Spinach Perpetual Spinach Seeds £4.99
Excellent on dry soils where annual spinach would run to seed quickly. Hardy and useful for autumn and winter dishes. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. Recommended by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. (Fourfold Packet). Average Packet Content 1000 Seeds

Lettuce Valdor Seeds £1.45
Valdor is a tasty lettuce with large, tight hearts. It’s one of the best over-wintering varieties so it’s ideal for sowing outdoors in September. Very hardy, Lettuce Valdor is highly recommended.. Average Packet Content 950 seeds

Perpetual Spinach Leaf Beet Seed Tape £2.75
Excellent on dry soils where annual spinach would run to seed quickly. Hardy, and useful for autumn and winter dishes. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. (115 seeds)Do you have trouble handling small seed and getting an even distribution? Sometimes it’s not easy when the seed is the same colour as the soil! When the seedlings emerge, do you find thinning them out a real chore?If the answer is yes – then Suttons Groweasy Seed Tapes are just the thing for you.Pre-spaced seed in a tape – less thinning out! 5m (161/2′) of bio-degradable tape per pack.Simply prepare your soil, draw out a groove, roll out your tape, cover with soil, water well and watch your seedlings grow!.

Kale Fizz Seed (Borecole) £1.55
The result of British breeding in new brassica leaf shapes and textures, Fizz is a fast growing, upright, deeply lobed variety. Ideal for salad leaves, or, if grown at wider spacings, will be more productive with larger leaves that can be used for cooking. Mature plants are very winter hardy.. Average Packet Content 220 Seeds

Spinach Perpetual Spinach Seeds £1.75
Excellent on dry soils where annual spinach would run to seed quickly. Hardy and useful for autumn and winter dishes. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. Recommended by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.. Average Packet Content 250 Seeds

Parsley Paravert Seeds £1.75
A hardy, high-yielding parsley that will provide tasty pickings of robust, curled, dark green leaves throughout summer and winter. Decorative as a garnish for fish and meat dishes, and very nutritious in soups, sauces and stews.. Average Packet Content 500 Seeds

Onion (Salad) White Lisbon – Winter Hardy Seeds £1.75
Sow in September for us in the following spring. Very hardy. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. Recommended by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.. Average Packet Contents 700 seeds

Brussels Sprouts Bedford – Winter Harvest Seeds £1.75
Dark green medium-sized sprouts from November to February. Strong and very hardy plants.. Average Packet Content 200 seeds

Kale Dwarf Green Curled Seeds £1.45
Dark green, densely curled leaves. The plants are dwarf growing and compact in habit. Very winter hardy.. Average Packet Content 400 seeds

Kale F1 Reflex Seed (Borecole) £1.45
A dark-leaved, intensely-curled, fully winter hardy variety which stands well without yellowing and can be picked for much of the year from successional sowings. Although mainly used in winter as mature leaves, it can also be used in summer as tasty baby leaves. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner.. Average Packet Content 55 Seeds

Get some plants for over winter growing in your veg patch!

Pansy Can Can 100 Plants + 60 FREE £12.99
Original and best ruffled pansyPansies are part of the Viola family. This beautiful ruffled pansy comes in a mix of pastel colours with dark centres. These pansies will flower from Autumn through to Spring providing a fantastically long flowering period. Pansy Can Can is the original and best ruffled pansy.

A really frilly pansy that’ll fill your winter borders with colour and life! Frothy flowers create a lovely look!

An amazing mix of colours – White with Blue Face, Strawberry Sundae, Lilac Picotee, Velvet Picotee, Cherry Rose, Black Moon, Blue, Blue Black, Red Leopard and Crimson Picotee

Height 12-15cm
Pansy Can Can 100 Plants + 60 FREE £12.99

Want different autumn bedding plants?

Bee Pollen Grains 250g

You can buy these – they are supposed to be very good for you!
Bee pollen contains the richest known source of vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, hormones, enzymes and fats, as well as significant quantities of natural antibiotics. Most of the known vitamins in pollen exist in perfect proportion, which further enhances their value.

Enjoy sprinkled on food, in smoothies and yoghurts or with fruit.

I’ve been to the Olympics this weekend! It was amazing – the swathes of flowers really are so beautiful!

Why not have a look at how to create your own mini meadow

If our project gets enough votes we’ll win £10k which we can spend on getting composting toilets on the site!

Vote now – you do have to regsister but it’s quick and easy!

Please vote for Diane on the Team Green Britain site

My bees – I’ve finally got bees! We now have two hives in the apiary at my allotments.

My bees arrived on Monday evening. On Tuesday I put them in the hive!
They arrived in a correx nuc from a local beekeeper who breeds queens!

I have been reading as much about bees as possible and watching videos. I tried to move the frames as smoothly as possible. They were a little stuck down with propolis though so I had to use my j tool to unstick them either side before moving them in. I kept them in the same order. I had people assisting with smoke although I don’t think they needed much at all. I put the spare comb of stores in – it was too big to fit in the nuc box as there was a lot on the frames. They were quite heavy. The frames were put the same way in the box as they had been in the nuc with the spare comb at the front, and right at the front was a dummy board. I put in 3 spare empty frames and another dummy board and that was that! Lid on – with tray of thymol crystals as recommended by the beekeeper who bought the bees. I’m to leave them for a week to let them settle in and then have a look to see how they’re getting on.
I will then add in some extra frames hopefully filling the brood box next week and then on the inspection after that they should be ready for a super.

Question:

I have a bold patch in the lawn what can I do?

Answer:
Consider first why you have a bald patch.

Some people have wear and tear on their lawn from using it. If this is the case and the bald patch is on a pathway why not consider putting a paving stone in this spot? It’ll save you having to replace it again next year or the year after.

A bald spot after burying a pet however can be easily covered with grass seed in the top soil and this will grow and fill the gap.

If a child’s slide or swing has been causing this mark and has been moved to another part of the garden then you could leave the grass to recover on its own if it’s not too badly damaged, or seed, or even cut a patch of turf from a roll. New turf is the most expensive option though and most gardeners will want to avoid this for not only the expense but the additional care of watering a new patch of lawn.

An allotment needs time and love. Without attention it’ll run wild away from you and be almost impossible to keep sweet.
The decision to take on an allotment needs to be considered carefully. Do you have time to lavish upon your plot when you first get it? They’re invariably a mess by the time they get allocated to someone new, so need extra time and care.
Can you spare the hours during the summer when long hours in sunshine need to be endured to weed, water and pick your harvest?
Tending your allotment needs to be done like a relationship. You’d not expect to spend just an hour a month with a loved one and to have a good relationship, so why expect an allotment to be easier?

Your loved ones might feel jealous of your allotment. The time that you devote to it might be the cause of a rift in your personal relationships. Something will have to give and invariably it’s the allotment. Unless of course you can persuade your partner that helping you on your allotment plot is good for them. If you can’t then every minute you spend on your plot pulling out weeds will be the cause of disharmony.

If you have young children then who’ll look after them whilst you’re working on your plot? You might think you can entertain them on your plot – and you might be able to once you’ve spent a few hundred hours making it child safe and removing the hazards of allotments; Unless you do though every second on your plot will be spent admonishing them for pulling up the plants whilst they admire the weeds. Lock up the pesticides, weedkillers and sharp tools too! And whatever you do don’t let them wonder off your plot on to someone else’s where you’ll find them munching on freshly picked prize peas.

Ideally your life can squeeze in a few hours a week on an allotment without making anyone feel jealous or insecure. How many allotments have been listed on divorce papers?

Nemaslug Slug Killer in stock at amazon

Nemaslug Slug Killer 40 sq m – same-day despatch

Uses microscopic worms (nematodes) which prey on slugs and kills them
Gives up to 6 weeks protection
Totally organic and harmless to wildlife, pets and children
Very easy to apply – just water in
Same-day first-class despatch (Mon-Fri, excl. bank holidays)

This stuff works! It’ll kill slugs in your garden soil competely for at least 6 weeks. Worth using every year as it reduces the slug population!

You get a sachet of product which you need to keep in the fridge until you use it. It has a use by date on so get moving once you get it. Read the instructions carefully and get watering it on to your garden beds. Don’t bother with lawn, just do the veg patch and flower beds.