[bower]

I hate to admit it but while I was busy working 12 hour days through october and first half of november, the weather changed to winter and I have ended up without mulch as yet. Leaves had not even dropped yet in the last week of October but then wind came and snatched them off in a hurry, and it has been very cold - midwinter cold - for days in a row, with days of rain in between. When we got a thaw this week I discovered that the ground was frozen hard, couldn't dig leeks, couldn't get a fork into the ground, and 3 or 4 days rain and above zero before things got a little bit soft.

I took the rainy days this week to clear up the garden of pots hoses and so on, and I was hoping to get some leaves on the garlic beds then but the wind came up and it was pretty obvious, no leaves were going to be gathered or laid in one place on that day.
Now we are into three days of January type cold weather again, with highs of -5 or -6 C and windchills -15 C. I was even glad to see some snow falling today, and about 2 cm forecast each day for the next three, making a small but important cover over my beds.
So with doubtful access to any mulch materials, I wondered if I could take the tarp which is white one side and black the other, and place it over the bed on top of the snow with the white side up. If that would keep the 5 cm or so of snow from melting it would be better than leaving the garlic with nothing on top through our usual winter of freeze and thaw cycles...
Do you think that might work?

If we had a long thaw I could check to see if there's still snow underneath, but we're not expecting too much in the way of warm weather considering how the winter has started so early.