Covering the ground

Like quite a few of you I have a very wet clay garden at the moment. Most of it is planted so that is ok but my veggie patch is looking very sorry for itself! People say to put black plastic over your veggie patch to warm it up but mine is so wet I am not sure whether to do this or not, if so when? Any help would be great please.

 

Hi LCH,

I am ostly on clay too but one way I have avoided it in teh veg patch is to use lots of smaler raised beds. If you raise up you can then fill up with a much better material (organic matter, top soil and grit / sand which the worms slowly mix up with the underlying clay (had to break up the clay in teh first place though.

I put a huge clear plastic cloche over each whole bed (4ft x 6ft) that I want to warm up prior to planting. As thhe idea is to warm the soil you don't have to do it much more than 2 or 3 weeks before planting. But because my cloches are clear I then leave them on until the danger of frosts has passed. No danger of drying out after a long wet winter and anyway if lookinga bit dry you can whip off the plastic give it a waater and recover. They love it in there and usually get going nice and early, so worth doing I have found.

Just a thought, walking on wet clay soil is a disastter so lay a long plank along where you want to walk to at least spread the load.