Green Mermaid Cottage

 Making your own potpourri is a natural way to add lovely fragrances to a room.  A potpourri ( a French word which translates as ‘rotten pot’, but don’t worry the result is more appealing than it sounds! ) is a mixture of ingredient such as dried petals, spices, cinnamon sticks, pine cones and citrus peels placed into a bowl to perfume a room.  I am lucky to have roses, rosemary and lavender growing in my garden, so I decided to use them as the main ingredients for my potpourri.  I gathered rose petals and rosemary and lavender stems and I let them air dry for a few days in my kitchen.  The best way to dry herbs like lavender and rosemary is to tie the stems together in little bunches with an elastic and hang them upside down with a bit of thread.  To add to this, I cut out some orange and lemon peels when I was making my morning orange juice and lemon tea and I also left them dry out for a few days in my kitchen.  When all my ingredi...

Now that I finally had my own garden I wanted to make it as welcoming as possible to wildlife, including insects and birds.  PROVIDING FOOD AND WATER FOR BIRDS  I installed a bird bath, bird feeder and a bird house as soon as I could and the previous owner had left a little ‘insect hotel’ which I kept and put on the fence.  SUSTAINABLE GARDENING I never use synthetic pesticides or peat-based compost. Instead I bought organic compost to start with and then made my own using a compost bin.  To try to deal with slugs and snails that targeted my vegetable raised bed, I used slug nematodes with some success.  Slug nematodes are microscopic worms used as an organic, natural pest control. They are safe for pets and wildlife. My longterm plan though is for my pond to attract frogs and toads to contain their numbers. I planted a wide variety of flowers, plants and shrubs to encourage bees and butterflies to visit my garden. Bees and other pollinators will thrive ...

As a vegetarian something I always wanted to do was to grow my own organic vegetables, fruits and cooking herbs. Now that I finally had my own garden I decided to do just that.  'No dig' gardening  I started looking at the easiest way that I could start my vegetable garden as a beginner gardener and I came across the ‘No dig’ method. This method simply means gardening without digging over the plot repeatedly each year, minimising disturbance to the soil.  The steps are:  choose the spot where you want to grow your vegetables remove/smother weeds get some cardboard (I used cardboard boxes from recent postal deliveries and made sure I removed any staples, plastic tape and labels) cover the area of soil where you are planting with layers of cardboard. Make sure you overlap your layers so that weeds have less opportunity to get through in the future Put organic compost on top of your layers of cardboard. That’s it! You are ready to start planting your...