2 x Bags of Dalefoot Wool Compost peat-Free, Sustainable: 30 litres

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How do you help the bees in your garden? Do you have or are you thinking of keeping a hive? We’d love to hear about your bee related experiences! Peatlands have been doing this for many thousands – and in some case many millions of years, with peat being the precursor to coal formation, which is almost pure carbon. We gardeners are generally quite conscientious. There are numerous schemes to plant more trees, often getting gardeners involved to grow more too. This is all very well, but if we continue to use peat in our gardens, we can’t possibly hope to offset our carbon footprint.

So, let’s welcome in winter with a celebration of rich harvests and warm suppers. Carve goulish faces on homegrown pumpkins, collect precious seeds and look ahead to a new growing season. These hyphae are usually invisible to the human eye unless they are in very high concentrations. Every so often, I squeal with delight as I open up a bag of compost to find a delicate white coating. Millions of fungal strands form a lace and assure me that my compost is healthy and full of microscopic life. Some composts, such as some municipal waste composts, can be very low in nutrients and require extra feeds. Some of these mulches would normally create a slug habitat here in the UK, but during hot dry weather they are a useful and free way to conserve moisture and protect plants.

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What does “no dig gardening” involve? Of course at times some digging is necessary, to plant a tree or remove rubble, for example. No dig gardening means growing with as little soil disturbance as possible, so that the soil structure remains intact and soil life can thrive. Every year, I spread a little compost (about 1cm) on the surface of the beds. This mulch feeds the soil life which in turn feeds the plants. That’s all that is needed: just an annual compost mulch. Our company’s ethos centres around driving positive environmental change within the horticultural industry and leading by example, proving that gardening can be done in a more sustainable way. Uniquely, as well as making peat-free compost, the business also restores damaged peatlands across the UK, from the Cairngorms to Dartmoor, using innovative techniques, working to fight climate change and highlighting the devastating effects to the environment, wildlife and history of peat-harvesting in horticulture.

I find it a lot easier to use cup measures for this recipe, rather than weighing everything out. If you don’t have US cup measures, just use a tea cup. Mycorrhizal fungi enter into the roots of plants, sometimes even going into the actual cells themselves. This connects the plant to the incredible web of hyphae under the soil, which acts like a secondary root system. The fungi can hunt down nutrients and water for the plant, using its tiny strands to penetrate parts of the soil inaccessible to plant roots. Plants can even make chemical requests to fungi for specific nutrients to aid their growth and health. These beds were made with 5cm of compost (after the dance!) on top of the card, on top of the weedy lawn. During 2021 I harvested so many things, including carrots, parsnips, squash, sweetcorn, cabbages, kale and leeks.

Fungi not only provide the glue to make this soil structure, but they also help to maintain it by facilitating the movement of nutrients and organic matter. Soil structure made in this way is remarkably resilient. It is less likely to get flooded or dry out and less likely to be affected by erosion. Reach out with little acts of kindness where you can; a warm hello, a compliment to someone who is looking sad… it offers hope for a more resilient future for us all, together.