A walk in the woods.

 We decided to go for a wander around our woods to see what was happening in there - it has been so wet recently that we have not been doing very much in the wood, so when we had a nice sunny day we decided to have a trip "out" into the wood

We found lots of ferns growing, enjoying the extra moisture no doubt!

A very overgrown log circle! It is just cow parsley, but the wet weather has made it grow everywhere!

Compostman soon cleared some space with his scythe

while Compostgirl had fun up a tree :-)

I sat on a log and listened to birdsong

We then went a bit further down into the wood, and found this. It had been a bumblebee nest, sadly ( for the bees ) a badger had taken a fancy to it and dug it out. A solitary bumblebee was flying around, trying to get back in to the underground nest.

More ferns

Going back home

I love our wood

Fuming about seeds.

Like a lot of home gardeners, I grow a lot of traditional, open pollinated varieties, I save my own seed and buy heritage varieties from small seed companies like RealSeeds, MoreVeg and Kokopelli. I am also a member of HSL, Garden Organic's seed saving, membership organisation. I grow lots of different veg and find the diversity of seeds on offer to be very helpful in the changeable weather conditions we often experience, here in the UK. I also find they taste so much better than "ordinary" varieties.

The tomatoes pictured  in my Lammas post are a good example!

But according to leading organic charities Garden Organic and the Soil Association, the choice of what crops are available for gardeners to grow has been dealt yet another restrictive blow,

"In a recent ruling in the European Court of Justice in Brussels(1) a small French seed company, seeking to defend its sales of old unregistered varieties of vegetables, lost its case. The company, Kokopelli, argued that the basis of the EU Marketing Directive was unlawful and curtailed the right to trade seed freely. However the court opposed this and ruled in favour of the current legislation, which restricts what seed can and cannot be marketed and sold."

Read the full article here 

I suspect quite a few of the seeds I buy to grow will no longer be available to me after this ruling.

As Garden Organic and the Soil Association so rightly point out, every variety lost weakens our ability to create an effective food system that can cope with the increasing challenges of climate change and resource scarcity.”

Bob Sherman, Chief Horticultural Officer at Garden Organic said,

“It is disappointing that the EU has neglected to unravel this controversial Directive to give amateur gardeners freedom of choice. Very few people believe that trade in traditional and endangered varieties threatens the commercial seed world. Despite some recent slackening of the regulation of ‘amateur’ and ‘conservation’ varieties, it appears it is still possible for large corporate businesses to control the market with no hesitation in resorting to law against the minnows of the sector. Fortunately Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library is not a seed company and we will continue to work at protecting the availability of many ‘at risk’ varieties by allowing our supporters access to seeds.”

I think this is a serious mistake on the part of the EU. I am not quite sure who to complain to about this - but surely there must be something we can do?

What do you all think?

Lammas greetings

 The loaf was still in the oven (!) - but here are some flowers and fruits picked today. I hope all my readers have a fruitful and boutiful harvest in the upcoming months.

We don't dig peat - do we?

The chair of the government’s Sustainable Growing Media Task Force (SGMTF), Dr Alan Knight, has recently published his chair’s report and draft ‘road map’, Towards Sustainable Growing Media.

I must admit I do wonder exactly why we need a "road map" about a move towards sustainable growing when, as John Walker has so eloquently written about on his blog  a growing number of gardeners have already found their way to using reliable and consistent peat-free composts with growing success.

But, regardless, this is the interesting bit.

“The Chairman is inviting feedback from all interested parties, whether Task Force members or not, by 30 September 2012. He would like your views on any part or all of the report and would particularly welcome details of specific actions that individuals or organisations would be willing to undertake that can be added to the roadmap. There are no specific questions to be answered and this is not a Government consultation.”
Feedback should be sent by email to the Secretariat: growingmedia@defra.gsi.gov.uk
I am not quite sure if this was the intention, but effectively this is an open invitation for we gardeners and growers to have our say on the issue of peat free growing.

So, if you are one of the many gardeners who grow beautiful flowers and veg without the use of peat, or just don't agree with the destruction of peat bog eco systems to provide peat as a growing medium, perhaps you would consider telling them so?

Just a thought

Hungry Bin update after 3 weeks

Here at Compost Mansion we generate a kitchen caddy full of waste every couple of days from our kitchen - tea bags, coffee filters and grounds, veg peelings and assorted bits of cardboard all go in there. The caddy lives in the corner by the sink, next to the sink. Typically, we empty about 5 kg of compostables out of it every few days.

I have been re filling the Hungry Bin with assorted kitchen and garden waste every day, a little and often is the best way and I have been adding a couple of inches of food stuff for the worms everyday, as suggested by the  Hungry Bin parent company in New Zealand

This was the view inside the lid of the Hungry Bin on Day 20 of the trial.I added some more assorted  kitchen and garden waste from the kitchen caddy and some of the packaging hay I recieved in my order from Rocket Gardens.

I have now owned a Hungry Bin for 3 weeks and am still delighted with it, despite the warmer weather recently it does not smell and it can handle a lot of kitchen waste.  I have also been using the "worm tea" from the tray at the bottom - diluted 10:1 with water  ( until it is the colour of weak tea, no milk, no sugar) the plants in the polytunnel love it

Next time I will hopefully be reporting on opening up the tray at the bottom to harvest some vermicompost ;-)