Elizabeth McCorquodale looks at the efficient and hugely popular method of turning kitchen waste into high quality compost with your own wormery
For those of us who don’t generate enough garden waste to feed a compost heap or have no space to put one, a wormery is a very efficient method of dealing with kitchen waste and garden debris and as a bonus it provides a free and renewable source of garden soil conditioner into the bargain.
A single, well established healthy blackcurrant bush will yield 10lbs of fruit every year and will stay productive for 20 years. It is what makes it one of the most popular of all the soft fruits grown in our gardens.
Blackcurrant bushes are very easy to please. And boy do they show their appreciation of being looked after!
Ten pounds of fruit per bush is a very generous supply of blackcurrants from which you can make countless jars of jam from, and the fruits are also ideal for freezing, juicing, adding to yogurts and so on.
Gill Heavens picks her favourite honeysuckles as she enjoys plants which provide form and structure in the garden throughout the year and bestow intoxicating beauty.
Providing gardeners with help on a range of gardening issues, problems and opportunities.
Whether you are growing plants in pots or in the ground watering is an essential part of summer gardening. When rainfall dries up you’ll need a strategy on how and when to water.
Watering is an essential and life dependent part of gardening in the summer. Water is vital to hydrate plant cells to aid plant processes including growth yet at the same time water is lost from the leaves. This is called transpiration. This means that plants rely on a good root system to constantly draw water from the soil.
Mark Hinsley sees problems with the infiltration into our countryside of an Eastern oak which falls well below the standards set by its English counterpart.
Growing cucumber plants is really quite easy once you understand that there are two main types available, and these need different treatment to produce a good crop.
If you’re lucky enough to own a greenhouse then it’s worth growing cucumbers indoors. Greenhouse cucumber plants produce long, smooth fruits and don’t need pollinating - in fact, you should remove any male flowers to prevent pollination happening as this produces fruits with a bitter flavour.
Julie Elkin is a member of Devon Beekeepers and a course tutor for the North Devon training courses. Too many people think keeping bees is the only way to help honeybees. ‘Taster days’ gives people the opportunity to handle bees and decide if keeping them is really for them but the emphasis is on how we can do much more in our gardens’ own plots to help all pollinators.
Spring at last, the garden a joy to behold filled with colour and fragrance, the hum of the bumblebee queens preparing to start their nests and my honeybees foraging on hellebores and crocuses as I write this.
May sees the seasons changing again, with spring rolling into early summer. It is a glorious month, greener than any other, with potential still in the air with a danger of being overwhelmed with all the growth in the garden.
It may not be possible to entirely keep your garden free from weeds but if you need to keep winning the weed battle you need a strategy.
If you were to track every hour spent in your garden, you would probably find that you do an inordinate amount of weeding. And while the first few weeks of tearing up these intruders can prove mildly satisfying, the chore soon wears thin. Even more maddening—you are a few simple strategies away from your garden not needing weeds anymore.
