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Category: Gardening

Grow your garden the organic way

An image of a bird feeding station
Posted on by Julie Halford

The wonderful thing about Garden Organic’s demonstration gardens is that they’re not a rarefied retreat for green-fingered types, they’re for absolutely everyone.

We had the pleasure of meeting up with a team from Garden Organic at their base in Coventry last week.

The charity promotes organic growing and composting to help everybody to garden using natural methods. As Dave from GO said to us, ‘We want to make organic gardening easy and attainable for anybody.’

The gardens are a treat for the senses with an abundance of colour and inspiration everywhere, not to mention the delicious earthy aroma of healthy soil.

It’s a place of quiet creativity and observation, with the volunteers who are so essential to the charity going about their activities peacefully in the background.

Dave checks in on the bugs in a composter observation panel

If you live in the area, we can guarantee you will be inspired by the guided tours and workshops and the tips you pick up from the experts.

 The gardens are also home to the Heritage Seed Library, which maintains the national collection of heritage vegetables and shares seeds with members.   

If a visit isn’t possible, check out GO’s website and their webinars, which feature useful Q&A sessions in the chat at the end so you can anonymously ask any questions that have been bugging you.

  You can also find out whether one of their 11 compost demonstration projects in the UK is near you. Don’t worry if there isn’t one yet; many more are in the pipeline.

Everyday gardeners

The charity began life in 1958 when Laurence D Hills founded the Henry Doubleday Research Association. He called on ‘everyday’ gardeners to take part in trials to build understanding of best organic growing practices. This form of research is termed ‘citizen science’ and plays an important role in modern research.

In the years that followed, the charity became known as Garden Organic and has continued to develop understanding about organic growing through research and practical application and sharing this knowledge with gardeners at home.

With 20,000 members, it’s a movement of citizens playing their part in supporting the nature on their doorstep.

Our team returned to our own doorsteps with more knowledge and inspiration for our own gardens, be it growing comfrey ‘Bocking 14’ to make natural compost activator, or succulents on a shed roof. And who wouldn’t want to create tunnels for hedgehogs and mini rainwater ponds for wildlife?

Everything you see there has a purpose in promoting life – be it soil, plant, animal or human. It’s also interesting and lovely to look at, which is a balm for the mind and soul.     

Growing comfrey Bocking 14

Compost activator is made by placing comfrey leaves in drainpipe sections and collecting the liquid that is produced

Rainwater runs off into a mini wildlife pond

A home-made wooden composter features a tunnel for hedgehogs

Succulents growing on a roof

A volunteer checks up on the chickpeas

Follow Garden Organic’s four main methods to build perfect soil

  • Add compost and other bulky organic materials – this not only adds nutrients but also helps create a good structure for plant roots to penetrate.
  • Minimise digging to avoid disturbing the complex soil life.
  • Plan your planting to make best use of the soil’s nutrients and to avoid build-up of pests and diseases.
  • Grow certain plants, such as green manures, which hold nutrients in the soil and can help suppress weeds. (Green manures are living mulches grown to benefit soil fertility and structure.)

A structure that creates a woody wonderland for wildlife

Pots of colour

How to make your own compost mixes

Posted on by Julie Halford

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about making your own compost mixes, Garden Organic is the place to go – and with the ban on peat compost for home gardeners coming in this year, there’s never been a better time.

 Last week I joined a Garden Organic online talk about peat-free growing, which I can thoroughly recommend. Talks are helpful if you find it easier to learn through listening rather than reading, especially if the talker is as knowledgeable as our host, Anton. Having the chance to ask questions anonymously in the Q and A session is really helpful too.

A Garden Organic (GO) survey showed that very few gardeners make all the compost their garden needs; the majority use a mixture of homemade and shop bought. If you want to garden as sustainably as you can, GO has loads of advice on achieving this balance.  

A few things I learned:

  • Peat only came into use in the 1960s with plants being sold in containers in garden centres. Garden plants don’t need peat, which is virtually devoid of nutrients. Some countries, such as Australia, have no source of peat so their horticulture industry has never depended on it. 
  • In a bag of peat-free compost you will find:  wood fibre (a waste product from sawmills that is also in demand for use in bio mass boilers)/ composted bark (adds structure and air spaces)/ coir waste (a waste product from coconut plantations)/green waste compost (from council garden waste collections).
  • Growing media shouldn’t be used on a large scale to improve the soil – the resources used to make potting compost are limited. To improve soil, use garden waste compost, homemade compost, manures and green manures. To fill raised beds, use topsoil.
  • It’s a good idea to buy in seed compost because it’s difficult to get right yourself. Get the best you can afford because a little goes a long way. Seeds contain their own nutrients so they will germinate successfully in low-nutrient material with good drainage.
  • If you want to adapt multipurpose compost for use as seed compost, remove larger pieces, put through a coarse sieve, mix 50/50 with rewetted coir block.

Peat-free challenges

  • Peat-free compost behaves differently to peat – the main challenge is watering. Because of their high coir and woodchip content, peat-free mixes tend to dry out more easily. They also have a coarse texture, which can appear dry on the surface but still be damp further down.
  • With pots, watering little and often is best. Check by putting your finger in the mix to see if it’s dry all the way through. Water by going round the pot in a circle to get water to drain all over. Repeat a few times.
  • Water seed trays from below. Use a fine mister or waterer for the surface.
  • Peat-free compost doesn’t store as well as peat so only buy what you need. Don’t leave out in the rain; tiny holes in the bag will let in water which will wash away nutrients. Don’t subject to high temperatures by leaving out in glasshouse. Don’t buy bags that are faded as they might have been lying around for a while. If a mix smells bad it may have turned anaerobic, so return it.  

Feeding tips

A challenge with peat-free compost is that it can run out of nutrients more quickly – after 4 weeks.

  •  After 4 weeks, water with a sustainable liquid feed using comfrey or nettle leaves. Make your own comfrey feed by leaving 1kg of comfrey leaves in 15 litres of water for 5-6 weeks. Use neat to water plants.
  • For a concentrated comfrey liquid feed – stuff leaves into a drainpipe and let the liquid drip out of the bottom. Dilute 1 -10 and use on flowering and fruiting plants. This feed doesn’t smell – adding water is what makes the concoction smell.
  • Urine also gives a very good balanced feed (dilute 1 – 10). Fun fact – the average person produces enough nitrogen in their urine to fertilise 1 and a half tonnes of tomatoes, yet this usually gets flushed away to be treated at high expense, together with drinking-standard water.   
  • Use worm compost mixed with homemade compost as top dressing. Worm compost provides high levels of readily available nitrogen. Use sparingly.

For information and advice about making your own mixes, check out the GO website –  Garden Organic – Discover organic growing

Garden Organic recommends trying different peat-free composts to see which you have most success with. The charity has had good results with Melcourt’s Sylvagrow range for seed and potting mixes.

A word about peat

Garden Organic has long campaigned for an end to the use of peat in horticulture.  Peatlands cover 3 per cent of land surface but store 30 per cent of the earth’s soil carbon. Peat only regenerates at a rate of 1mm a year. In the UK, peat extraction accounts for 5 per cent of CO2 emissions. More than 95% of lowland bogs in the UK have been destroyed or damaged as peat has been extracted on an industrial scale.

Garden Organic’s online talks (webinars) are held on a donation basis to help support the charity’s work in helping people to garden organically. 

If you live near the charity’s Coventry base, you can attend courses or workshops in person, or else watch out for the next webinar. Online courses are also available and you can write in with questions too.

Julie

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