How to Prepare Polytunnel Beds for Winter | The Complete Guide with @Huw Richards

hello my name is hugh richards i'm an author and also a very passionate permaculturalist and for the next year or so i'm going to be creating some videos here on behalf of permaculture magazine and in this video i want to talk about undercover growing because winter is fast approaching and in this video i'm going to show you how to prepare the beds and the ground in your undercover growing areas ready for winter so you can get an awesome head start in spring amazingly we're still harvesting tomatoes it's early november and we haven't yet had a frost so i'm gonna make the most of these and keep the tomatoes in these beds for the time being but there are other beds here in the poly crop that need clearing out now you could say what about winter salads well we've got another undercover growing area which is a solar tunnel and that is where we're growing some winter salads and winter crops but for this i want to gradually put this whole undercover space to sleep for winter so i can start planting as early as february the process of preparing undercover beds in comparison to the beds outside is that firstly you don't get wind and secondly it doesn't rain at least it shouldn't rain considering it is meant to be undercover so that means that we can be a bit more free with how we approach preparing the beds the first step is to simply remove the plants that are currently here so you can see this marigold is still flowering and i'm going to keep that in but this cosmos is pretty gone and what i'm going to do is cut crops i've grown on purpose at the base which means i can leave the roots in which is going to help build a healthier soil and it's going to be really useful for the microbes that are in the soil i'll increase the organic matter and then i'm going to remove the top material now if i've got weeds say these kind of dandelion things i will actually pull them out and pull the roots out as well just so they don't regrow we've got dandelions everywhere anyway so it's much better to just pop these on the compost bin let them rot down and then we can put the compost back on the surface if you have plants that have had a disease it kind of depends how bad the disease is in terms of how to approach it so this is just powdery mildew that's hit these courgettes and we always get it right at the end of the season as they start to tail off in production anyway and to be honest we just put this straight on the combust bin we've been using a homemade compost for 15 years been putting plants have had powdery mildew on for 15 years you might say say that there's some correlation but it only ever seems to hit right at the end and by then we're already a little bit fed up with courgettes i've cleared the beds and i've noticed that they're looking a little bit dry and that's very understandable because it is under cover and if it had the worst rainfall i would know about it so what i'm going to do is just add quite a bit of water on these beds and then that means i won't have to worry about them drying out throughout winter because i will put a certain covering over it as a mulch to protect the water from evaporating too much so i'm just gonna give everything a really good soaking and i'll probably go over each area two or three times you can see how dry it is so if i just give it a good soaking that means that there's a really good amount of moisture in the soil for the microbes and also for when it comes to planting in spring so so i've put around 60 liters of water or six watering cans worth on both of these two beds the next thing to do is to add some organic matter you can either use stuff like well broken down manure but here i'm just using some compost and a single wheelbarrow will do because i want to apply a layer of around three centimeters just over an inch up to two inches over these beds so i'm just going to get a rake and level it out you can see that there's just a nice covering of compost and that's all i'm going to put is a single wheelbarrow load full for this area and the next thing is thinking about if you want to put something over the top so usually if i'm doing a bed outside i'll put something over the top just to help protect it a bit it isn't completely necessary but i like to do it because it really does keep down on weeds the thing here though is that a polytunnel as a space is a lot more manageable than if you have a bigger garden and what you want to actually consider is about the soil potentially drying out over winter so all i'm going to do is put over some newspaper in this instance you could use things like shredded paper even leaves leaves aren't going to blow away when they're indoors and cover it and when it comes to springtime i can simply remove this organic covering put it on the compost bin and plant straight away and should any weeds grow that will also help keep them down so you can really start spraying on the front foot one of the questions you may have is where can i source loads of cardboard and loads of newspaper and i've actually managed to get carrier bags full of free newspapers at the end of the day from a couple of shops nearby so it's about having a look out asking to see the manager asking where their newspapers go and i did exactly this and i got dozens of carrier bags full of loads of newspaper to use on the raised bed so it's about looking for opportunities in your local community and really going for them you can see that the bed behind me is all finished and i'm just going to carry on doing the rest of the beds and i like to just do one or two beds a day when i'm preparing things for winter so the whole thing doesn't seem too overwhelming and i can just chip away at it and try and prepare all of your beds by mid-december and then you can rest and then when it comes to the start of the new growing season the only other thing that i would do around february or march is just wipe down the insides and the outsides quickly thank you very much for watching if you have any questions please do let me know down below in the comment section and make sure that you get your hands on the latest copy of the permaculture magazine i also wrote an article about intuitive gardening which is an experiment i did all of this growing season so you can find out a little bit more about that and i look forward to seeing you again on this channel soon [Music]

Channel: Permaculture Magazine

Views: 4,359

Rating: 4.9792747 out of 5

Keywords: undercover growing, permaculture gardening, polytunnel gardening, polytunnel, greenhouse, organic gardening, permaculture, gardening tips, winter gardening

Id: hsCQljo8ux8

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020