Making pincushions...

I've been trying to use up some of the scraps of wood I have, I tend to hoard small bits of wood as they might come in useful at some point, I've made pincushions before on my lathe and it is a quick and simple use of any small off cuts of wood and indeed material as well.

The one's I've made in the video are all from recycled materials, even the polyester padding, it's from an old cushion, I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out.

Here's a video on how to make them - 

And here's a picture of the ones I made recently - 

Thanks for visiting.

How to identify Foxgloves and Comfrey...

If you've ever had trouble telling Foxglove from Comfrey which is a mistake I've made in the past (and recently) hopefully this post will help you (and me) avoid future mistakes.

It's easily done especially when the plants are young, I recently moved some plants about on our plot and thought I'd moved 3 Comfrey plants, turns out it was 1 Comfrey plant and 2 Foxgloves, either way I'm happy the comfrey will make a useful feed for plants and wildlife and the foxglove is a great plant for bees and such like as well.

If you don't want to watch the video I've added a couple of pictures as well as a guide to -

Video -

Picture guide (you can click on the images for a better view)

Foxglove -

Comfrey - 

Thanks for visiting.

Allotment update - Blackcurrants, Leeks and Big Bud Mite...

Another productive session on the plot, relocated the self seeded leeks, made a new bed for our black currant plants and discovered that some of the black currants have big bud mite, which I talk about a couple of times in the video, but basically it is a sap sucking mite that gets into the forming leaf buds and they become swollen, there is a diagram in the video that shows the difference between a good leaf bud and an infected one.

I didn't manage to move our skirret plants, so that'll have to be done on the next visit, and as the weather warms up we'll start sowing seeds for a variety of crops.

Here's the video, I hope you find it useful -

Thanks for visiting.

How to remove dock...

One of the perennial weeds found on allotment plots and in gardens is dock, it's a problem plant, but it can be controlled by removing as much of it as possible, this includes the roots, which can be very long as you can see in the video below.

You can just hoe the tops off, but I prefer to dig them up using a fork which helps loosen the soil so you can get as much root out as possible.

This is how we deal with them on the allotment, and some of the other weeds.

Thanks for visiting.