Nether Wallop Trading Paper Potter Review

Morning, happy Easter!  I have been Missing In Action on this blog, it took me a good long while to get around to doing anything much in the garden, you think it will be easy when the baby arrives, once you've got over the initial shock and 'gear change', but there is always so much to do, growing my own food took the back seat.  Hopefully though, and little V is now on her feet the summer will be full of wonderful days that the two of us can spend time together outdoors, and I can become reacquainted with my veggie plot.  I have planted my tomato seeds already.  Nothing is up yet though.

I made a review of the paper pot making tool I use for my seeds. Deeeeply unflattering angle, but you get the idea!

 Maybe you will remember the pots from earlier posts made to this blog, here you can see then with some pumpkin seedlings in them;

They perform much better than you would imagine, holding up nicely when waterlogged.  I write the name of the plant on the side in permanent marker.  Saves that 'ummmm...what was this?!' moment (we all have them).

If you want to try one of these yourself please have a look at my new venture!  I have become a Wikaniko distributor, not heard of them?  My shop sells all things 'green' and better for the planet (plus some specifically vegan stuff).  Amongst them are quite a few innovations for the garden, including the Nether Wallop Trading Company Paper Potter, and also matching oak dibbers and pot brushes.  I even bought my tomato seeds from there this year!  There is loads of other great stuff too, if you fancy a look http://Greenviolets.wikaniko.com.  Please go and have a look around, tell me what you think, highly recommended :)

Other seeds this year will be from Simply Seeds (I love that place) and the fabulous The Real Seed Catalogue.  Can't recommend them enough :)

Playing Catch up & Kill 'Em

Nemaslug Review

As this year I have been MEGA crap at sowing anything at all at the right time (due to personal circumstances) I have a lot of bare soil at the moment.  To top it off there are millions of big fat juicy slugs and huge snails this year thanks to Britain's dire weather; it's rained almost every day for months, with the occasional flash flood (to add that extra groan and mutterings about needing to emigrate!).  Have no fear though for the sluggy snaily things (technical gardening term) can be dealt with by Nemaslug.  If you don't know what this is it comes as a packet mix of micro-organisms that go to live in your soil and eat your pest by destroying slugs from the inside, they die in the ground (where they live), so no mess to clear up and unlike slug pellets there is absolutely no risk to pets, children or wildlife (so anything eating the dead slugs get no ill effects at all).  I was a bit sceptical but I won a free packet last year from following Chase Organics on Twitter (thanks guys!) and I have to say, it really does work brilliantly!  I have bought another pack which will go on the garden today, within 2 weeks the slugs will be pretty much all dead.  Brutal? maybe...but safe and effective!

Aaanyway, this week I planted out the peas that I had grown in tiny newspaper pots.  They are Early Onward variety, so...um...a bit late!  But they are growing great guns (that's an expression, I haven't yet managed to grown legumes with firearm capabilities!), I reckon they will catch up and maybe give me a late crop if we end up with some late summer sun (ever hopeful!).  I germinated 2 cucumbers with an idea to maybe see if I can force them up to speed by growing them in the sunny extension (will that work? who knows, I don't) and also 2 pumpkins...because I love pumpkins so I'll give it a go and cross my fingers.  In the mean time, have a picture of the garlic scape I had on my Elephant garlic (it's a bit mature, they start out curly and then straighten with age).  I chopped it up and ate it in a vegetable omelette.  Yum!

This is a garlic scape, you can leave them on but the thought is that the garlic bulb will be smaller if you do.  So chop them off and lightly cook and eat them.