Call me crazy but I must be honest with you; I love the cold weather that winter brings. The frosty mornings, clear blue skies and crisp days in particular are my absolute favourite for working in the garden and recent weeks have been heavenly to me.

A cold day is perfect for a more physical job and what better way to exercise the body and soak up some fresh air? It’s amazing how quickly the scarves and layers of coats come off once you get going.

Just in the last few weeks Growhampton volunteers have helped me build some rather large compost piles shovelling and wheel barrowing leaf litter and mulch and mounding up into large piles.  We also spent a morning digging out nettle roots and clearing brambles under some woodland. Both days were freezing cold but not once we got our heart rate up and bodies moving!

Making compost and clearing shrubs are ideal jobs for the winter time. It’s also a great time to do construction work such as making compost bays (an upcoming blog shortly), building new garden beds before spring planting commences or wind break structures to protect crops against the wild winter wind.

In the potted garden, scrub and clean out old pots and seed trays ready for spring sowings which will help prevent disease build up. Moving and clustering together planters and containers to a sheltered spot will also give them protection from the frosty weather.

We have a few house plants in our Hive Café on the campus at the University of Roehampton, and at this time of year they don’t need much water but do ensure the soil is being kept just moist. The café also has a lovely Christmas cacti kindly donated to us from a staff member which has just finished flowering beautifully. Twisting off outer segments of the cacti ‘branch’ helps to encourage bushy growth for the upcoming season.

Amongst the edibles keep some fleece handy to protect hardy crops just in case the frost is especially heavy. They’ll also keep growing (albeit very slowly) with that little extra night time blanket. Deep winter is still a perfectly good time to eat your greens and produce sprouts and microgreens and this my friends, will be the topic of another blog in the coming weeks.

Keep Warm, Joel

Joel Williams is the Grower for the University of Roehampton Students’ Union’s Growhampton project.