Winter Vegetable Garden growing vegetables all year with the aid of Cloches.
Garden Cloches, Frames, Greenhouses and Ground or Walk in polythene tunnels along with modern Horticultural Fleece, are all designed to give your plants and vegetables extra protection from the elements. Cloches are effective and invaluable garden tools for the winter vegetable garden and enable the growing season to be extended and for some hardy organic vegetables to be grown year round. They allow the soil to be warmed up early in the season to give you a head start and they also help protect plants from the wind, cats and birds.
Cloches originated in France and were made from solid glass
shaped like a bell. The glass cloche was designed to be placed over the plant when the risk of frost or bad weather was forecast in order to protect it. Today cloches come in many shapes the best are still made from glass but it is possible to get them in plastic too.
You can even make an effective garden cloche cheaply for yourself. To do this simply shape pieces of wire in a U shape it needs to be long enough to secure the ends into the soil leaving sufficient height to give apply clearance over the plant it is going to protect. You need to place these at each end of your planting and again every 18-20 inches. Then take a length of clear plastic sheeting and place it over the wires to form a tunnel shape and secure at each end. Make sure you can roll the sides up to water and weed as required and to give extra light on those warmer winter days.
Although Garden Cloches offer some protection against frost, a heated greenhouse or frame is really the best guarantee against frost damage. But cloches will help minimise damage caused to winter vegetables by the lethal combination of freezing temperatures and cold winds.
Protected cropping enables earlier sowing and planting of popular vegetables such as lettuce, onion and salad leaves. It also increases the likelihood, particularly in the more northern areas, of achieving a reasonable crop of many half hardy vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.
Using the same method it is also possible to extend the growing season well into the autumn allowing later sowing and later picking of many varieties of vegetables. With protected cropping it is also possible to produce crops of winter vegetables like corn salad and lambs lettuce as well as late and early radish and spring onion.
To get the best results from the winter vegetable garden using cloches, the soil must also be as fertile as possible, with an ample amount of well rotted organic material worked in.