Heat your greenhouse with beercans

Interesting idea!

Clips available – After Life: The Strange Science of Decay

For two months in summer 2011, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo.

Not for the squeamish maybe!

Essential hints to help you when it’s rainy weather

Make the most of the sunny spells. Even if you don’t do much, go out and survey the garden. Make a list of things to do – some of them will be fine to do in the rain.
Ignore the lawn except for removing dandelions. Long grass won’t hurt, it just looks a bit untidy. Cutting the lawn whilst the grass is wet is a complete nightmare so wait til it’s sunny and dry.
Remove flowering weed heads. Dispose of them in the bin not the compost heap
Think about raised beds – they take more effort making and looking after but if we’re going to have constantly wet springs and your garden is soggy then it’d mean you had somewhere to plant in.
Avoid walking on the dug beds.
Top up mulch at this time – only if it needs it.
Start things in pots under cover.
Think about a greenhouse if you’ve not got one.
Browse the sale at T&M for more seeds.
Get your boots on and go and do something on the allotment. Even if it’s only trying to earth up the potatoes a bit.
Weeds should come out easier when the soil is damp.
My dad swore by digging when the soil is damp as it’s easier. If you’ve got pure clay it’s probably a bit slippy.
Wear a coat and wellies and go out for a walk round your local area. See what other people have in their gardens. Apart from lots of rain of course.

It’s sent off to be composted and then is sometimes given back free or sold to people in the area as soil conditioner!

In Mid Lothian it’s sold – but not bad prices!

Caledonian Horticulture Green Goodness soil improver is available to purchase from Forth Resource Management.

20kg bags of 10mm soil improver are priced at £2.20 per bag or 5 for £10.

Bulk Bags of 10mm Green Compost are available for delivery at a cost of £35 per builder’s bag*. Two or more buidler’s bag are priced at £30 each and include free delivery.

*£10 delivery charge applies. Free delivery with orders over £90.
Prices are inclusive of VAT and are correct at time of publication (March 2012)

Whilst some councils do give it away, it’s not a bad price this – so if you live in their delivery area why not try it and let us know what the stuff is like!

hotbin voucher

International Compost Awareness Week from Sunday 6th to Saturday 12th May
2012.

During Compost Awareness week from Sunday 6 to Saturday 12 May 2012 get £10
off a HOTBIN using voucher code COMPweek2012

“Compost Awareness Week aims to encourage more people to realise the
benefits of home composting and the great results that can be achieved by using
peat-free composts containing recycled material”

To celebrate and support this you can get £10 off your HOTBIN
between 6-12 May 2012.

New research exposes that almost half of the food waste in our rubbish bins
could have been composted! With a HOTBIN you can easily do your bit to reduce
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Buy a hotbin now and get £10 off

Cheap shops that sell potatoes, onions and other plants are worth a look. Various pound shops and bargain stores have great deals on onion sets and small packs of spuds. Useful if you only want a few of each type. Supermarkets sell compost. It’s not bad value – Costco also sell compost which is great. All the DIY stores sell it too, as will your local garden centre. Shop around, compare prices.

Growbags are starting to appear in the supermarkets.

Lidl’s are £1.29


As soon as I find other prices I will post!

Buckets can be got from Morrisons – look in the flower section! Ask the assistant if they have any flower buckets for sale. They’re 8 for a quid which is pretty good value!


Seed swap with your gardening friends.


Try taking cuttings before buying plants. If your neighbour has a plant ask if you can try taking a cutting.


Look on Freecycle for great free stuff!

My other half was tidying out the cat house we have outside. In it he found lots of spider moults and this amazing paper wasps nest. It’s very delicate made of paper. It’s about 3 cm long and inside you can see the honeycomb shapes.
It was empty!

Strawberry Wall Tower
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Everyone loves strawberries, but a strawberry bed can take up a lot of room. This is a neat solution for small gardens. This wall tower is designed to hold 10 strawberry plants which means you get plenty of strawberries. It’s also good for keeping the slugs and other pests away!

Ideal for a small yard or back garden where you just don’t have lots of ground space to give over to fruit.
Hang so it’s in the sun and water regularly especially when it’s fruiting. Using water retaining gel in the compost will help too.

Did you know you can eat some flowers? Of course cauliflowers might be the first that springs to mind!
This list at T&M lists edible flowers and offers notes on them – Edible Flowers list at
Thompson & Morgan

Of course artichokes are the flower of the plant that you eat the petals and heart of.

I know you can eat nasturtium flowers and leaves and treat the seeds as capers and pickle them!
Courgette flowers can be battered and deep fried for an interesting treat!

Capers are also a flower bud!
Elderflowers are used to make a sparkling drink!

I know you can eat chive flowers – I just like to leave them for the bees.

Some I know about are:
wild garlic, primrose and borage, ramsons, courgette flowers, saffron crocus (for stamens),
Some I didn’t know – rose petals for jam apparently!)
orange Day lilies (hemerocallis sp)

You can make rose petal sugar by adding rose petals to sugar.
You can do the same with lavender. Lavender can be used as a flavouring in biscuits too. I’ve also seen this last week on one of the food programs (royal dinner thing) that something was flavoured with gorse flowers.

If you fancy a book on the subject of edible flowers then Amazon have several!

Although not using the flowers you can make spearmint sugar by adding spearmint leaves to a jar of sugar.

Wiki has a list of edible flowers too

 
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