Feed your compost

 feed small bits of cardboard every week to your compost bin and

 hundreds of worms will make a bee-line for your compost enriching your soil no end.

The reason: worms are mad about the glue in the carboard

Floods

 My allotment has now been under water for six weeks..........I can do nothing other then wait for Old Father Thames to go back to his bed and when that happens I will have to loosen up my compressed soil.

What I want to know is: Where do moles go when it floods>

Dig a potato trench:

What I do this time of year is, dig  a potato trench for your March plantings.

Dig a trench 20–30 cm (8–12 ins deep) and a spade’s blade in width.

Line the trench  with cardboard and newspaper, fill with vegetable peelings, covering with soil (to stop rats) as the layers are added.

By planting time,(Good Friday) this will have reduced well and will help the soil to retain water over the growing season.

Well worth the effect, come a dry summer! 

What to do after a garden flood

If you have had floods on your plot ( as I have ) before you do anything on your plot, make sure you have a tetanus shot.

 It’s not even a painful jab but tetanus can kill you and goodness knows what is in the soil after a flood.

So check it out!

Winter Solstice

 The 21st is the shortest day of the year. Called the Winter Solstice. It is an important day in the growing calendar, the days will be getting longer from now on, more light and soon enough spring will be here. For now we’ve winter to get through but that’s a chance to rest and recover.

Happy Christ

Asian Hornets

 Asian hornets, Vespa velutina, have spread across Europe and are now in the UK. Their main threat is too honey bees. Our help forum administrator ‘Aunt Sally’ has produced this Asian Hornet advice guide to raise awareness and give advice about They are know to be a dangerous, invasive pest that have killed people all over Europe. Do not poke their nest.

Asian hornets are thought to have arrived in Bordeaux, France from China in a container of pottery in 2005. They quickly spread across France and into continental Europe. Reported in Spain in 2010, Belgium in 2011, Germany in 2014the Channel Isles in 2016 and were first spotted in the UK in late 2016.

Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Lancashire, Cornwall, Hull, Hampshire, Surrey, Kent, Suffolk and Staffordshire have all had sightings of Asian hornets.

Once established their growth rate is exponential. If allowed to establish they will be near impossible to eradicate in the UK

Report sightings to: https://www.bbka.org.uk/news/beekeepers-call-on-the-public-to-help-fight-record-asian-hornet-invasion

The place where you might find them is in corners of your shed or in boxes or any where you might find wasp. 

Pigeons

 Winter has come, at last.

It is good to have some months doing what they should be doing.

-7 here in Oxfordshire.

From last year , when we had -10 , I have learnt that Pigeons can wipe out Kale overnight.

So, for this year I have covered everything with netting and the Pigeons have gone else where.