Five ideas to keep you busy

It’s been a slightly manic few months – kept busy with exams, essay deadlines, results, work experience and general busying about whilst moving house – but it’s a jolly relief to be back.

I’m incredibly annoyed at myself for not getting a picture of the garden before I moved back home for the summer – particularly because the wild flowers were just coming into their own (there are no weeds in my garden ;) )! But, I’ll be visiting in a couple of days, so I can get snap-happy then.

In a few weeks (I say under baited breath), my parents will be moving and I’ll be given greater responsibility of the garden. At the moment, our garden is very established and I can’t imagine ever making drastic changes to it. The new house, however, has plenty of options: veg patch, edible flowers, chicken coop, flower beds – the list is endless.

For now, I’ve come up with a list of five ideas – because all good things began with a list – to share with you.

1.      Glue pennies to raised beds to prevent slugs and snails from munching on your goodies. This is genius. Slugs and snails are averse to copper. I’d toyed with the idea of wrapping copper wire around pots and things, but was put off by the price entailed. I saw this idea posted on Pinterest originally.

2.     Start a compost heap. An attempted compost heap went belly-up when a housemate’s boyfriend unknowingly swept it all up and put it in bin bags…but hey ho. Using newspaper clippings, the odds & ends of fruit & veg, coffee grounds, eggshells and lawn clippings, you can make your own organic matter for fertilising your soil.

3.  Harden off succulents. This is to be somewhat of an experiment. Whilst on a trip to Swansea’s Plantasia, I saw succulents spreading over the ground, forming into clumps and generally doing what nature does best – creating a fabulous display with no (or some, in this case) human help. Working from cuttings, once the fresh succulents become established I’ll pop them outside (still in their containers) and see how they fare.

4.   Create DIY plant markers by peeling away bark from a stick and writing the name on it. These look just lovely – and there’s nothing more I can say about them!

5.   Get rid of aphids with washing up liquid. Okay, I lied a little about the list of ‘ideas’ because I’ve used this before. Plenty of times before. In fact, I swear by it and it will probably reappear in a future list. In a spray bottle, squeeze a bit of washing up liquid and fill to the top of the bottle with water. Shake, and spray to your heart’s content on affected areas.