Today we had Joy Gallichan come and share with us from her years of growing vegetables. She gave us plenty of basic down to earth (no pun intended) advice on how to grow things, what to grow when, and how to 'attempt' to keep our gardens from simply being a smorgasbord for pests!
In the photo is a small contraption made from cutting both ends off a 3L bottle and a tent peg. You place this around your seedlings and hold it in place with the peg. This acts as a small impromptu glasshouse and helps to keep snails off too. The little container pictured has lamb pellets in it which you just lay over the soil and then as they get wet they break down and are great fertiliser.
You can download Joy's notes here.
You can download notes about Companion Planting here.
"The Gardeners Prayer"
Lord, grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight, until 3 o'clock in the morning, but you see, it must be gently and warm, so it can soak in...
Grant at the same time, that it would not rain on the campion, alyssum, helianthum, lavender and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought loving plants - I will write their names on a bit of paper, if you like...
And grant that the sun may shine the whole day through, but not everywhere (not for instance, on gentian, plantain lily & rhododendron), and not too much...
That there may be plenty of dew, and very little wind enough worms, no mealy bugs, slugs and snails, no mildew or fungus, and that once a week, thin liquid manure may fall from heaven. Amen.
