Jobs For The Fruit Garden In June

If you’d like to look after your fruit garden, then here is a list of jobs that may be applicable for getting out in the garden in June:

• Pinch-prune figs. By pinching out the growing point of new shoots, this encourages a heaver crop of fruits
• Thin out fruitlets of apples, pleases, peaches and plums this month to ensure that those that remain have room to swell.
• Move citrus trees outside and gradually acclimatise them to the higher levels by opting for a shady spot for the first two weeks.
• Peg down strawberry runners if you’d like to propagate from your stock.
• Thin out new shoots of raspberries to ease congestion.
• Cover ripening cherries with sheets of clear polythene during wet weather as this prevents the fruit skin cracking.

Beat Food Price Hikes – Grow Your Own!

According to farming minister David Heath, Britain may need to ‘Dig for Survival’. The Lib Dem MP recently urged us to grow more of our own fruit and veg and rely less on foreign imports. “We need to be able to produce enough to deal with the requirements in this country. Food security is going to be an issue of increasing relevance,” he said.

Poor weather and crop disease can have a disastrous impact on sensitive supermarket supply chains. Food prices have already shot up within the last year and it looks as though average prices have gone up 6 per cent for veg buyers and 10 percent on fruit.

So when you do get your Summer gluts this year – freeze, bottle, store and pickle!

Step By Step – How To Use Tomato Ring Pots

Tomato stems may look like normal stems but when you pile soil up against them, they turn in to roots! This ability gives them double the pulling power to absorb water and nutrients which in turn lead to super strong plants and bumper yields.

The idea with tomato pot rings is that you are using two growing environments and ring culture is a great way of compensating for the limited resources of grow bags as they sit snugly into the holes that you cut in to the top and untimely give far better results than a grow bag on its own.

Simply plant your seedlings into compost at the bottom of the pots and as they grow add more compost around the stems until you reach the top. Make sure your watering is tailored to the substrate and feed the ring pot weekly with diluted tomato feed.

Win Bee Friendly Wildlife Products To Help The Bees In Your Garden

Bees are wonderful creatures which we simply couldn’t live without they collect nectar from thousands of flowers in return pollinating them, much of our food either grown on a large scale or in the back garden needs Bees to pollinate their flowers to produce their crops: Tree fruits – Apples, Pears, Plums etc, Soft Fruits – Blackcurrants, Raspberries, Strawberries etc and Vegetables – Tomatoes, Peppers, Beans, Courgettes – plants that are not pollinated will not produce a crop.

Unfortunately Bees need our help and fast, in recent years the Honey Bee population has dropped by 30%, I cannot imagine a garden without that familiar buzz.There are a number of possible factors for the decline of our Bees: – Loss of Habitat, Shortage of Food, Pesticides and Disease.

How To Enter:

‘Bee’ creative and design a poster with the heading ‘Bee kind to Bees’ or ‘Bee’ artistic and draw a picture of a Bee in your garden.

Send your drawing to us with the entry form below before the closing date of 30thJune 2013 and our favourite will win.

Sorry we are unable to return any entries (maximum size A4). Full details and competition entry forms can be found by clicking here.

The RHS Centenary Appeal

“Please help the RHS to ensure the survival of vital horticultural skills and knowledge.” Alan Titchmarsh

This year, to coincide with the celebrations surrounding 100 years of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show at the Royal Hospital, the RHS has launched the RHS Chelsea Centenary Appeal, to raise £1 million to help them inspire today’s young people, and future generations, to love gardening.

Creating tomorrow’s horticulturists

There are currently more than one million under-25s out of work in the UK. Yet there are thousands of vacancies in the horticultural industry. The RHS are introducing apprenticeships to RHS gardens to help bridge the green skills gap, and engaging with schools through the RHS Campaign for School Gardening, to help ensure that the vital skills and expertise of todays’ gardeners are passed on to the next generation. Only then can our precious green spaces be safeguarded, maintain our ability to grow our own food, and keep Britain a green and beautiful land.

Inspiring the next generation to safeguard the planet

We need to inspire more young gardeners to get involved and help shape a greener environment. Creating more green spaces and nurturing gardens will help to control rising temperatures in our cities, prevent flash flooding and provide important habitats for wildlife, including the pollinating insects that are such an essential link in our food chain. And developing cultivars that can cope with a changing climate will aid future sustainability.

For further information or to support the appeal, click here.

Compost Awareness Week Is Here Again!

Compost Awareness Week (6th to 12th May ) is all about learning how to make a difference with compost and all of us at The Recycle Works can be evangelical about compost when we want to be!

International Compost Awareness Week  (ICAW) is a week of activities, events and publicity to improve awareness about using organic waste as a resource to produce compost.

The campaign is also keen to encourage people to put their compost to good use by trying their hand at growing their own fruit and vegetables. After all, not only do they taste wonderful, they can save you an absolute fortune year on year. Lots of events have been planned throughout the whole of the country and why not get involved in something near you?

So this weekend our special offer will be dedicated to all things compost to help you produce the best compost, in the easiest possible way!

Love Your Environment!