The English Garden – September 2019

AUTUMN GREENHOUSE

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85

WORDS

CLARE FOGGETT

IMAGE

GAP O

nce the last of your summer glass-

grown crops have been harvested

and the garden outside is winding

down for winter, don’t abandon the

greenhouse until spring. Make it

earn its keep over the winter months by maximising

the extra space it oers. Even if you don’t heat the

greenhouse during winter, just by virtue of being

enclosed by glass its interior will be a degree or

two warmer than outside. That may not sound like

much, but it could be all you need to nurse borderline

hardy plants through the colder months – many

need only a minimum of 3°C to tick over, as long as

they are kept dry. And it also enables much more: an

unheated greenhouse can be used to prepare winter

blooms for the house, to start o seeds for next year,

to propagate plants and to grow winter crops. Use

heating to increase the temperature, and even more

possibilities will open up.

The first step, in late autumn, once cropping has

finished, is to clear the greenhouse of this year’s

plants. Put the last few green tomatoes in a bowl

Above As temperatures

begin to fall in autumn,

the greenhouse comes

into its own as a place of

refuge for tender plants.

The Winter Garden

Don’t shut up your greenhouse once the last tomato is picked. Use it in the

colder months to extend the season and make the most of this precious space