Going Peat Free

I have decided that the time has come to go peat free in my garden. I haven't used chemicals for years and as I move towards a wildlife friendly environment it has occurred to me that this is the next natural step. I have been put off in the past because there has been a lot of bad press about peat free composts, but more recently I am hearing good things about a product called New Horizon. I know that my local nursery doesn't stock it so I went off to Wyevale to take advantage of their 3 x 60lt bags of multi-purpose for £12. So imagine my disappointment when I got there to find they had completely sold out! They had towering stacks of every other type of multi-purpose compost needless to say. However, I did get two 60lt bags of New Horizon 'vegetable compost' for £10 so I have made a start. And whilst I was there I bought some herbs - Sage, Tricolour Sage, Mint and Golden Thyme - and a little Fuchsia called 'Ant n Dec' - thanks for that tip off Jo!

Back at home the first task was to transplant my lovely Phontinia 'Red Robin' into a half barrel. It had been drying out so quickly in its pot so hopefully it'll be much happier now. Then I carried out the tiresome task of plucking out all the dead strands from some of my Blue Fescues. This takes ages but I never have the heart to cut the plants right back so there's no choice. Another dull task was emptying some of the pots of dead annuals and bagging up the spent compost which I pass on to a friend to use on her allotment. I can only do a few at a time before I'm itching to do something more interesting. But one thing did make the job more enjoyable. I was tipping out the Par-cel - which I'd assumed was a biennial like Parsley - when I noticed a few tiny green shoots. So I potted up the plant in fresh compost - that's one lot of seeds I don't need to sow this year.

Wandering around the garden I couldn't resist snapping my Crocus again now that the buds have opened. I also have Narcissus Jet Fire out as well as a few flowers on the Forsythia. There are buds on Narcissus Chinita, Pumonaria and Hyacinth City of Haarlem and two of the three Hostas planted in autumn have small shoots. And in the greenhouse the first of the Sweet Pea Cupid Mixed seeds sown on 15 February have germinated.

Georgie