News - Page 98
Britain is a nation of wildlife lovers according to a recent survey of 2000 gardeners which found that almost all of us – 98% - enjoy watching wild creatures in our gardens.
Over three-quarters leave an area of their gardens wild, to be colonised by frogs, toads, beetles and other creepy-crawlies; and around a third spend over £50 a year feeding or caring for the birds, hedgehogs, bees and butterflies which visit.
Over a third of respondent...
Gardeners are getting a new weapon in the war against slugs and snails as the RHS launches a year-long research project into how best to tackle our no.1 garden menace.
Slugs and snails have been top of the RHS’s annual list of worst garden pests for seven of the last 10 years. The Society is now testing six different control strategies to find out which treatment – or combination of treatments – works best.
Among the anti-slug measures they’ll be testi...
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Release biological controls on your pests and you’ll harness the power of nature to fight on your side against the creepy crawlies with designs on your plants.
Biological controls – predatory wasps, nematodes or mites which prey on our most hated garden pests – tackle pests from whitefly to red spider mite in the greenhouse, and outdoors they’ll feast on your slugs, vine weevils and caterpillars too.
You can pick them up from our garden cen...
Thin carrots you sowed earlier this spring – but this year, instead of following the traditional routine of removing all the seedlings to leave those remaining at their final 5-8cm spacings, try taking a more relaxed approach.
However sparingly you sow, you'll always get a few seedlings coming up in clumps, or too close to their neighbours. But instead of pinching them out, let them grow on. You'll find that the very smallest get overwhelmed anyway by t...
Forest gardening, or permaculture as it's more technically known, is really getting gardeners talking.
Instead of replanting your crops annually and clearing the ground after harvesting, in forest gardens the bulk of the planting is permanent, keeping soil undisturbed. It's a sustainable way of growing that's more in tune with the natural world, and less work for you.
In forest gardening, trees, shrubs and perennials are planted in layers, mimicking th...
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