Chop and drop composting and mulching for winter - Gardening with Brendan
You often see people creating compost heaps out of old leaves, plants, grass and other scraps and it’s a great idea, but why not try cutting out the middle man and leave old plants to die back or try the very simple and no mess chop and drop method.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00So it's really cold out today, so what we're going to do today is a bit of chopping and
00:17dropping and that's just getting the garden bed ready to plant some young plants into
00:23and removing some of the annuals that have now stopped flowering and I'm leaving the
00:30roots in the ground and just chopping the plants up, they're looking very straggly at
00:36the moment and then I'll just return them back to the ground, use them as a mulch for
03:12now. We've cleared quite a bit of ground here in the foreground but there's a lot of grass
03:34that was growing in between the flowering, so I'm going to try and get some of that out and then start putting them down there, yeah I already had some sweet wooden that were planted earlier in the year, so I'm going to get them out, pulling them out with the grass, there it goes.
06:34So as you can see this is just young grass, the roots are a little bit shallow so I'm not going down too deep and causing too much disturbance to the soil structure, so you can see here just how easily grass spreads, this is one
07:03grass seed that's entwined itself in amongst this plant and just look at that, it's got a three foot stem on it thick, it's just branching out and branching out, so this is what I'm trying to deal with today, I'm trying to get as much soil off here because it's really good soil up towards the middle end and it structures really well, it's nice and crumbly, so I'm hoping to get, save as much
07:33as possible, do as little disturbance as possible, but get the grass out and then get like a layer of compost down and some more plants in the ground, there's quite a few in here already that I've been planting over the past two weeks and then they should get a bit of light then to come on, so these are some of the dying annuals that I've been chopping down and all I'm really doing, and I'll just show you in a minute,
08:03is just cutting them and dropping them back onto the soil, just the chop and drop method, so I've left the roots in the ground and then just chopping them up,
08:21these will feed the soil over the winter, they'll also provide some ground cover as well,
08:26and I have quite a lot of annuals that are dying back at this time of year,
08:35and they should help protect the other plants that I'm planting on the ground over the next week or so,
08:41and that's basically what chop and drop is, it's just all the plants that are in the ground, you leave the roots there
08:50and then you cut out the plants that are dying back and then just basically you could just throw
08:57them onto your soil and they'll break down and feed the soil, or you can chop them up and then
09:04scatter them around the place, so I'll just take you around and show you a few of the plants
09:11that I have been planting at the moment, and it's quite early in the morning, it's quite dark outside,
09:20here down here you can see, I'll move this, these are pheasant's eye, which is a native Irish plant that
09:32has become endangered by the looks of it, so I thought I'd give them a go, they have a
09:41flower that looks like a pheasant's eye, or a red flower, and then on up here we have
09:51these sweet William, which are planted back in summer, and they are looking very strong,
09:59they're a biennial, and then there's some other biennials and some perennials here too that I'm
10:03going to be putting in the ground, there's quite a lot of them, so I'm hoping for good ground cover
10:08so there's no bare soil, and then with the chop and drop too, that'll help, and I'll put some
10:17maybe wood mulch and a little bit of compost down too, just to protect the plants, it's quite cold
10:24this morning, you can feel we'll probably get a few frosts, early frosts maybe, so at the back here we
10:29have wallflowers, which I grew from seed in the summer as well, they're quite, they're up quite
10:35high now, so they may die back over the next few weeks, but I'll put them in the ground, and then
10:40they should spring back to life in the spring, and have some early flowers there, here we have
10:48some aquilegia, some columbine, and these are perennials, so they should come back every year,
10:55I've an awful lot of them, but they haven't grown very tall in these pots, so I'm hoping they'll
11:00come on once they're on the ground, and they're usually quite easy growers, and here's a
11:05wee close-up of the pheasancy plants, which were also sown in the summer, and they're supposed
11:12to be annuals, so I'm not sure how these will fare, I'm hoping because they are,
11:20they grow wild in Ireland, that they may be a bit hardy, and here we have the
11:25Canterbury Bells, which are coming on quite nicely, I have quite a few of these in the ground,
11:32and in the back here, I've put a dozen or so of these in so far, these are a hollyhock,
11:39another biennial, along with the Canterbury Bells, and the wallflowers, and the Sweet William that's
11:46on the ground there, and so I'm hoping for a lot of spring colour from all of these, and just here
11:58as well, I have some rosemary that I might put on as well, I know this too has a good spread,
12:07I'm not even sure if it'll survive the winter, but I have quite a few rosemary as well that came up,
12:13um, that aside, I think that's the main things that I'm putting on the ground,
12:18for the winter, I have some baby's breath there as well, but I don't think that would
12:22survive the frost, so I might keep that in the little greenhouse here, and just take it over,
12:31as you can see here, there's quite a lot growing still,
12:34well I'm not sure if you can see, because it's so dark, maybe if I turn this light around,
12:43there's quite a lot of young plants there, I'd hoped that most of them would be further on,
12:48and this is the other plant that I didn't bring out, that I should have shown, these are
12:55the money plant, or the honesty, and there's quite a few of them underground,
13:04that were planted early in the summer, and they should flower early in the spring next year,
13:09now I'm not sure if these ones will make it in time to flower next year,
13:14but maybe even the year after, so that's basically how the garden's looking now at the moment.
13:39you