Sunday 23rd February 2014

Evening All,

I spent a couple of hours at the allotment this morning. I'd recently bought a grow bag from a local Garden Centre for about £2, and thought I'd make some potting compost out of it with a riddle/sieve.

After spending about 15 minutes riddling the bag, I was left with this at the bottom of each batch.

 

 I thought there would be a lot more left at the bottom, but out of a 20-30 litre bag of compost, I only ended up with about a tenth of the bag being rubbish. 

More importantly, this is what I was left with as the final result.

It's light crumbly, and perfect for potting compost for small seeds, seedlings and potting on etc... 

If you wanted to use this for parsnips/carrots you could, but it might be worth adding a little bit of sand to the mix.

I also added a little bit of Blood, Fish & Bone, and it's organic, and slow releasing.

I used one whole box (I got three boxes worth out of one growbag) of potting compost for sowing Beetroot, Viola's, Begonia's & Asters in modular trays. 

As they are in the poly tunnel, I have protected the flower seeds with a mini propagator to keep the temperatures up. 

I've left the Beetroot to fend for itself.

I was going to add the odds and sods that were leftover from the compost (the twiggy bits) and put them on the compost heap, or dig in somewhere, but instead, I threw the whole lot in to a piece of guttering, and sowed a load of early Sugar-Snap Pea's to see if they would tolerate it.

It's only a trial, but I thought I'd give it a go, and I'll let you know how I get on.

(I don't know why some of these photo's keep coming out upside down!!)

The reason I sow my peas this way, is because they hate being moved. So if you sow them in a piece of guttering, you can dig a shallow trench, and just slide the whole thing in, and the peas will not know that they have been moved, and will continue growing without any setbacks.

Anyway, that's all from me today, thanks for reading, and don't forget to follow me on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFmpg8u18HOZ085wfnyjd4A

Mark's Sussex Allotment