in a salad, put it in a stir fry, put it in soups. It's really, really tasty. Yeah, it encourages you to be more adventurous with your cooking.

00:43:05 (someone): Well, listen, we've also got some other questions we've got to cover here in the postbag section. So I'm going to start with one of our listeners in Scotland. The question is, I live in Scotland and my garden suffers from severe frosts and regular snow during winter. What tips can you give me to help protect my soil during this time? So, Anton, soil, first of all, should there be much soil to protect? This is the question.

00:43:31 (someone): Well, ideally, we really shouldn't be leaving soil bare over the winter. I think particularly, I mean, it's perhaps not quite the same in Scotland, but we are generally getting milder and wetter, certainly wetter winters, and that can really do a lot of damage to the soil. I sort of compare it to breadcrumbs. So a good soil structure should have lots of little crumbs, or they're known as aggregates. And those allow the sort of passage of water into the soil so that the soil surface can absorb water easily when it rains. It's because it's got lots of little pores and holes for it to go into. If you have lots of really heavy rain, it breaks up those aggregates and they become more like flour rather than breadcrumbs. And if you think what happens when you add water to flour and then let it dry out, it sets in a hard crust. And that's what happens to the soil surface.

00:04:40 (someone): that already, is quite an exotic plant. So we grow a lot of this stuff that wouldn't naturally be here. So they're very prone to permafrost. So permafrost could get down into the soil and sit there. And what happens then is you get a thing called psychological drought, which is very apparent in evergreen plants. So the plant looks fine, it comes to spring, it tries to take up water, its roots are damaged, and the whole thing will flag. And that's called a psychological drought. And how do we protect in that instance then? Well certainly mulching is a good idea if you've got vulnerable species that are exotic that might get damaged roots. I would certainly look at mulching around them and keep that frost above the root hairs which tend to sit on top of the soil. That's a good idea. The snow will do it for you as well. If you've got stuff that's maybe contained or very tender, maybe you've grown palms, tracheocarpuses, stuff like that, then why not think about wrapping the crown in hessian. A lot of gardeners do that in sort of exotic garden, Logan Botanic Garden up in Scotland's got a very exotic collection. You'll see they'll stuff the crown with insulator and then wrap it in hessian and that'll stop the frost and the wet getting into the crown. If you've got stuff in pots hessian wrap the pot because once that frost gets into the pot you're in big trouble and you'll lose your plant.

00:02:54 (someone): So I'll maybe prune out any dead wood on the fruit trees or whatever. keep that wood, retain it and as long as it's healthy and put it in a pile so you can get your beetles and your spiders and stuff in. Things like our basis plants as well it's so tempting to cut them back but they're that lovely brown straw coloured aren't they and if you're lucky enough to get a decent frost that is a perfect site on a winter's day. frosted herbaceous and that also means that that dead material, that dead foliage is protecting the root ball of your herbaceous plants from any damage.

00:03:24 (someone): But also think how the insects love those hollow stems that they can crawl into, ladybirds and such like and piles of leaves for hedgehogs if you're lucky enough to have a hedgehog in your garden. I've noticed that in the corner of my potting shed there's a massive amount of spider webs and spider nests rather rather than webs And that's good that you know there's little eggs in there, those baby spiders will hatch out in the spring and they'll be dealing with an awful lot of pests in the shed and in the greenhouse. So yeah, I think you're quite right. You share your plot. The organic gardener shares their plot with the wildlife. So make it good for them in the winter. Help them to survive these cold, wet winter months.

00:04:05 (someone): Yeah, take care of your friends. That's a good way to look at it, you know, because they will be helping you out in that garden space when the growing season kicks off again.

00:45:30 (someone): And would you just mist with water? Yep, don't need to put anything into it at all. So just mist down with water and make sure you give them a good drip. Also be careful not to mist any nearby lamps or lights or don't want anyone electrocuting themselves.

00:45:41 (someone): Best do it in the sink really.

00:45:43 (someone): Yeah, or the bath. I put all mine in, I have bath parties for my houseplants. That might sound a little bit weird, but it's a good way to miss them, I can promise you. It's a nice image, Chris. I'd get in there if I could, but I think I might be pushing it a little bit far, really.

00:45:58 (someone): So is there anything else we can be recommending people do to sort of look after their houseplants over the winter?

00:46:04 (someone): Maybe dust them. Okay. We live in a terraced house and we get quite a bit of condensation because of course we've got probably more drafts than a lot of people have. We haven't got double glazing, we've got the old glass that you can see the bubbles still in. Just looking on my own windowsill at the moment I've got a couple of clivias and the dust is really thick on the top of those. If it's a nice mild foggy day and there's something that's reasonably hardy for a houseplant, you could even put them outside in the rain. You know, if the temperatures are over 10 centigrade, 50 Fahrenheit, you know, it won't hurt them.