Plant Gardens 101

Is there too much digging and not enough harvesting going on in your garden? Try these ideas to make your garden work harder for you without breaking a sweat!

Rotation: When one crop comes out of the ground, quickly turn the earth and plant something else straight away. This could be late summer lettuce or over-wintering salad varieties. Some beans can be successfully planted in the autumn, in particular broad beans, along with late cropping cauliflowers and other brassicas.

Make small cloches to protect the young plants from autumn weather. Cut a clear plastic bottle in half to produce two min-cloches!

What you plant as a second crop will depend heavily on your region, climate and availability of seed. However, when this crop comes out in the Spring, there will be far less weeds than if you had left the patch fallow all winter. (more…)

Allow a small patch of your garden to grow daisies, nettles, dandelions and even a bramble or two. The secret to containing your weeds in a small patch is not to let them seed and spread their wings! Pick them at the flower stage and they don’t get a chance to spread themselves over the rest of the garden.

Why have a weed patch?: Well, it’s always nice to see a bit of ‘wild’ in an otherwise neat and tidy garden. But there are other more practical reasons…

Flowering weeds will encourage bees to your garden and they in turn will pollinate your other plants. Weeds are simply wild flowers and they hold a huge range of medicinal and nutritional properties just waiting to be taken advantage of…

Collect some of these regular garden weeds, in any combination for a super bath tonic to relax with… (more…)