Clearing debris From The Garden

DEAL WITH THE DEBRIS Waste material from the beds is gathered up and put on the compost heap rather than burned, as many of the stems are still home to insects that will crawl from the heap when they hatch. The beds are raked clean in readiness for spring mulching and to make way for the bulbs.

ROOT OUT THE WEEDS Weeds become visible with the clear-up, so take your time to winkle out buttercup, nettle and couch. Bindweed might be more of an issue, as it delves deep when established. Where it is getting a hold, dig out plants that might be affected, carefully fork out and burn the white roots, and replant anything displaced by the upheaval. There is plenty of time for plants to get their feet back in again before spring, but work in some goodness now to improve their opportunities for the year ahead.

GET MULCHING I like to leave mulching until the ground is a little warmer, but where bulbs are coming through it is timely to work in a 5cm layer of weed-free organic matter before they grow any more. Never mulch on weed-infested ground, as you will simply be creating a better environment for the weeds.

slug Hugging for profit – Gardening

Plotters and profiteers

There is a class war going on in allotments. Allotment groups have hit out at private entrepreneurs attempting to make money from renting out plots to the 150,000-strong waiting list. The private New Allotment Company, for example, is renting out 100sq ft allotments for £150 each; treble the price but a third of the size of typical council plots.

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Matthew Appleby

Children in the garden: how to get kids interested?National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners national secretary Geoff Stokes and National Allotment Gardens Trust chairman Neil Dixon are united in their opposition to commercial profit-making allotment companies. Dixon compares them to drug dealers, making hooked gardeners pay over the odds for what they are addicted to.

But serial entrepreneur Rudi Schogger, managing director of the New Allotment Company, which aims to build 10,000 allotments by 2012, says local authority allotments are “not viable” as a business model, and that if private businesses such as his take over provision for the shortfall in allotments, councils may no longer consider themselves responsible for the service.

He says: “It is a possibility [that new private allotments] might make councils lazy. But I’m not to be held responsible for the public sector. It is up to the taxpayer to demand them or not.

“It’s nanny state stuff – I don’t understand how we arrived at the modern system. It’s a socialist system – without wanting to get into politics. That’s why we arrived at the shortages we have.”

Allotments used to be for pensioners and the poor. Now they are for the middle classes. Do you agree with the new private initiatives?

Slug huggers

I ran a pop-up garden shop in up-and-coming London suburb Brockley recently. We sold the dream ticket of secondhand books, local photo cards of Brockley in the snow, cupcakes, and slug and weedkillers. Only the chemicals failed to shift. This retail offering may sound like a health and safety nightmare, and indeed one child complained about tinfoil in their fairy cake, but the event had a lovely community feel, with a ukulele band, Santa and mulled wine on offer. We used a cute baby as bait (my idea) and gave the proceeds to charity (not my idea).

However, no-one bought any garden products. Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe the trendy Brockley-ites want to do it for free. Maybe the seeds and grow-your-own thing is now so embedded that no-one thinks they need garden chemicals any more. Maybe they are all organic and self-sufficient. But I doubt it.

Last year, sales of chemicals went up overall, perhaps because the damp brought out slugs. Do you still use weedkillers and slugkillers? Or should they be banned?

Snow business in the garden

Is there anything to do in the garden at this time of year? I say there isn’t. Gardening publications say there is. Mainly involving looking at seed catalogues and tidying your shed. I recommend taking a photo of your garden in the snow. Email pictures to gardening@telegraph.co.uk (jpeg or tiff preferred) and we’ll put up a gallery of the best.

Matthew Appleby is Horticulture Week’s deputy editor. Matt also edits Garden Retail magazine and writes gardening news for the Evening Standard and other daily and weekly publications. He is a keen allotment gardener and blogger