CREATE A REAL EXPLOSION OF COLOUR

Brighten up a desolate patch of land with easy to make seed bombs*


Making seed bombs and throwing, concealing, digging or just gently placing them in places that could use a little love - think vacant lots and random patches of public dirt - is a fun and productive way to get your hands dirty and adds a little (or a lot) of beauty to your surroundings.

Seed bombs or seed balls were created by members of the guerrilla gardening movement: green thumbed city dwellers, all over the world, who have been beautifying neglected plots of land since the Seventies.


Seed bombs are simple constructions of clay (lots of that in our garden!), water, compost or potting mix (or even worm castings), and native seeds. 

They're cheap to make, and make for an enjoyable afternoon project.  You don't even need to consider yourself a gardener.
The seeds of native flowers and plants are the most desirable for seed bombing, as they will grow well without a lot of tending.  

They also won't crowd out other plants, disrupt bird and insect populations or do any other kind of environmental damage.


METHOD


1   Lay the clay, seeds and compost on a surface that you don't mind getting dirty.

2   Divide them into five parts clay, one part compost (or potting mix) and one part seeds.

3   Form the compound for the outside of the seed bombs by combining the clay and the compost.  The clay might be tough until you've warmed it with your hands, so don't be afraid to get stuck in.  Adding a drop or two of water can make it more pliable, but don't overdo it, rub it together until it has a gritty, dough-like texture.  The mixture should be malleable, but not too sloppy. 

4   Add the seeds and gradually work them in, using the same rubbing and kneading method as before.  Roll into a long sausage, then tear the mixture into pieces about the size of a nectarine and roll into balls.


You can plant your seed bombs while they are moist or let them dry. As long as they are watered the clay will break down and the seeds will grow.  In a few weeks' time you should see your seeds starting to grow into beautiful plants and flowers for everyone to enjoy!

See also: 
http://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/how-to-make-a-seed-bomb/
http://www.redtedart.com/2014/02/12/how-to-make-seed-bombs-recipe/


*From an article by Anna Carlile in the Telegraph

A timely explanation ...

For tired-looking borders in the garden here's an explanation of the difference between manure, fertilizer and mulch.  Do we need all three and when to apply which of these?*

Mulching is the name given to the process of adding a layer to the surface of soil over plant roots, or even over the entire surface of soil over plant roots, or even over the entire surface of beds and borders.  This does one or more of the following - conserve moisture, feed plant roots, improve soil texture or suppress weed growth


The noun 'mulch' most often refers to something organic.  Organic mulches are a mixed, potentially confusing bunch: animal manure is generally high in nitrogen, and unless completely rotted should not come into contact with plant roots or stems.  Leaf mould and composted bark have a low nutrient level and low pH.  

They are useful for mulching woodlanders and lime-haters.  Unlike mushroom compost (second-hand animal manure, thus with lower nitrogen levels and laced with variable amounts of high pH chalk), which should be kept away from them.

Coarse bark chippings, if applied thickly enough (at least 4"/10cm), are long-lasting, suppress weeds and retain moisture well, but can deplete the soil of nitrogen as they slowly rot down (nitrogen that can, of course, be topped up using a fertiliser - read on).  And home-made compost can be rich in nutrients but is extremely variable (depending on what goes in the bin), and is seldom perfectly seed-free.  Gravel and weed-smothering black membranes are, technically speaking, inorganic mulches.

Spring is a big feeding/mulching time in the garden, just as plant growth starts, and some diligent gardeners feed their shrubs and roses again, halfway through the summer.  Most of us, I think, tend to use a combination of mulches/soil-improvers and fertilizers (both organic and inorganic) and, increasingly, slow-release inorganic ones.

Fertilisers contain essential nutrients (and minerals), in various ratios for specific purposes in order to bolster plant growth.  Most gardeners are now familiar with the fact that nitrogen encourages leaf growth, potash boosts flower production, while phosphates encourage root development and strength.  Fertiliser packets reliable carry information about nitrogen, potassium and phosphate (NPK) content that we need to know.

So-called 'balanced' fertilisers (such as traditional organic, blood fish and bone or inorganic Growmore), are those that contain more or less equal quantities of all three nutrients.

Finally, soluble and liquid fertilisers and foliar feeds are useful, being quickly absorbed by plants under stress.

One mulch I find very useful is leaf mould

*From Helen Yemm in the Saturday Telegraph, 15 February 2014, Helen's always a valuable source of information.

Natural Tonic

Who needs the gym or medicines when there's a garden waiting for you?  Monty Don extols the healthy benefits of feeling at one with nature.*

I have a fail-safe measure of how angry, distressed, exhausted or just plain ill I am.  I put on my boots (an important part of the ritual this - I am symbolically strapping on my necessary armour), go outside and start to garden.  

This might be gentle pottering about, a little light pruning, watering the greenhouse,thinning a line of beetroot, mowing or perhaps vigorously turning the compost or digging the vegetable garden.  The point is not what I do, but the simple fact I am doing something in my garden.  If after 10 minutes I feel less than utterly content, I know that something is seriously wrong.

Gardening - for me at any rate-  works like a magical elixir.  It heals, almost instantly.  Of course, it is much better not to need healing from any kind of hurt.  The best health of all is the kind that you do not notice or need to think about.  A body and mind working well never need to consider how they are doing, just the matter in hand.  

I would argue that the best road to sound mental and physical health comes from a good diet based on fresh, seasonal food, plenty of outdoor exercise, a small amount of stress and an active interest and stake in the future.  Gardening fulfils all those requirements and is consequently the healthiest of all pastimes.  


I also think that gardens are where we feel most free.  Modern life is, for the majority of us, a kind of serfdom to mortgage, job and the constant assault to consume. We have more time and money than ever before, and yet most of us have little sense of control over our lives.  But in the garden or allotment we are king or queen.  It is our piece of outdoors that gives us a real stake in the planet.  The garden is not just the grass to be morn and the straggle of weeds to be pulled from between the paving, but the sky and the rain and the birds singing from the bushes - our bushes.


Gardens are places where we can connect with the weather, the seasons and the natural rhythms of plants and animals.  We all lead such hermetic lives, wrapped in central heating, air conditioning, cars, trains, neon-lit offices, street lights and a constant supply of cheap gratification, that it is possible not to experience anything at all directly.



A garden - however small - is the corrective to this ersatz existence.  Gardens are wet and cold and bathed in sun and, despite all our worst endeavours, continues to obey the cycles of nature.  To be out there and doing something is deeply empowering because you become part of that rhythm.

Certainly by far the most immediate effect of time in the garden - and this includes everything from house plants to allotments - is to wash away the stress of modern life.  We are living longer than ever before, but for many people the quality of life is getting worse. We live in an age driven by haste and a sense of forces we cannot control. 

Apparently simply walking on grass in bare feet can help, it's good for lowering blood pressure and heart rates and stress levels.  And most people believe that being surrounded by grass, trees and flowers improves their health and general well being. 
This is hardly rocket science but it is a much under-praised and under-encouraged aspect of gardening.


More young people are living in a permanently heated, artificially lit world insulated from weather or the changing cycle of growth.  Yet a very cursory relationship with a garden will provide the most direct contact with the natural world available to most people.  The simplest garden can connect people to a living world that has infinitely more depth and meaning.

To put it at its simplest, gardening does us good at every level - from the exercise needed throughout the changing seasons to grow it, to the pleasure and health-giving properties when eating it, to the greater desire to share what we grow ourselves, and therefore to improve our social health.  Wise men and women have known and practised this for millennia - but how many of our modern politicians grow their own?

Even if you turn your back of the health-giving properties of a veg patch, just being outside can be life changing.  We need the benefit of daylight to improve our mood and being out in the open can only help.

Beneath the joy and endless satisfaction I get from almost every aspect of gardening, whether in my own private garde at home or shared with millions via the TV, is a real and urgent need to preserve my health and sanity through the healing balm of the garden.  This is a mad, dangerous and cruel world we live in, and if we want to cope with its horrors and relish the profound joys that are there to be had, then a garden is the best place to start - and to end.

* taken from an article in Gardeners' World, February 2006.

If you don't have a garden - or you do and have lots of energy, would like fun and to meet people - see: http://www.tcv.org.uk/greengym

Why do we need to feed our plants?

A letter sent in from one of the readers ran thus:

I seem to spend my life scattering things around my garden (chicken pellets one year, blood fish and bone the next, together with the contents, as far as it will stretch, of the compost bin), while acquiring a shed full of bags of partly used fertilisers because, we are told, different plants need different fertilisers.  But what am I actually achieving?  Is it all a plot on the part of the marketing people? could you explain simply what we need to do - and what you do, for instance?

To which Helen replied:

Oh what a loaded question!  Answering this has the potential to upset just about everyone - from white-coated scientists and the makes of Day-Glo inorganic soluble feeds right through to serried ranks of organic allotmenters.

In theory, we shouldn't need to feed our plants.  After all, the natural world looks after itself.  

A garden, however, is an unnatural environment.  We cram a small patch of earth full of plants that in their natural habitat might have very differing needs, and expect super performance year after year: fabulous flowers from roses, huge leaves from hostas, endless flowering from annuals, a perfect lawn ...  

Plants crowded together suffer from drought, which encourages disease, weakening them further.  To make things worse, we clear up every bits of debris from our gardens that would otherwise go back into the soil, eventually to create vital humus without which plants can't grow.  So we need first and foremost to feed the soil, putting back as much moisture-retaining, humus-creating organic stuff as we can - invariably more than those of us with average-sized gardens can make in our compost bin.


Whatever we choose or don't choose to do, we should all feed our plants. Certain plants will perform better - and importantly show more disease resistance - given certain nutrients, each of which has a different 'function': flowering plants (and tomatoes) like extra potash, summer lawns benefit from nitrogen that encourages green leaves, while the roots of autumn grass are strengthened by phosphates etc. And lime-haters don't like animal manure.

It is a big subject if you want it to be.  I try to keep it simple.

I give my garden masses of manure-based organic matter each year (which I buy, to supplment my own compost), adding it to the soil when I plant, and mulching around individual plants in spring.  I make oak-leaf mould for lime-haters and woodlands.  

In addition I spread a general, balanced fertiliser on my flower borders once a year (for 'balanced' nutrients look at the NPK ratio on the packaging - beware, you won't find precise information on chicken manure pellets, which are nitrogen-rich).  

I also give high potash rose food to my flowering shrubs and I use seaweed-based liquid fertiliser as a pick-me-up (for ailing plants, that is, not me, silly).

From an article by Helen Yemm in the Telegraph Gardening section



Time Lapse: Watching Flowers Grow  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQYjZRuAay0).  Remember watching the beginning of 'Watch with Mother'? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE9dsOu3oE8)

Water is one of the most vital ingredients in our gardens.  

Few of us are lucky enough to have natural water or man-made pond large enough so that they do not need intervention (400 square metres and 1.5 metres deep in parts).  Anything smaller and there will be a need to tinker with it to keep it sweet.

Blanket weed's quite a nuisance, probably caused by too much nitrate or phosphate which trigger blanket weed to grow at a phenomenal rate.


Rainwater is also a big culprit, as it tends to be full of nutrients, and we have had several deluges over recent months.

Hay nets of barley straw which works in about 60% of cases, but it's difficult to source these days.  Why is does not always work is a bit of a puzzle to the freshwater biologists.  It does take a good month or two, though, and you must remove it before it starts to disintegrate, otherwise it increases the nitrogen levels and causes even more algae.

One idea is to add barley straw extract instead (from agagroup.co.uk), which is quicker and easier to manage, but if it doesn't work then it's suggeted that we try Aqua Activ Algo Universal (oase-livingwater.com) from Oase, which has a helpline for pool-related queries (01264 333225).  This control does not alst as long as the more natural method.

The fail-safe but expensive, method is to use a sonic machine that zaps the weed continually but it costs around £800 for an area of water around 150 square metres.

Another common pest problem is invasive vegetation (reeds etc) which can cover the entire pool.  To combat this, either use glyphosate carefully to spray the vegetation (it is not harmful to fish if used correctly) or you can cover the base before they emerge (or cut down first) with a needle punch root barrier (£2.35 per square metre from Aga group, as before).  You will need to weigh it down initially with rocks or silt.

The best way to avoid the pea soup situation is plants, plants and more plants.  Ash Girdler, a pond expert for the Aga group, recommends covering two thirds of the surface area with floating leaved plants such as water lilies, water soldier (Stratiotes aloides) and frogbit (hydrocharis).  Another three-quarters of the sides, at least, should be planted with emergent and marginal plants such as irises, flowering rush (Butomus umbellatus) and water forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpioides).

It'a a good idea to add some  bunches of submergents such as spiked water milboil (Myriophyllum spicatum), not to be confused with the highly invasive parrot's feather (M. aquaticum).  Fish, especially carp, will gobble these up, though, so you may need to cage the plants.

Lilies are best contained in baskets so that some water can be seen.  These vigorous lilies start pushing their leaves way up out of the water when they become congested and every few years the need to be hauled out, split and replanted in the garden.

Some gardeners think their pool base should look like the bottom of a clean bath.  This would be quite horrible for wildlife.  What they really want in the base is about 150mm or more of good, healthy hydrasoil (mud!), which if it has been left untouched, will be there anyway.  

If not sure, take out a scoop and smell it.  If it stinks of rotten eggs or methane, then maybe there is some anaerobic or partial decomposition.  In this case add some Aquabio (calcium sulphate, from Agagroup).  This should either be applied in early June or late summer; it will slowly sweeten the pond.


Planting marginal plants directly into the soil, which covers the whole pool/pond base, gives a better balance.  Small quantities of basketed plants can look rather wimpy.  Topsoil is too rich and makes everything turn green and clay subsoil and fish are a bad combination, as the clay fines cloud the water when the fish move. A poor, sandy subsoil is best.

A good way to hide the liner is to add pre-0vegetated coir rolls.  These are sausage-shaped 3m-long rolls, 200mm in diameter.  They bend and can be fixed either just below water level, or partially above it and they will sprout wonderful, lush, emergent plants (ornamental and native mixes, from the Aga group).

If starting a new pool or pond, the choice of liner is very important.  Butyl has been superseded; EPDM rubber is far better. It's not degraded by UV light and has a 25 year guarantee.  Make sure it's 1mm thick and put a blanket underlay (NP300) below and usually above the liner too.  If labradors, children and deer are going to stray in, it protects the liner.



From an article by Bunny Guiness (The Telegraph Life Gardening pages, 9 June 2013)