You will find lots of useful information on compost, composting and all things grow your own, from hints and tips to step by step how to guides on all sorts of interesting subjects.
Browse through all our garden guru's articles below to find the subject you are interested in.
If the article you are looking for is not here, just ask The Compost Shop Garden Guru and he will get back to you as quickly as possible with the answers you are looking for!
You may have heard gardeners talk about mulching, or perhaps seen mention of it in garden magazines, or on websites. But what does it mean, and when and how should you do it? This quick guide will help you become an expert and confident mulcher.
WILDLIFE GARDENING MADE SIMPLE
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has launched a new campaign, called ‘Giving Nature a Home’. As wild habitats disappear ever faster, it’s becoming more and more important that gardens are wildlife-friendly. So we thought it might be helpful to give you some hints to make your garden nature-friendly all year round.
So what are our top five tips for wildlife-friendly gardening? And more importantly, what can you do at this time of year?
Water really is the magic ingredient for all wildlife: add water, and the animals follow, from small insects to birds, frogs and toads, and hedgehogs. Even a small pond will help, and now is a good time to build one. Whether you choose a ready-made pond, or use flexible pond liner, provide an access point for animals to drink, and put marginal plants around the edge to create cover. If you don’t have room for a pond, or don’t want one, how about a shallow bird bath? Every little helps, as they say.
Compost heaps can provide homes for all kinds of animals, as well as a source of food and a warm shelter in winter. Toads may take up residence, and plenty of flies and other insects like to feed there, which attracts birds. What’s more, you get home-made compost for your garden too, although you’ll probably find that you still need to buy compost from compost suppliers too!
This is a particularly good activity with children. Bug houses don’t have to be big, although you can make some fantastic ones with three or four pallets stacked up, stuffed with different sorts of materials, such as dried grass, fallen leaves, small sticks and twigs and so on. But you can also make miniature bug houses out of old plastic containers, by filling them with sticks, drinking straws, autumn leaves and the like, and providing a range of habitats in odd corners of your garden. Now is the best time to do this, so that insects can overwinter safely.
The more different plants you have, the more different insects you will attract, and so you will also have more of the animals and birds that feed on them. Wildlife gardening is a gardeners’ dream!
We said it was a gardeners’ dream! At this time of year in particular, leave fallen leaves on flower beds, preserve some untidy parts of your garden, grow bits of lawn longer by not mowing. All these things provide habitats for wildlife and shelter for winter, while making your life a bit easier. It’s a win-win situation.
Read more …Giving Nature a Home - Wildlife Gardening Made Simple
It may seem a little strange to be talking about planting up containers for autumn and winter now, when it’s still the school summer holidays. But spring bulb catalogues are out, and spring bulbs and autumn bedding are starting to arrive in garden centres now. Since one of the best and cheapest way of buying bulbs is to order them from seed catalogues, it’s certainly worth thinking about ordering bulbs now ready for planting from late September.
It’s the time of year when containers and pots with bedding plants start to look a little bit sad. Some of the plants are coming to the end of their flowering, and some are dying back, but others are still flowering. What should you do to keep them looking good for as long as possible? Here are some useful pointers that should help you keep your display going for a bit longer.
1) Clear out the old
The best thing to do with those plants that have finished flowering and died back, such as Lobelia, is to pull them out lock, stock and barrel. Yes, it will leave spaces, but better spaces than dead plants. So have a good clear out of the pots. And while you’re at it, deadhead everything else. As long as the sun keeps shining, deadheaded plants will generally keep flowering.