Warming the soil

It’s nearly spring, so we thought we’d try to get ahead of nature by warming the soil.

Dan and Amy’s top tips for soil warming:

(1) If you garden on clay, like us, the soil stays cold for ages.
(2) Clear plastic warms the soil faster than black plastic.
(3) It’s warm enough to start sowing once weeds start to grow.
(4) You can look up the temperature a particular seed needs to germinate, but the unpredictability of the British climate makes this meaningless. Decide if the soil needs to be cool, warm, or hot.
(5) There’s a useful weather forecast which tells you the soil temperature for your area.