The Beauty of Nature

Well, as you can see, we need to dig the allotment at this time of year. It has over-wintered well, but the soil needs to be broken up and we have to remove some of the grass that has grown with the mild winter.

We could have put a carpet over it like some of the other allotment holder, but we didn’t have a spare 50sq ft carpet to hand.

So we dig!

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As you can hear it was a very windy day. Perhaps we will use a rotavator next year?

Having slugs on your allotment can be a real pain. While you can catch them in the act and invite them to leave your vegetables alone, it is good to keep an eye out for them before you start growing. This is often best done when you are digging the soil over in preparation for planting.

In this video we can see some slug eggs waiting to hatch and eat the veg. They are not very large, but you can tell them as they are translucent balls. These could be from last year, but equally they can lay dormant for a long time.

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My favourite method is to lightly salt them.

On a rather windy day, we take a look at the comfrey growing on the allotment.

We will be using this to tempt the slugs away from the veg, but also as an important constituent of the composting process.

It’s a coarse Eurasian plant belonging to the genus Symphytum – part of the borage family. It has large hairy, lance-shaped leaves and drooping clusters of small, white, rose-coloured, or purplish flowers.

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Using some toilet rolls as ‘peat pots’. They may well have one purpose, but their second life role is just as good.

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Today we checked on the seeds we planted last week.

As you can see the Asters have already come through.

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Today we are planting some seeds that we will germinate indoors as it is still too cold outside – illustrated by it snowing while we were filming.

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Last night it was minus 8 degrees outside so these seeds are now indoors by a window keeping warm.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me.

This is the second part of our tip on taking a cutting from an established Geranium so that we can have beautiful flowers in two hanging baskets this summer.

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Today we are taking a cutting from an established Geranium so that we can have beautiful flowers in two hanging baskets this summer.

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Today we are potting some seeds that we will germinate indoors as it is still too cold outside – illustrated by it snowing while we were filming.

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If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me.

Here we have a second short video on what to put into your compost.

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