Pests and how to murder them
There’s nothing more dismal in a gardener’s experience than seeing all your hard work ruined by pests. Slugs and snails can wreak havoc in a single night. Aphids can ensure that your beautiful rosebuds never open. There are several natural ways you can deter and trap pests which you can build into your gardening routines. Don't give the blighters a chance!

Spend a little time, regularly, inspecting your plants for pests which you can remove by hand, such as snails, slugs (ugh) and caterpillars. The little grey slugs do more damage than the big juicy-looking ones.

If you can’t bear to handle slugs and snails, set traps. A jam jar buried with its lip level with the soil, with a centimetre of beer in the bottom will be full of slimy creatures, mostly dead, by the morning. Avert your eyes as you empty it in a distant corner of the garden.

Encourage natural predators: ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings eat aphids; grow marigolds to attract them. Thrushes smash snails; make sure you have tree or shrub cover for them, and feed them in times of scarcity. Toads and hedgehogs snack on slugs and snails; they like safe, undisturbed places to nest, perhaps in long grass at the bottom of the garden, or where you throw garden clippings which are too large to compost. Blue tits eat insects; you could put up a nesting box for them.

Make green gardening choices

Even if most of your garden is covered in paving, gravel, decking or weeds, there are still important gardening choices to be made, and these can have an impact on the environment, however small. Go here to find out how you can use your small patch of the planet in an eco-friendly way, by composting, conserving water, encouraging wildlife and so on. It's a question of balance and personal choice - you don't necessarily have to throw out your power tools or create a perfect lawn!
Green Choices >

Organic gardening tips
Use this link for organic gardening tips, such as “friendly” methods of getting rid of pests, and read about the benefits organic gardening can have to you and the environment.
Garden Advice >

Save the peat bogs!
Peat has been used for many years as a soil improver and it is a major ingredient in many commercially produced composts. Peat comes from peat bogs, which have a unique ecosystem and support their own wildlife species. They help to control drought and flooding by stabilising groundwater. Yet, largely because of the ignorance of gardeners everywhere, 94% of UK lowland peat bogs have been damaged or destroyed. We are, quite literally, using them up, with damaging environmental consequences.

You don’t have to use peat in your garden. Making your own compost is easy and free, using only your kitchen fruit and vegetable waste. This is commonsense: save the last peat bogs, cut down on landfill waste, and have a ready source of soil improver for your garden. If you do have to buy compost, choose a peat-free alternative. These are widely available and labelled as such.

Growing vegetables from seed
Go to Vegetable Seeds UK for instructions for growing vegetables from seed, including tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, cabbage, corn, melon, squash and rhubarb.
Seedfest >

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