• Win #1 – You don’t have to get all upset about doing the thinning and putting your beloved seedlings or plants on the compost heap. You pass them on to people who will really appreciate them.
• Win #2 – You can fill the gaps in your repertoire or menu, throughout the season, allowing lots of flexibility.
• Win #3 – You get to meet other people in your area who are planting other things which makes it nice and sociable.
• Win #4 – You get to meet people who have tried some slug killing methods, and the like, that you haven’t had the time or resources to try. Knowing that someone has been successful with a method in your area means that you don’t have to go through the same process. And being able to tell someone that you have a successful method is really nice!
• Win #5 – You can try out a variety of veg or flowers to see if you like it, without having to go through the effort of growing it. You can also find out how your fellow gardener did it, thus saving you time.

Plant swapping saves you time, money, effort and heartache. You also gain knowledge, pride and future friends. One thing that can be a problem is weeds coming from another garden. This is something I’ve noticed but it’s not really been an issue. I try my best not to include weeds and pests when I’m giving plants away, but you’ll find you sometimes get weeds and pests even if you get plants from a fancy garden centre, so it’s not really any different.

How to start plant swapping

The first place to start is with family, friends and neighbours, if any of them garden. It’s a nice way to start a conversation with a neighbour, and a nice thing to do with friends. If this isn’t an option for you (like it wasn’t for me), join an online scheme like Freegle (or Freecycle in some areas) or Freeconomy. They are general getting-stuff-for-free schemes but are more than capable of handling plant swapping schemes.

On Freegle, the rule is that you are giving something away with nothing in return, so you can usually only post an ‘offer’ and then mention swapping in your private emails to people that reply to your message. For example, a couple of weeks ago I realised with horror that I had an insane number of brussel sprouts and cabbages for just the two of us. They were all from seed and I put the whole packet in the ground (see Sowing Seeds section for more reasons not to do this!). I posted an ‘offer’ on Stroud Freegle (the one I’m a member of) and got about 20 responses from people who wanted some. Some very kindly offered to bring some plants that they had in excess, and I ended up with a few green calabrese broccoli plants. I hadn’t sown any in the Spring and was starting to wish I had, so it was ideal and unexpected!

Green Calabrese Broccoli swapped for cabbages!

Freegle Cafe would be the place to mention a plant swapping scheme, as it’s more of a public forum where you can put anything about free stuff. You could post a message asking if anyone else fancied swapping some plants, and see what responses you get. You could even offer to be the person who gets contacted and organises the swaps, if you felt up to the challenge. To use Freegle Cafe, you have to be a member of Freegle. Each Freegle group works differently so it’s best to email a moderator to ask them how it works!

Freeconomy is a different kettle of fish. It’s about skill, tool and land sharing. You have a profile that mentions what skills, tools and land you have to offer, and others can look to see if you’ve got what they want. You can send a message to everyone in your area, so this would be the place to mention plant swapping.

Freecycle works the same as Freegle but is a worldwide organisation. The Stroud area moved to using Freegle instead a few months ago for political reasons.

There are other avenues to try if you want to start swapping your plants. Transition Stroud is a great local organisation with the appropriate ethos, and they have a Transition Stroud Food Group which has information about gardening, cooking, growing food, community, and much more. I am yet to take a proper look but if anyone has any information or experiences they can share, do please leave a comment below.

And as always, there’s a simple method; put a handwritten poster in your front window if you have one, mentioning that you have some plants you want to swap. You never know what the response from your neighbours might be, so just try it!

Another great thing is that you also don’t even need to buy seed packets. Seeds collected from other plants, in people’s gardens and on your travels (with permission) can be just as successful. I would recommend keeping a record of where the seeds came from and perhaps take a picture of the original plant.

A lot of the time, seed packets mention using soil conditioners like vermiculite : “Vermiculite is a natural volcanic material similar to mica. Processed vermiculite has an expansive, foam-like texture that makes it an ideal soil conditioner. Soil conditioned with vermiculite is popular in horticultural applications” (ehow.com article).

Many gardening programmes, books and magazines recommend other expensive methods or materials that are hard to come by. What I have come to realise is that to get the ‘best’ from your seeds or plants, particularly ones that don’t occur naturally (ones that have been bred), they would benefit from such things as vermiculite, water retaining gel/crystals, a heated greenhouse with automatic ventilation, etc. But, it doesn’t mean they’re impossible to grow, and that’s really important to remember.

My solution, for this year anyway, has been to stick to the more traditional plants that I know are native and therefore easier to grow. Sometimes I can’t resist the lure of more exotic plants, and therefore have to pay more attention to them. The only plant that I have yet to successfully grow from seed is passion flower. I came across an established plant a few years ago at one of my student houses, and the love of it has stayed. I feel very uncomfortable buying established plants from a garden centre for £20. I prefer the idea of getting a £2 packet of seeds and know it’s history and background. So the battle to grow my beloved passion flower continues…

When I first started with seeds, I bought a little bag of potting compost, because it was apparently an essential for growing seeds. It was specially formulated to drain freely but retain the right balance of moisture for seed germination. The little bag didn’t last long, and in the end I just used our normal New Horizon Multi Purpose Compost . What amused me was that the potting compost got mouldy really quickly, despite me keeping the potted trays in the correct conditions. The lovely thing was that the multi-purpose worked much better. The seedlings came up quicker and healthier, and the compost stayed mould free for at least 2 months. The potting compost only lasted a week.

What I was initially worried about was that the multi-purpose compost was very lumpy. Being organic and one of the cheaper brands of organic compost (but no less good), it still had fairly large chunks of bark and stuff in. I was worried that little seeds would have to grow around it and become distorted. I’ve now being sowing seeds in compost for 4 months and haven’t seen a distorted seeding as yet. The multi-purpose also seemed to keep a better balance of moisture. So in the end I decided we should stock up on it because I could use it for everything, from seeds to large pots to the veg patch.

I’m not a fan of faffing too much with one plant, unless it’s very dear to me. Things either work or they don’t. I have a ‘survival of the fittest’ motto in my garden, so all my plants have proved to me that they can handle a bit of rough handling, not quite ideal conditions, and a little bit of neglect now and then. When it comes to the more sensitive plants, I am more careful. For example, transplanting out pea or bean seedings, they really can’t be disturbed because they really do suffer.  Especially bigger pea or bean plants; they really don’t like to be moved. They’re such divas.

Courgettes from seed in loo roll tubes

One method I used this year and loved for it’s simplicity and effectiveness, was sowing seeds in toilet roll tubes and handmade paper pots. Stroud Council don’t take cardboard from our normal recycling, so we have to take it about 2 miles to be recycled. So the fact that I could use these on my garden and they had a plant-saving purpose, makes me smile! We have a little wooden paper pot maker so we can lots of little pots out of newspaper as well.

Both the loo roll tubes and paper pots can be simply lifted out and placed in the ground. It beats faffing around with little seedings, especially when you’ve got hundreds to do in an afternoon. This year I grew courgettes, cucumbers and sweet peas with this method because I learnt that they really don’t like their roots being disturbed. It worked a treat and they’re all really healthy plants.

The most important things I’ve learnt to remember when sowing seeds are:

• Put them in (roughly) at the depth that the seed packet indicates – it doesn’t take any more effort to do this
• Position them correctly – I have a few places that my pots of seeds go:

1. 1. The patio if the plants are hardy and I don’t need the seedlings quickly (e.g. my autumn cabbages at the moment)
   2. The greenhouse if they need a bit of warmth (mine’s unheated but in a sunny position)
   3. Inside on a sunny windowsill, if they need lots of warmth but aren’t too fussy (e.g. tomatoes and peppers)
   4. Inside and in an unheated propagator, if they need to be kept moist at all times (some varieties of fruit and flowers)
   5. Inside and covered with cling film or plastic bag (usually perennial flowers or shrubs, e.g. lavender and campanulas) – these are the faffy ones that I rarely feel like attempting! Although my canterbury bells started off this way and they’re now successfully planted in the flower bed, so definitely try it.

• Keep an eye on their moisture levels – most seeds need to be moist all the time until they’re germinated, but not so damp that the soil gets mildewy or mouldy (the seed will probably rot by that point). When the soil starts to smell a bit weird or get white mildew on it, stop watering! Perhaps also try moving it to a different position to see if that works.

• Don’t sow the whole packet at once! Gah, I wish someone had told me that in the Spring. Not only is thinning a pain in the bum, but if it doesn’t work, you then have to buy another packet!
• Label what you’re growing – I like to put the variety (especially if I’m growing more than one tomato for example) and the date that I sowed the seeds. It can be useful later. I make labels out of scrap pieces of paper, old wooden dental sticks my gran was throwing out, and a staple to hold the stick in. They only last a couple of months but can go on the compo heap or the bbq afterwards.

Tomatoes from seed in trays

It’s so satisfying growing something from seed, so I’d recommend giving it a go! All of our veg came from seeds and sets this year and it makes them feel like they’re truly something to be proud of. It’s really not as complicated as a lot of ‘gardening experts’ make it out to be, and if you’re just growing veg or flowers for your own enjoyment, then surely they don’t have to look perfect?

One thing I’m probably going to say repeatedly, is if your garden is for you, it can be whatever you want. If you want to stick something somewhere but it’s a cardinal sin in the gardening world, do it anyway! To enjoy your garden as much as you can, you need to do it your way. Learn from others mistakes where possible and if you want to, but feel free to try it yourself and learn it all from scratch like I did!

The only place it could go, and actually the ideal place for it as well, was right at the end by the shed. Our neighbours have pretty wild gardens, particularly at the ends where access is tricky, so there are lots of places for creatures to hide and get some shelter. As access is tricky, it also makes it the most undisturbed area, so hopefully reducing the possibility of scaring things off. The ground always seemed pretty moist and rich, and we have a large conifer trunk left, with holly and ivy going over it. Plus we had made a wood pile right at the end of all the wood that was too big to fit in our fireplace. Basically a nice haven for wildlife.

The process of digging the hole took me some time. I realised after a while that I needed some logic as part of my plan, rather than the “ach, let’s just see how it goes” approach I usually have for things in the garden. Nick told me repeatedly about levels, and it was something that came up regularly in pond information, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. It took two attempts at digging a hole when I finally understood what I was doing wrong (a very daft mistake that I don’t want to admit to making!).

To cut a long story short, I eventually understood the importance of getting the level right all the way around the pond. The realisation came when I got the plants and saw that they needed to be sitting on a decent ledge, and with the water covering them at a certain point. But essentially, that’s all it’s needed for.

In total, I spent £25.98 on materials for the pond. £19.99 on pond liner, £4.99 on aquatic soil, £1 on an oxygenating plant. I posted a ‘wanted’ message on Freegle for pond plants going spare. I had remembered a time when my dad was cursing some of the plants in our pond because they were spreading and taking over, so I figured that others must have a similar problem. I was contacted by a couple in the next town saying they were about to thin some of their plants and I was welcome to go and take some of their thinnings. I also ended up with a wealth of new information. For example, I hadn’t been aware that pond plants need aquatic soil and special baskets. Again, it sounds daft typing it now, but I knew very little about it all when I started.

What I would really like to share, and I’m really very glad that I can say, is that a pond does not need to cost much at all. Anyone who tries to say that you need things like waterfalls, filters, proper paving around the outside, chemicals to clean the water, etc., is ignorant I’m afraid. A pond can be organic, easy to maintain, simple (ish) to make, and an absolute joy. And even if you don’t have space for a full-on pond, you can still attract similar types of wildlife by having containers that simply fill up with rainwater. You’ll find they’ll start their own little ecosystem and do it all themselves.

What I wanted to achieve was more of a wildlife pond. Partly because there was no hope in hell of making a modern and slick looking thing in our garden, and on our budget. But instead of staying frustrated that I couldn’t get hold of ‘nicer’ materials or specific plants, I chose to accept what I was working with and enjoy the freedom of having completely unique materials to work with. I gathered together a load of really heavy tree stumps, logs and branches, and used them as the bits to hold the liner down around the edge. They actually decided the final shape of the pond because they were the only things I had, so they had to fit around the pond. Instead of having to tidy around the liner edges, I covered them up with more wood, and plants that I’d collected from Freegle before.

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to tend to the pond area much, I chucked in a load of plants that I knew would spread and sort themselves out. So I chucked in:

• Ferns
• Crocosmia
• Cumpfrey
• Grasses
• Wild flower seed
• Mallow
• Fushia
• Flowering Currant
• Daisies and violets

And that is what surrounds our pond now. Actually it’s more like a forest now!

The pond area itself is effectively a really big raised bed. We had a lot of soil left over from making terraces out of the lower garden so I dug two wooden pallets into the ground and then started chucking the soil into the new space. I stomped on it a bit, and continued like that for a couple of weeks (not constantly might I add!). Eventually I filled it up and was able to dig the pond. It was a really handy way of using up excess soil and leftover materials like the pallets. They were actually the pallets we’d built the compost heap out of, so they were re-recycled!

I wanted to fill the pond using the water butt, not water from the house. There were a few reasons for this. For one thing it’s a waste. Secondly, for the chemicals in the house water to disappear from the pond I had to wait a few days for the water to settle until I could put the plants in (advice from the couple I got the plants from). I wasn’t being impatient, but the plants were sitting in a leaky wheelbarrow and wouldn’t live much longer! Thirdly, we don’t have an outdoor tap, and the closest indoor tap was through two rooms, and the hose fitting doesn’t fit on the kitchen tap. So all-in-all it had to be done with the water butt.

Then came a lifelong draught. Well, it was probably only about a week, but to have an empty water butt for that long made time drag no end! I finally got to fill it, and it really was lovely. I also got to prove Nick wrong because I managed to fill the entire pond with one water butt. Hoorah!

I introduced 8 tadpoles from a garden a few streets away. It was a spontaneous occurrence, so I didn’t get to look up whether it was a good idea or not. My original plan was to leave the pond to attract things. Everything seemed to be going well for a couple of days but then suddenly the pond went stagnant. It seemed like the oxygenating plant I’d put in hadn’t spread as quickly as I was hoping, and wasn’t doing a good enough job. The pond very quickly filled up with rat-tailed maggots and other types of larvae. It was really freaky.

Nick looked up solutions, and came up with two organic ideas. The theory was to break the surface tension of the water so the larvae couldn’t breathe any more. The idea was to put a bit of washing up liquid or oil in the pond. This seemed to work eventually, but it left the pond looking really minging. Nick then got the task of skimming the pond to get the washing up liquid and oil back out of the pond (poor thing). He used a mug on a stick. I resisted the urge to tickle him as he was leaning over.

After he finished the skimming the water level had gone down by about a third, so we filled it back up with fresh water from the water butt. I also managed to pick up some more oxygenating plants from Freegle the same day and I put them in the pond immediately.

The next day I saw a baby frog! It was small but so sweet and was happily sitting in the sunny bit of the pond. The day after that I noticed three more tadpoles. They had survived the whole enslaught! It’s extraordinary what nature is capable of. I’ve also seen red and blue damselflies, lots of hoverflies (which is what the rat-tailed maggots turn into), and other interesting looking flying creatures that I’m sure are very nice.

So for now, we seem to have a healthy pond with some happy wildlife. And all for a lot of effort and time, but not much money.

Gert Lush Salad

Obviously you can take bits out you don’t like or put other stuff in. This is simply my favourite salad!

Ingredients (serves 1)

3 Asparagus stems (or a handful of the tips), chopped

3 Mushrooms, chopped

1/2 Yellow pepper, sliced/chopped – and/or sweetcorn

An amount of halloumi (there is no fixed amount because it depends on how greedy I’m feeling), chopped into squares works better in this salad

8 Cherry tomatoes (fresh off the vine if possible), chopped

Tbsp Mayonnaise

A big load of lettuce

A sprinkling of seasoning

Drizzle of olive oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

1. Drizzle some olive oil in a pan on a high heat and chuck the halloumi in. Wiggle it all around so it doesn’t catch, and turn once it has browned. When the other side is done, take it out and put it in the bowl.

2. Pop a little bit of butter in the same pan and throw the mushrooms and asparagus in. Wiggle it around a bit and take it out when done.

3. Put the rest of the ingredients in the bowl with the other things, mix it up a bit, and eat. I like to serve it with some granary bread.

Dagnabbit, I’m hungry now…

Yum Yum Panda Burger Recipe (makes 6)

These burgers are lush cooked on the bbq. Second best is on the grill or in a frying pan. Third best is in the oven. A veggie version would be just as tasty, but as these bind together with the fat from the lamb mince, you may need to bind them with egg or something similar.

Ingredients

350g Frozen Lamb Mince (if using fresh, just ignore the first bit of the recipe, but frozen is usually cheaper)

1 Onion

1 Large garlic clove

1 handful of fresh mint

1/2 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp sea salt and a sprinkle of ground black pepper

1 tsp Herbs de Provence

Instructions

1. Defrost the lamb mince in a medium size bowl, taking care not to cook it at all. It will be fine if it’s still a bit cold.

2. Chop the onion and garlic finely, and add to the lamb mince.

3. Add the mint, cumin, seasoning and herbs de provence.

4. Mix it all together by hand and get it all properly mixed evenly. Work it in your hands for a bit so it all starts to bind together.

5. Divide the mixture into 6 approximate bits and roll into balls. Put a ball into a cupped hand and squeeze it between another cupped hand, so you make a quite small and fat burger.

6. Stick it on the bbq or whatever other heat source you have, and cook them until they’re cooked in the middle. Obviously the most important thing that needs to cook is the lamb, but if the onions aren’t cooked enough the whole burger won’t taste as good. Nick usually splits one in half to see if it’s cooked. I just think he does it so that he can eat a little bit, and he thinks I don’t notice.

Recommendations

• If cooking on a bbq or grill, we’d recommend having a decent spatula ready and turning them with it really gentlyso they don’t fall apart and fall between the cracks. Disaster.
• If when you’re making the mixture you find a spare few bits of onion left over, don’t be tempted to stick them on the edges of the burger. What happens is that they either burn and/or fall off, or they just don’t cook properly.
• The burgers are lush served in a burger bun, with home-grown lettuce (although you will be forgiven if you have to buy some), a slice of gooey goats cheese, a spread of chilli jam in Nick’s case, and a spread of mayonnaise in my case.

Yum yum panda burger. Geddit?

• Freegle : Don’t throw it away – give it away!
• Freeconomy : Promoting Skillsharing : Learn skills, share tools, save money and make great new friends
• Article about Frugal Living – I suddenly came to a blank so I typed ‘free stuff’ into google and I found a horribly generic article about getting free food! It’s very simple and mainstream but perhaps a good starting point for someone new to this way of thinking.

Here are a list of some of the most popular free knitting pattern sites. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email if you know anymore. I know I would be grateful to know of more!

Some of these are American and don’t use British measurements or British materials, but there’s plenty of help out there for help with conversion. Also, in most cases they are written by individuals like me, so they’re not necessarily guaranteed to be accurate and consistent.

• Knitting Pattern Central
• Daily Knitter
• Lion Brand Yarn (only ever uses their own yarn in the patterns so you have to work out for yourself what yarn to use)

Here is a list of some smaller websites and blogs that have free knitting patterns on. They also usually have work or materials for sale and other interesting stuff on there as well so do browse around. By the way, I don’t know any of these people and I’m not associated with any of the companies, I’m just recommending the ones I like.

• Little Cotton Rabbits : Knitting and Living with an autistic son
• Jimmy Bean’s Wool
• Knitting Daily (Interweave Knits Magazine)
• Naturally Caron
• Eskimimi Knits

I’ll add to the lists when I come across more. In the mean time, check them out. I will warn you though, it gets a bit addictive looking at them all and downloading them to your desktop!