It’s still not too late to plant certain crops in your vegetable plots for next year’s harvest, especially with the autumn weather having been so mild. Late October and early November is the time to plant garlic, as well as over-wintering varieties of onions, peas and broad beans.
All of these crops will start to shoot and produce a few inches of green growth before winter hits, and everything slows down to an almost complete standstill. But even after a really hard winter – even after a covering of snow – they will shoot away again in the spring. And in the case of peas, broad beans and onions, they’ll give an earlier harvest than spring-sown crops.
To grow a bulb of garlic, you simply need to plant an individual clove, pointed end upwards, just below the surface of the soil. If you’re dividing up an existing bulb into cloves, be careful to avoid exposing the flesh beneath the papery skin – this reduces the risk of the cloves rotting in the ground. Garlic likes fertile, well-drained soil, and each new plant needs about 6 inches (15 cm) between it and its nearest neighbours. And you will need patience, because garlic planted now will not be ready for harvest until July!
Onions are planted in a similar way, with similar spacing. At this time of year, they need to be grown from ‘sets’ – make sure you plant a variety suitable for over-wintering, such as ‘Radar’. Onions planted now should keep on growing until June, but once harvested will only keep a few weeks, and will not store for months in the same way as spring-planted varieties. Legume varieties to sow now include ‘Meteor’ for peas and ‘Aquadulce’ for broad beans.
Although the colder weather shouldn’t harm your crops, you may well need to protect them from pests who are starting to get hungry. Mice and voles will happily eat all your pea and bean seeds, as well as the emerging seedlings – if you have rodent problems, it may be better to start your plants indoors in pots, and harden them off slowly before planting out. Birds can sometimes pull out shooting garlic cloves and onion sets, so netting or fleecing helps.
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