Strawberry pots can be challenging The best way to plant a strawberry pot is to take precautions against erosion, drying out, and choosing the best compost When you plant a terracotta strawberry pot you do it with high hopes. Visions of juicy berries spilling from each opening and delighting friends, family, and yourself with homegrown edibles grown in a small space. The trouble is that strawberry pots will often fail you. Compost falls out the sides, the plants look sad, and the berries that do form can be small and
Make homemade compost in a Pallet Compost Bin How to build an Easy Wooden Compost Bin using pallets. A pallet compost bin takes ten minutes to build & creates space for converting waste to compost. It doesn’t matter if you have a vegetable garden or just a big grassy lawn — you will eventually have heaps of ‘green waste’. Grass clippings, weeds, pruned raspberry canes, plants that have gone to seed, you name it. Some of us might pile it all up and hope for the best and others cart
What to do if your honeybees run out of honey Feeding bees in winter is different than feeding them in summer or autumn. Knowing the difference can mean life or death for your colony. If you could have the choice of drizzling golden honey over your food or white sugar, what would you choose? If you were a honeybee, you’d choose the honey of course! It’s made from everything that bees need to last them through lean times including energy, vitamins, minerals, and other micro-nutrients. Sometimes they run out of
Don’t let the weather get your garden down Vegetable gardening through a cold spring comes down to choosing the right varieties, growing under cover, and protecting young plants. Gardeners across the world are panicking — where on earth is spring? Peering at snow through window sills fast becoming seedling jungles is causing a lot of anxiety. I’ve heard lamentations of this being the coldest spring in living memory and worries about the summer to come. It reminds me of what happened seven years ago when folks were wringing their hands
Make homemade soap using herbs & flowers A guide to using herbs and flowers in soap recipes. Tips on which herbs and flowers are best & using fresh and dried plant material in soap In natural soap making, herbs and flowers are used to add texture, color, and decoration. In some cases, they can also add scent and therapeutic properties. Dried rose petals decorating the tops of your bars can smell rosy, and calendula flower petals are used by herbalists to speed up the healing of skin complaints. Using herbs
Building diversity with companion plants The secret to growing a thriving vegetable garden is to follow nature. Grow companion plants and edible flowers to build diversity into your garden. By Emily Murphy, author of Grow What You Love. Order it now on Amazon A quick look at any healthy, living system reveals a clamor of diversity: plants of different kinds keeping company while a mix of good bugs and bad ones busy themselves with the routine of daily living. You’ll find a variety of birds and most likely a host
