The Organic Gardening Podcast

What do bed sheets, hessian and bacteria have in common? They might help us reduce the amount of plastic we use in our veg plots!
Award-winning author, gardener, peat- and plastic-free advocate Sally Nex shares fascinating advice for reducing, reusing and recycling the 500 million pots, seed trays, and other bits of plastic we get through in our gardens every year in the UK.
“When we chip a pot and it goes directly into our soil, it's going to stay there for the next 400 years,” says Sally. “Experiments have shown that earthworms, which are living in soils high in microplastics, lose weight and soil biodiversity is a fraction of what it is in clean soils.”
Also in this episode...

Chris and Fiona chat about the delay in germination and plant growth due to the cool start to the summer – and reassure that it’s not too late to sow now. From the postbag, Anton advises on using organic slug pellets, and the team mull over what creature might be creating ‘strawberry piles’!

Shoes filled with dust, salads shrivelling, and a bad case of watering can elbow - it’s certainly been one of the most challenging summers for gardeners!
In this month’s Organic Gardening Podcast, Garden Organic Chief Executive Fiona Taylor is joined by Head of Organic Horticulture Chris Collins and Head Gardener Emma O’Neill as they look ahead to spring and ­share tips for weatherproofing your garden.
The takeaway messages are: embrace the imperfect, don’t be put off if things fail – and just give it a go!
The team talk about the importance of learning about your local conditions, rather than relying on what it says on the seed packet. And building resilience from the ground up by nurturing the soil and choosing a diverse range of plants.
The team will show you how to plan ahead with tips for seed collecting and bulb planting. Including Chris’s ‘bulb trifle’ method!
And to mark Organic September, you can find out why the team chose to go into organic horticulture. And learn what they wished they’d know before they started – all the while busting the myth that organic gardening takes more effort and money.

Join us as Frances talks to Sarah about rewilding, and why you should bring the wild into your growing space.

How to share your plot with wildlife, plus making a pond, protecting your plants from frost, and deciding what's safe to put on the compost heap.