As I told you last week, I ordered a new wormery to go on my allotment plot (eventually). I had 2 reasons for buying a new wormery. First of all I wasn’t too impressed with the one I bought last year (for more money than what I paid for the new one!) - and secondly I figured that I could just take some of the worms from my new wormery to re-populate my old one - and get them both going.

On one point I was “let down” bit - but it’s all good!

My new wormery is fully up to the standard I would have expected it to be, having bought it directly from a professional worm farmer with 30 years of experience. It’s built out of very sturdy plastic boxes, rather than the cheap ones from the pound-shop, and have a few seemingly essential features that I’ve missed previously.

The “let down”? Well - since I bought this wormery from a worm farmer - he didn’t send me breeding worms as I thought he would. This means I’ll have to hold off re-populating my old wormery for a month or two, as all of my new worms are rather small. The biggest of them are around 2 inches long - but once they get down to business of munching through some of my green waste - they’ll soon grow bigger.

For those of you interested in worm composting - I’ll be posting regular updates here on how things develop over the season - and hopefully I’ll be able to encourage/help some of you getting going with your own wormeries.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, wormery.

I saw a very interesting feature on the BBC breakfast programme this morning. Apparantly it’s now “in” to go to the green gym.

So what is a green gym then? Simply a number of community projects set up for people to come and do some gardening activities, and do a bit of a workout that way, rather than going to the more traditional gyms and pull some iron rods around etc. Apparantly an hour doing light gardening is as good as, if not better than going on an excercise mashine or doing “steps” for 20 minutes, and it’s free! I know which one I’d prefer.

A doctor interviewed on the program confirmed what we allotmenteers have known for ages - twenty minutes of digging every day is more than enough cardio-vascular excercise for the average person - and there’s social and psychological benefits in it as well.

Personally I love the idea! Not only for the health benefits, but also (maybe particularly) for the benefits of the communities in which this work takes place. I hope that a lot more people becomes involved in things like this, and that the powers that be will start to realise the need for projects like this, and start setting up more allotment sites in order to meet the demand.

In other news I ordered a new wormery for my plot yesterday. I can’t wait to get going again, and I’m going to get my old wormery started up again, as well as setting up some more wormeries as and when the population of worms allows it. Before the end of the season I would like to be able to set up a complete “professional” worm-bed on my plot, but we’ll have to wait and see if my time and finances allow for this. Fingers crossed! My new wormery should be here this coming friday.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, Green Gym.

I must admit I’m starting to get a bit anxious, as it seems every time I plan to go and do some work on m plot, it starts pouring down. The party stops before it can even start - and by now my first seeds should have been put in the soil!

Ah well - I know my plot will be one heck of a lot more successfull this year than last year - simply because last year was a disaster

This has also given me a bit of time to surf the internet - and think about what I’m going to do on my plot and on this website in the next few months - so it’s not all lost!

One thing I’m going to focus on this season is composting. This should be the backbone of every allotment plot - producing your own compost - and recycling as much of your green waste as possible. Both of these things are something I’m rather passionate about.

As you may know - I invested in a wormery last year - and all of my worms drowned in the torrential downpours! In the coming week I’m definately going to get it going again, while I’m also going to invest in another kind of wormery just to try it out, and also I’m going to build myself another two kinds of wormeries based on some studying I’ve done over winter. If you’re interested in these sorts of things at all - watch this space!

As far as surfing the internet goes - I came across a rather interesting downloadable e-book for those of you interested in organic allotmenteering. Organic Food Gardening Beginners Manual is just that - a guide that will take you by the hand and teach you about growing your food organically - but perhaps more interestingly comes with a number of bonus tools such as a garden planner / diary - a guide to collecting your own seeds - a 4-year plot rotation plan and direct email consultation with the author.

I have not yet bought the manual - but I plan to do so and give it a proper review at a later stage. Meanwhile - if you fancy taking a look at it - please do, and post your thoughts in my comment section.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, Organic Food Gardening.