If you’re still growing lots of summer veggies and seemingly have little space for growing anything else this year, fear not…we have ideas for you!
- Plant decorative veggies in flower beds and borders for some fab winter colour.
You can easily squeeze any Cavolo Nero, Broccoli, Curly Kale, Red Russian Kale, Chard, Giant Red Mustard and Chicory plants into empty spaces that you have in flower beds – they all look great with their foliage and add real interest over winter. - Pop lettuces in the greenhouse amongst tomato plants.
Now is the time to cut back the foliage and growing tips of tomatoes to help the plants focus their energy on ripening the fruits. This opens up quite a lot of space and light for winter lettuces. Just pop them in between the tomato plants, and cut the tomatoes down once your harvest is over to give them a little more growing space. - Use grow bags temporarily.
It won’t be long until potatoes are dug up, whole summer lettuces are harvested, and other crops are over. This’ll open up loads of space in a few weeks. Until then you can temporarily plant seedlings in grow bags or bags of compost, fairly close together. Just cut open the bag and pop them in, giving them some water and then plant them on as space in the veg patch opens up. - Harvest the veggies that store well to make space.
Beetroot, carrots, potatoes and onions all store well, so if you’ve been leaving them in the soil then go ahead and pull them up to make a little extra space for planting your autumn veggies. - Plant slow growers in between other rows.
Turnips, spring onions, winter green cabbage and spring green cabbage will grow a little more slowly than others, so they can happily be planted between rows of smaller summer veg that let a little light through – for example, leeks, dwarf beans and rocket rather than broccoli, leafy parsnips and huge pumpkin plants!