All bumps and bruises

As usual it has been another busy week in our household, Jay hurt his foot whilst training and in the early hours of Thursday morning was up A&E, parents evening and yesterday twin2lew burnt his hand and now has a lovely blister.

I still have 2 more lots of questions for the gardening journal and then I can transfer all the answers from the lovely Mum and Joanne into the journal. 

I have now gotten Dad on board to help me with the garden. We have had a brief chat and we decided to keep things simple. So it will be potatoes, dwarf green beans, runner beans, peas and courgettes and some tomatoes too and cut and come again salad leaves in tubs.

The Weather has been dry the past week so hopefully I will persuade someone to get the Rotavator out and get the ground all ready for planting the early potatoes. The raised bed also needs a severe weeding as it is full of stinging nettles which I shall use to make some nettle tea so it's not all bad.

Lets get on to the next lots of questions

41) Organic Gardening is becoming more prevalent...what views and advice would you give me?

42) Gardening can be expensive, so what money saving tips would you give me?

43) How do you manage a compost heap? what do you put in it and what do you keep out?

44) Companion planting is where some plants benefit from growing near each other...what have you observed?

45) How should I organise my plants and time in the greenhouse?

My response...

41) We are all more concerned about what goes into growing and producing our food hence why many of us now grow our own. I try to avoid any use of chemicals and use natural remedies for pest control, such as steeped rhubarb leaves to control numerous bugs, sunken beer cups to catch the snails as well as broken egg shells and also human hair around the base of your plants as another great deterrent to slugs and snails. 

42) Save all your food packaging containers as these are great for growing seedlings. Have a compost heap, use loo roll inners to sow peas & beans in. Make your own feeds and pest control. Buy good quality tools from boot sales, as the old ones are often the best, seed swaps.

43) I have 2 compost bins, I tend to put most food scraps in but avoid putting in onions & potatoes. 

44) This is not something I have really tried I did however plants marigolds all around my brassiccas to work as a barrier against slugs and snails but the blighter's still got to munch on my cabbages!

45) Again I have not had that much use out of my greenhouse so I can't really answer but I am looking forward to playing around in it this year.

So that is it from me for today, thank you all for joining me and I shall be back on Monday evening with the last of the journal quest. Until next time x