Tag: gardening

Free fertiliser from stinging Nettle tea!

Steeping nettle tea

A couple of weeks ago we were watching Monty Don one Sunday morning on BBC 2’s Gardeners World. He was talking through his “Jobs for the weekend” and was highlighting the benefits of stinging nettles being fantastic plant fertilizer and just how easy it was to make and would cost absolutely nothing!

Well that was it a man on a mission, free fertilizer! I was determined to give it go as there are always thousands of stinging nettles nearby. Plus there are no unpleasant chemicals or additives to worry about, plain and simple nitrogen rich fertilizer…

Simple compost aerator from toilet rolls

Airator thrown into the compost bin

This is a simple, sustainable and very green trick to help speed up your composting using old toilet rolls. The old trusty toilet roll, there are so many things one can do with them in addition to finding their way into the recycling bin!

We have previously used them as bio-degradable planters for our seedlings or brown mulch for our wormery to name a couple of great uses. Though our dog has really found a love for left over toilet rolls, she brings them to us asking for permission before chewing it to pieces.

Fun moving soil to the back garden

Shifting a tonne of soil

This looks like it’s going to be hard work, its a lot of soil to shift from the roadside to our back garden lol. We knew when we ordered a tonne of soil that we would have to move it to the back garden ‘manually’ ourselves with a couple of spades and a wheelbarrow, as we have no access for deliveries. Damn!!

All these great ideas, always seem to result in a little missing forethought on just how we are going to move the materials from point A to B. The rest of the construction/ideas have been planned and thought through, just not the deliveries…

Heritage seed planting session

Well with this miserable weather outside, we thought today we should plant some more of our new heritage seeds! Though we are seriously lacking with available window space, we cannot put all of the seeds out in the greenhouse either as it’s still too cold at the moment. So we have been trying to plant our seeds in separate sittings, this was the second sitting and the rest of the seeds will have to wait until April. So Sherrie, her mother and i sat there in a mini production line, cleaning seed trays, filling them with soil, planting and labelling for a couple hours.