Village Sustainability Newsleter, May 2025
Garden time
With the very welcome arrival of some warm spring weather, the urge to get going on the garden and get ready for summer starts to kick in. I wrote this time last year about No Mow May and how taking at least a month off cutting our lawns to give plants and wildlife a break, while refraining from burning petrol or using up precious electricity is a great way to start as we mean to go on with gardening in a sustainable way.
Other considerations in the garden should include avoiding single use plastic. For example, a synthetic membrane is sometimes used as a weed suppressant, but these don't last forever and inevitably eventually break up and the plastic remains in the ground. A quick scan of the internet suggests alternatives such as cardboard, newspaper, burlap/hessian, straw, wood chips, bark mulch or pine needles. I’d love to know if anyone has tried any of these with success or otherwise! Another suggestion is the use of ground cover plants and lots of you will have heard the Gardening Club talk on these recently. There’s always weeding, of course, as an alternative…
As I write, the next Gardening Club talk is on No Dig Gardening from a couple of our local experts. This is another consideration for the preservation of soil structure and biodiversity. And at the risk of sounding like an advertisement, the plant propagation demonstration for the May meeting will encourage more of us to feel confident to avoid buying plants ready grown in plastic plant pots. Gardeners are of course renowned reusers but if you do find yourself with excess plant pots there are groups or individuals locally who collect or save them for charity plant sales and community gardening schemes - reuse is always better than recycling. And don’t forget the Plant and Produce sale at Chieveley House on 18th May where there will be lots of lovely “home grown” plants to buy Maybe offer some of your own home-propagated efforts too and share the love?
The other thing to think about in the garden is the products we use to protect our hard work and keep our beloved plants alive and thriving. Hostas are known as “slug food” in our house, but rightly, those little blue pellets which were the only thing that worked on slugs and snails have been banned. There are a number of more friendly ways to discourage the slimy, hungry creatures. These include encouraging predators – slow worms are suggested – as are hedgehogs, which may be viewed as cuter. Other suggestions are ducks, beetles, and centipedes. You can offer an alternative menu – lawn camomile is a suggestion - so the slugs stay away from your juicy lettuces. Beer traps, manual extraction, and other dark moist traps can be effective, and if you have a pond you can feed slugs to frogspawn! Eggshells and copper can form a barrier to slugs and snails – but it is commonly held that a combination of several of these measures may be necessary.
And if those weeds are still bothering you, please don’t reach for the commercial weedkiller. Sure, it will kill your weeds but it will also kill pollinators including bees and potentially entire hives over a wide area. A widely offered recipe using white vinegar and washing up liquid claims to be effective – again, I’d love to hear of your successes with this as the weeds coming up between the gaps of my very elderly terrace mean it almost needs mowing itself. Of course, if you are buying white vinegar – and the ratio of this recipe is 1 gallon vinegar to 1 tablespoon washing up liquid - do make sure you buy it in bulk from a seller who encourages you to fill your own containers so you aren’t adding to the plastic problem. We like Thatcham Refillable, who regularly set up their stall at various locations in the local area, offer home deliveries and carry a wide range of useful, sustainable products.
Happy gardening!
Julia Hoaen