Make your greenhouse
winter ready

Empty the greenhouse and make room for the new season

Remove plants that cannot overwinter in the greenhouse and remove wilted leaves from plants that can overwinter. Remember that chillies can overwinter indoors on your windowsill, green tomatoes can be ripened in newspaper in a cupboard, and vegetables can be frozen if you have so many that you can't eat them.

Once you've made sure to bring in the plants you want for the winter and removed wilted leaves, you can empty your planter boxes. If you have bagged soil, you can use the soil in your garden beds, or alternatively you can throw the soil in your compost heap.

Grape plants and other similar plants, which are usually permanent, can be looked after over the winter in the greenhouse. Make sure you've removed all withered leaves and dried fruit so that pests don't have anything to eat, and your grapes will survive the rest of the year and flourish again next season.

If your wine has become a mess, perhaps because you didn't prune it enough in the summer, you can winter prune your wine in December.

As early as December, the flower buds that will become wine are ready to burst. So don't cut your shoots all the way to the stem, you'll also cut off your harvest.

Instead, you need to cut back so that you have what is called a staff. This is basically a side branch with a spur.

Count the buds and cut back so that there are at least two buds (preferably 8) left, and not all the way down to the bud, because then it can dry out, but a little more. If you have actually cut back to, for example, 2 to 4 buds in some years and haven't gotten any wine out of it, the explanation may be that some varieties have shoots that are barren, and it is precisely the first buds that are barren. Therefore, try to have at least 5 buds left.

Insulate your greenhouse

You can place bubble wrap on the inside of the greenhouse. Here, the air between the bubble wrap and the greenhouse glass will act as one insulating layer, while the bubble wrap will act as another. It is advantageous to find bubble wrap with large bubbles.

The bubble wrap should be able to keep your greenhouse frost-free over the winter.

It's also a good idea to store endive and Palla Rossa salads in polythene boxes so that the roots don't get frost from below. The same goes for your flowers and herbs from the garden. Place them in the greenhouse in pots or polythene boxes. However, herbs are a lot more delicate than most other plants, so we recommend that you bring them inside before the frost really takes hold.

Garden furniture in the greenhouse

If you have space in the greenhouse for your garden furniture, it can be stored in the greenhouse over winter, just like garden tools, pots and the like.

What can you grow in the winter months

We recommend growing the following varieties:

• Garlic
• Peas
• Mushrooms
• Spinach
• Herbs and spices
• Cabbage, including broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, pointed cabbage and Brussels sprouts.
• Broad beans
• Swiss chard

Tips & tricks

Only harvest your winter crop when it's above freezing and the plants are juicy. In general, don't worry about frost destroying your plants. Cover your plants with fibre cloth at night when frost is promised. Sow new seeds suitable for winter growing every month until after the end of the year.