Plantpassion

Garden clearup - Recycling pots

it's at this time of year when I've planted as much as I can in the garden, and finally given up on the dead sticks in pots that have been dessicated since the summer, that I finally have a turnout of all the pots that have been lying around the garden all year.

Unfortunately my collection of pots isn't all terracotta and rustic looking, most of the plants I buy are in black plastic pots, and although I need a few each year to pot seedling on into, I don't need nearly as many as I use.

Falling leaves, - turn them into plant food and mulch

The nights are drawing in, the days are getting shorter and your lawn suddenly disappears under a sea of leaves.

Now raking leaves up can be invigorating excersise, or it can be boring and never ending at this time of year, - but it might cheer you up to know that all your hard work can be worth it, if you turn your leaves into leaf mulch.

2 years ago, I encouraged (ok, maybe bullied is closer to the truth) several of my clients to start leaf bins. - The results are now in.

and whether you leave your leaves in a large builders sack, -or in a purpose made bin, you can get great leaf mulch within 2 years to add to your garden.

To make really good mulch, you need 3 ingredients

1) Wet Leaves, - if you add them dry, then you need rain to be able to get to them to help them to rot down

2) Air, - either open sides, and open top or holes in the bags help with this

3) Time - leave it alone for a couple of years and you'll have deep rich crumbly leaf mulch

i'd also suggest you compact the leaves well as you put them in or this happens

there is a very good value leaf bin available through The recycle works But if you don't have a completly flat surface with lots of space, i'd recommend using extra canes as support to make sure the bin doesn't collapse like this one did. - also make sure you put the join in the mesh at the front, so that you can easily get the leaf mould out.

I hope you have fun making your leaf bins, -even if the leaf raking is slightly harder work.

Harvesting rainwater to improve your garden

We've had a water meter installed in the last week. We opted for it as we're sure that our water bill will be less, but it does focus the mind on not wasting water.  This week i've installed another 2 waterbutts, and there are 2 more on the way.

i've always used water butts, - even on my 6' x 4' shed at the last house, we managed to fit guttering to fill a space saver waterbutt from one side. However this morning crystalized how much water we can harvest, - my 200 litre plastic water butt, bought as a buy one get one half price deal and delivered and installed on Sunday is now full to overflowing with one nights rainfall falling on our porch roof.  This is plenty to water all my front garden plants for the next week or so, and it means that I need to think about a larger tank there, or connecting several in tandom.

Some water companies are currently doing very good deals, or even giving basic butts away for free, - if you'd like something a bit more stylish, there are plenty of oak barrels or italiante urns available, - my advice would be to buy online, - delivery is almost always included.

Most plants prefer rainwater rather than tap water, because it doesn't include any chlorine or limescale additives, - Most of Surrey has hard water, so limescale can also cause white marks on plant leaves, -

I just need to buy a couple more watering cans now, (that don't have handles on the back so that they fit under the tap, so that one can be filling while i'm watering with the other. This summer i'm going to save my hosepipe, and use my butt!

Could my compost bin attract rats?

This is a question that i'm asked often, and is used as an excuse for people not to set up a compost bin, - so here is my take on the subject

Rats want somewhere warm and dry to shelter, and they want to find food.  A compost bin may be warm but it shouldn't be dry enough for a rat, and the food that attracts rats i.e cooked or processed food, meat, fish or dairy products shouldn't be added unless they have been pickled in a bokashi bin first. so my top tips for composting to avoid making a comfortable home for rats are

1) Make sure that there are no sources of food in the garden that can attract rats -

leftover food on a birdtable, bird food bags left open in a shed, vegetables hung up to dry ( the Goods had the right idea using the spare bedroom in The Good Life), rubbish bags containing food scraps left outside

2) Be an active composter, - if you are disturbing their hiding place every day and walking past on your way to other parts of the garden, your compost bin will become an uncomfortable place to hide

3) Don't put your bin in a far away part of the garden, so that you can add things every day or so, and make sure there is space round it - no overgrown folilage for rodents to hide in

4) Rats like a dry environment, - a pile of leaves is perfect for them, a well balanced mix of vegetable peelings, grass clippings, shreddings, shredded newspaper and cardboard will give you a heap with the consistency of a wrung out sponge, and you can always water your compost heap if it is too dry

5) make sure the rats can't be tempted by using a closed heap, - a lid and a base, or a layer of plaster mesh underneath it.

 

It is always a good idea to wear gloves when handling compost, and if you do see any signs of Rats having been in your compost, - all is not lost as the compost can be used on the garden as worms will have helped the degradation process, or you can always put material back in the bin for a couple more months.

It is also worth knowing that Garden Organic have not had an increase in questions about vermin in compost over the last couple of years even though there has been a large increase in the numbers of people composting

 

How to solve a leaky pipe to get maximum water on your garden

It's at this time of year, when everything is growing at full pelt and we've had a couple of of weeks of dry weather, with the showers not properly wetting the ground and the waterbutts not filling, that we discover that the hosepipe gets more water on the patio, than out of the end of the hose on to your plants.  If this is a problem for you as well, see if these steps can help you get leak free watering.

Check any plastic fittings, - these have often cracked, particularly after our cold winter, and could be where the water is trying to escape. Hozelock are the market leader in hose pipe fitting, and their hose end fittings now have have an optional bendy end to help pipes move around corners without putting them under undue pressure - Hozelock Aqua stop connector 2055

Check that the hose is tightly gripped in the hose end connector, - the hoses tend to stretch over the space of a year, - so cut off several centimetres from the end of the hose and refit.

Clean out your lance or spray gun, - these may be leaking because they are blocked with mud, weeds or sorse... - slugs!

Look for any pin holes in the hose where water is escaping, - these can usually be fixed successfully for at least a year with electrical tape.

Hopefully checking all of these will get the water to your plants so that they can benefit, and keep you dry while you're giving them a drink.

What are Bokashi bins? Do I need one?

I've been all excited for the last few weeks, as i've finally got round to using Bokashi bins.  I first heard about them a couple of years ago and thought they sounded like a good idea, but I already fed my wormery with my kitchen scraps and egg boxes and put the excess in the compost bins to make lots of compost, so did I need anything else? - well one of my favourite garden goodies website, Wiggly Wrigglers has great informative explanation of Bokashi, which starts with

What if there was a method of composting that was so simple that it could easily be fitted into even the busiest lifestyles? What if there was a method of composting that was so quick that the kitchen waste from a large family could be composted in something as small as a 19 litre bin? What if there was a method of composting that meant that even the smelliest meat scraps (old fish skins anyone?) could be composted indoors; without smells and without attracting vermin? What if there was a method of composting where the drained-off liquid could be used to keep drains fresh?
Not even our superb composting worms can achieve all those things; but now there are some creatures that can! We'd like to introduce you to Effective microOrganisms... Ems for short.
To read the rest of their description click here

As we now live in a slightly more rural location, and I have my lovely open compost bins as well as my plastic darlek composters, I didn't want to be attracting vermin, and I do have food scraps (thanks to a picky DH and DS) and I want to reduce my landfill as much as possible, so at the beginning of the year I decided to give it a go.  I bought the multi pack, which has  2 bins. They are square plastic bins with taps at the bottom to drain off the liquid, - you put a tray in the bottom that has slits in it to let the liquid fall through, and then you add your food waste as you make it.  After you've put in a whole layer, you squash it down, and add the Bokashi Bran which has the Ems in it. - it took 3 weeks for us to fill our first bin, and it squashed down well, - we put in leftovers from our plates, egg shells, tea bags, bread, vegetable peelings and out of date things lurking in the fridge (jars of olives and cottage cheese) - the only thing they suggest you don't put in is bones , although reading the reviews, people have put in chicken drumsticks etc and they've rotted down fine - rotting isn't actually the right word, as apparantly the waste pickles itself.  I'm now onto my second bin, so the first one is outside pikling, - i'll let you know when it's time to put it on my compost heap outside. - There is no smell in the kitchen, there is a slight whiff when you lift the lid if you've only just put smelly things in (out of date sausages!), - but then the bran gets to work and a day or 2 later, no smell.

i'm really please so far, and there is loads of stuff that otherwise would have gone into landfill, - the best thing is, as my bin bag now has no food in it, I can put it out without the foxes having a go and ripping it to shreds, - tidy garden as a bonus.
I'll update you in a few weeks time.

Mucky Manure

I'd just like to draw your attention to a problem that may get worse before it gets better, - no not the credit crunch/recession, but the mucky issue of Weedkiller in composted manure.  Since the autumn, reports have been building of crops and plants being badly affected across the country by manure contaminated by aminopyralid. This is a weedkiller used a couple of years ago on farm land, which has got into the food chain, and is now "on the loose" in manures.  Because of the bad growing season last summer, a lot of people had put their crop failures down to other reasons, but are now realising that their symptoms of ferny foliage and shrivelled leaves, particularly in tomatos, potatoes, beans, but also Roses and some herbaceous plants is down to a chemical. Having read quite a lot on blogs and websites in the last week, I have to say that my usual advice to condition soil and mulch hungry plants with a country natural organic manure, will be changed this year, and top soil and home made compost will be a lot more important. to read the RHS advicce sheet put on the internet recently click here

Recycling Christmas Trees

I've started the New Year with a flourish of Reduce Reuse and Recycle. Shredded Christmas trees smell lovely, and make great fodder for you compost bin, particularly as there has probably been a surfeit of leftover food scraps and veg peelings and not much else going in over the last few weeks, but if you don't have a compost bin to put it in and you don't have council green bags to chop it into for it to be recycled, then the next best thing is to take it to one of the places that will recycle it for you.

In Horsley you can take them to
East Horsley Village Hall, Kingston Avenue
or
West Horsley Squires Garden Centre, Epsom Road

for the full list of where else to take them click here and they'll be accepted up until the 18th January

Autumn leaves

Well it is now fully Autumn, the clocks have gone back and the trees are losing their leaves.  To make sure you make the best of the leaf fall, and get plenty of exercise whenever the sun comes out, rake the leaves off the lawn with a plastic rake at every opportunity.  These leaves can then be heaped in a leaf bin with open mesh sides, or put in plastic bags with holes in them, so that they will become leaf mulch over the next couple of years. If you have a garden vacuum that picks up and mulches the leaves, the decomposition time will be even quicker, and you'll have an excellent soil improver in the next year.