Page 33 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2025

conditions as it is winter we are talking
about, but it is possible to improve planting
conditions a little if ground conditions are
not excessively wet. Providing you can dig
a hole that doesn’t collapse and only fills
up with a little bit of water it is possible
to plant. The aim here is to use externally
introduced soil such as imported topsoil
or John Innes No 3. When you have dug
the hole fork in a little organic matter and
then a good few inches of imported soil.
You can then go ahead with planting again
using imported soil to bed in the roots and
then only at the very end of planting draw
back some of the previously dug soil over
the top of the whole. Of course, you may
be lucky to have enough friable soil to use
that for planting, but you will have to make
that judgement. I used this method to
plant a 20-tree orchard in March last year
in foul ground conditions, used 20 bags of
imported soil and all trees survived which
pleased my client enormously as you can
imagine!
Just a note on planting holes. You may
be unlucky enough to live in area where
the soil water table is always quite high and
where water will seep into a planting hole
even in dry conditions. Again, you will need
to take precautions and the usual and by
far best method to use is to raise up the
planting level. As you simply cannot have
roots sitting in a wet sump all year you will
need to create planting “mounds” whereby
they may be up to 300mm (1 foot) higher
than the surrounding ground level. You can
be fairly sure that this will obviate roots
sitting in water and this method is used a
lot in low lying parts of this country and
other parts of the world of which Belgium
and Holland are good examples.
Unfortunately, you may be in an area
where you suffer with a permanent high-
water table and where the ground may
be quite spongy during the whole year
(particularly found in the redevelopment
of old marsh or heath land) or a one off
flooding situation when you are planting
and where water levels are going to stay
high for a fair length of time. In these
conditions you are simply not going to be
able to get bushes and trees in the ground
either for a long time or indeed ever. In
these conditions you are going to have to
utilise raised beds (as a friend of mine in
north Hampshire does) or growing them in
pots or containers. Not the same but this is
a need driven by necessity I’m afraid.
Having considered water and it affects
on ground conditions we also need to
consider frosty or freezing conditions.
Ironically, unless weather conditions
are very cold indeed - perhaps minus 6
degrees centigrade and colder - ground
covered by snow (once cleared away from
the planting position) will be perfectly
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Planted tree
usable unless the ground is waterlogged.
In the same way that roots will simply
rot off if they are sitting in water they can
be equally killed if they are frozen. This is
why we always protect bare roots as noted
earlier if stored in a shed or garage during
very cold weather.
Gerry Edwards
®
®
Simply Vegetables 33