Gardeners’ World presenter Joe Swift has shared the best time to mulch your garden beds ahead of the cold winter months – and there is one thing you should definitely ‘avoid’
Gardeners are being told to ‘avoid’ one thing during a vital autumn task(Image: Getty)
Gardeners’ World star Joe Swift has revealed one thing you should ‘avoid’ while carrying out a crucial autumn task. According to Joe, preparing a good mulch is akin to “laying a duvet” over your garden beds as the winter months draw near.
This comes as the TV presenter asserts that gardening doesn’t cease during the colder months. Instead, Joe will be readying a vegetable garden as he plans to “get stuck in” to his plot on a frosty morning.
However, before then, he will be spreading a robust mulch onto his garden beds. Mulch is an organic material that is spread on top of the soil, Joe clarifies.
Writing in the Radio Times Magazine, Joe said: “Mulch breaks down to increase the organic content of your soil, so makes it moisture-retentive and helps with drainage. It generally makes the soil more fertile, too, and smothers annual seeds and weeds.”
Joe suggests that regardless of the type of soil your garden possesses, the organic matter can assist a wide variety of plants to grow more effortlessly. He advises gardeners to source their mulch from a local supplier, reports the Express.
Joe suggests mulching your garden(Image: Getty)
He proposes mulching your garden during the autumn months to help stimulate the winter worms. Joe says these worms will then “take the good stuff” into their plot without the necessity to dig.
The expert indicates the best time to mulch is once all planting has been completed – including bulbs. He explains that gardeners should mulch onto their plot when the soil is damp, but he says there is one thing they shouldn’t do.
He advised: “Avoid building up mulch around a shrub’s stem or covering the centre of a perennial or small delicate plants, as that may encourage them to rot.”
Gardeners’ World expert Joe Swift says now is the time to mulch(Image: Getty)
Joe recommends mulching around a plant if you’re short on supplies for an entire area, suggesting to fill in the gaps afterwards.
He asserts that flowerbeds require at least 5cm of organic matter. A square metre with around 5cm of organic matter will need about 50 litres of material.
Joe observes that garden centres and shops typically sell mulch in 25 or 50l bags. However, he suggests that ordering a bulk loose delivery can be more cost-effective.
He’s not the only Gardeners’ World star to utilise mulch in their plot. Monty Don applies mulch to all his borders at Longmeadow in January, although he concedes the best time to do it is “whenever you get round to it”.
In a January column, Monty penned: “The best time to put down a mulch is whenever you get round to do it, because the pros of a good organic mulch – which are weed suppression, moisture retention and improved soil structure and fertility – always outweigh any cons such as suppressing ‘little treasure’ seedlings.
“However, we do try and mulch all our borders in January because this gives time in autumn for the borders to die back gracefully and allow birds to eat all seeds and berries but is early enough not to suppress the”.
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