Here in the North-East of England spring has finally began in earnest! The last of the snow seems to have gone and temperatures are starting to rise. This means it's time for me to defrost myself, put on the gloves, break out the tools and get me some of that sweet vitamin D! 😎🌞
This year I'll be attempting to expand my garden by increasing my yield, maintaining my soil quality and becoming an overall more efficient and knowledgeable gardener. All while trying to share my experiences with this awesome community so that we can all grow together!
With that mission in mind, here is a little of what I've been doing to get myself going this season:
Building A Seedling Shelving Stand
This is a project that has been in my mind for quite a while but this year, I decided that the time was right to see it through. I try my best to repurpose things and live sustainably so I had been collecting materials for this whilst I thought it through. I collected some wood for the frame from bits I found in my shed, as well as package bracing from the delivery of a new fridge-freezer and washing machine that we had to replace over the last couple of years.
The top piece came from an old fabric wardrobe and the fridge trays make up the shelving boxes that I will use to house my pots of seedlings. All that remained was to use some left over fencing treatment to protect the frame from the weather.
As a side note, I should mention that the old fridge-freezer itself has been in the garden for the last two seasons now and I successfully grew a host of different wild flowers in them to keep my Bee 🐝 friends happy. It's currently empty and covered so that our cats don't get in there.
Looking After Soil Fertility
As well as adding food scraps and shredded paper to my dalek compost bin, I have been doing a lot more direct burying of food scraps over the winter as my beds have been dormant. I experimented a bit and found that a trench like this could almost completely break down the scraps completely in just a few weeks, even when temperatures were close to their lowest. This has made for a quick and easy way to add nutrients to the soil in preparation for spring time planting.
Creating A Diversion
Due to quite a high amount of aphids attacking my Kale and other leafy greens I have decided to let this tyre planter that used to hold stawberries in to diversion for the aphids. Aphids are very keen on nettles as they are packed full of nutrients. By giving them something preferable to focus on I'm hoping this will give some relief to my salad crops. I'll report more on this strategy later in the season. 🔍
That's all I've got for today but I'll hopefully have some healthy seedling and new projects to show off soon. Look forward to catching up with you all and to seeing how things are going in your gardens/farms.
*All images used are my own except the dividers and other banner, which I credit to my friends in #TheAlliance.
