Eco Warrior

The cost of potting compost can be quite prohibitive if you have a large garden like ours. And peat based compost has environmental concerns too. I make my own compost of course, but it's never enough for my needs, and since I have fairly terrible soil, I do tend to need quite a lot of compost to improve the soil when planting out, just to give the plants a decent chance. 

 I shop around for the good deals at garden centres and usually find I can get reasonable compost for around 5p a litre. Lidl is often good value, but currently I'm using Countrywide Stores own brand compost which is available at their stores for 3 x 100 litres for £16.

However, for garden use, as opposed to potting use, I get a cubic metre, which is 1000 litres, of Warrior Compost produced by my local recycling centre here in Wiltshire, Hills, and costs £33 including delivery. It's made from recycled local garden waste and is excellent stuff, weed free and accredited by the Soil Association and at just over 3p a litre great value. When I can make enough room by the gate, I intend to have a bulk delivery which will be even better value then I will be able to use it with abandon as a soil improver and top dressing. And I can  feel good about it because it's not only cheap but it's green as well. 

 If you don't live in Wiltshire, try your local recycling centre to see if they do a similar scheme.

Allotment Recycling Syndrome

I like to think I do my bit on the recycling front. Green as the next woman, that's me. I keep a compost bucket in the kitchen, diligently sort all the bottles, tins, and newspapers for collection, and all that. But when it comes to the garden I find I have developed a disease. In medical circles it's known as Allotment Recycling Syndrome, and you can see common symptoms of it on any local allotments you might care to walk through, ie  you will see all manner of bits and pieces of flotsam pressed into service long after they would otherwise have ended up in the bin. There must be somthing about gardening that makes you not want to waste things, and to put old things to a new use wherever possible. This is great, but it does rather lead to an accumulation of stuff that might just be of some use at some undefined future time.... I'm thinking of  the tin labelled "Pieces of String Too Short To Be Of Any Possible Use" kind of thing.

Anyway, the other day I spotted some fruit trees in Tescos. Yes, I know they're not known for the choicest varieties, but they were selling them off for £3.50 each, and as they seemed to be still alive I couldn't resist. There's no indication of the rootstock, but an estimation of the eventual expected height makes it look like a  fairly dwarfing rootstock, and the varietal name is given, so it seemed like worth a go. I will probably put them in the chicken run/mini orchard. There is an Egremont Russet apple, a Williams Bon Chretian pear, a Sunburst cherry, an Oullin's Golden Gage, and an Arthur Turner apple (what a lovely name for an apple tree, sounds like a northern bloke in a flat cap ay-up). Of course being a supermarket everything has to be packed in plastic, (it's the law you know) and as I was un packing them, I realised if I kept the plastic sleeving it would be perfect for sliding onto the branches of my existing Stella cherry tree to protect the ripening fruit from birds, later on in the summer.  So as I say, stuff that would have gone to waste is now cluttering up the shed waiting to be put to good use in June. I hope it works this year, last year I got no cherries at all, because the birds were quicker than I was. Sounds like a result to me, so far anyway.

Plantus Labellus Ikealloides

Plant labels are annoying things. Flimsy bits of plastic that get lost, break, or become illegible, or just blow away. I'd like to have lovely slate ones, or nice pretty wooden painted ones, but like so many other things I'd like, I just never get round to making them and I certainly don't want to be paying out the money charged at fancy garden shops for them. So I was very pleased with myself when I came up with the idea of re-using something which would otherwise have been binned.

I recently installed a new venetian blind**in the bathroom, and since it came from Ikea, where everything is one size, it was miles too long and I had lots of slats leftover. The slats seem to be made of some kind of wood, or mdf, or but are thin enough to be reasonably easy to cut. They are white and about two inches or so wide, so ideal for large, legible, garden labels. I was worried that they might disintegrate in water so I tried cutting one to size, and have soaked it in a glass of water for a few days and so far it looks ok.

So hopefully, this year, no more peering at illegible bits of plastic and wondering whether it was peas or beans I sowed in that bed last week.

**We are very lucky to have views from our windows onto open fields, with nothing more than the odd dog walker passing by. However this applies to our bathroom windows as well, which are clear glazed, not frosted as most modern bathrooms are, I suppose because no one went past the garden hedge when the house was built.  But the village has grown and there are more people about than there used to be, and a not insignificant number of dog walkers pass through the field on the other side of our hedge, especially first thing in the morning.   Anyway, to avoid giving an inadvertent surprise, not to say a heart attack, to Major Fanshawe as he passes a gap in the hedge whilst taking his early morning constitutional, a venetian blind seemed to be the solution.