Fertilising the garden is one of the best investments a gardener could make, with the promise of larger blooms, more extensive harvests, and generally happier plants. However, top-tier fertiliser doesn’t come cheap.
Luckily, innovative gardeners have found a kitchen scrap item that not only helps to save money but also minimises kitchen waste significantly.
Every household encounters kitchen waste, regardless of how strict they might be about consuming everything prior to its expiry date – plant products being a prime culprit.
In an attempt to reduce this wastage, one gardener queried if she could utilise her orange peels in gardening, what items should be off-limits, and whether this could really enhance her plants’ health.
On the Gardening UK Facebook page, Angela Knight posed: “Hi, I have a few compost questions. Can I put orange peel in the compost bin? I eat loads of oranges but as I never knew if you could I tend to throw the peel away.”
She followed up with: “I know you can’t put onions, cooked food and meat in, but is there anything else you shouldn’t put in the compost bin?”
Fellow group members were quick to encourage the use of orange peels in the garden, with Louise Gallagher stating: “I always add oranges and onion! Not had any problems.”
Mabel Walker agreed, adding: “I put all uncooked veg and fruit peel, onions and orange banana peel, buckets of unwashed seaweed in and shredded paper and cardboard.”
Brian Corr revealed: “I have always put onions and also orange, lime and lemon peels in and it’s never been an issue for me. It’s helped my plants fantastically to flower better and has deterred rats and cats from my garden.”
The pungent aroma of oranges acts as a superb and harmless deterrent for felines that often use gardens as their personal lavatories.
Emma Kelsall shared: “We put it all in our compost. The only thing I avoid is anything cooked.”
Chris Taylor remarked: “Orange peel is brilliant to add to compost as it breaks down it releases phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium.
“Every plant needs as much of these nutrients as it can get to thrive. I put the skins of oranges in my compost every day. The family love fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast.”
Garden enthusiasts are encouraged to add orange peels to their compost heaps. Within two years, the peels will begin to decompose.
Rich in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, these elements create nutrient-dense soil once they break down, ideal for gardening.
Due to their acidic nature, they’re especially good for acid-loving plants like potatoes, blueberries, azaleas and hydrangeas.
Oranges are an affordable purchase at local supermarkets, with a five-pack selling for 99p at Asda and at Sainsbury’s equating to just 20p per orange.
Join us for a groovy time and celebrate the legacy of Parkesdale Farms with a brand new summer garden fest! The fest will feature highly curated plant and garden-related vendors, art, food from Smitty’s Corndogs, Seasoned Green Vegan, and Ournoirekitchen, music, and a fun raffle! The event is free and family friendly.
Location: Parkesdale Farms Market – 3702 W. Baker St., Plant City, FL Time: 9AM – 2PM FREE!
Don your 60’s/70’s inspired outfits and flower crowns and bring your wagon for all your new plant friends!
We are excited to see everyone there!
For vendor information, please email: thecitrineghost (at) gmail (dot) com
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A 7-year-old boy died in a farming accident in Montgomery Township, Franklin County.
The boy was killed on Tuesday when he was hit by a piece of farming equipment in the area of Young and Mercersburg roads in Montgomery Township around 10 a.m., CBS affiliate WHP-TV reported. Officials reportedly said the boy was helping in the field at the time of the accident.
There was no evidence of foul play, the TV station reported. No other details, including the boy’s name, were released by officials.
Franklin County is in southcentral Pennsylvania, with the southern part of the county boarding Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Farming accidents in Pennsylvania
Last year, 33 people died from injuries suffered in farm-related incidents, according to research from Penn State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. The university said 37 people died in 2022.
The research, according to Penn State, shows that deadly farm-related incidents “disproportionately affected young children and older adults.”
Michael Guise
Michael Guise is a web producer for CBS Pittsburgh who has worked for KDKA-TV since 2019.
Organic food sales nearly doubled between 2013 and 2022, to more than $61 billion. The top seller, according to the Organic Trade Association, is produce. Those organic fruits and veggies usually come at a higher price point than their conventionally grown counterparts. One reason is market demand. Another is that organic farmers face higher production costs than non-organic, or conventional farms. For produce to be certified organic, it needs to be grown without the use of most synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Instead, organic farms have to rely on other tools, including increased labor.
“They don’t have the same toolkit available to them,” said Ted Jaenicke, a professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University. “They are substituting, in some cases, towards labor, which is generally more expensive.”
And labor is needed to deal with things like weeds. When David Paulk sees one on his organic farm, even just in passing, it’s hard for him not to pull it out.
“That’s amaranth. This one we don’t like,” he said. “This one will produce a lot of weed-seeds.”
The weed is living among the shallots on Sassafras Creek Farm, 50 acres in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. All the crops — from arugula to zucchini — are certified organic, which means the farm doesn’t use any synthetic herbicides to keep those weeds from growing. And weeds are expensive.
“One of the reasons why organic foods cost so much is — do the best you can and there’s still going to be hand weeding,” said Paulk.
David runs the farm with his wife, Jennifer Paulk. They’re co-owners. “He’s definitely the farmer-in-chief, using military terminology,” Jennifer said, laughing.
They’re familiar with the military: Jennifer works full time for the Navy as an environmental protection specialist. David was active duty until he retired in 2011. Organic farming is their mid-life second career.
“It can be very satisfying, it really is. I particularly enjoy the farmers market, because I’m directly talking to the public, the people who are eating the food,” said Jennifer. “It’s a lot of fun.”
That’s bugs and all: they spy some Colorado potato beetle larvae on the potato plants. Jennifer picks off some of the shiny brown insects. (I join in, briefly.)
“It’s addicting,” she said
“We call them Jabba the Hutt,” David added. “Typically, what we do is squeeze them. But the problem with that, is it squeezes in your eye, and then it’s kind of unpleasant.”
Bug picking and weeding is definitely not all done by hand. The Paulks will use naturally derived pesticides approved for organic farming. For weeding, they have several methods — including plowing the ground with a tractor to uproot the weeds. This is what David calls “steel in the field.”
But the Paulks know some of their crops will succumb to bugs, or weeds, or disease.
David Paulk stands near the watermelon plants on Sassafras Creek Farm. The plastic sheeting, called plastic mulch, is to prevent weeds from growing, as is the cover between the rows. (Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace)
“You end up having to plant often more to produce the same volume of harvest as a conventional farm would,” said David. “So the cost of that production has to get reflected in the price.”
That price also has to be what their customers in rural southern Maryland consider affordable. At the local farmer’s market, a half pound bag of Sassafras Creek salad mix goes for $5.
In the farm’s pack shed, a couple of the Paulks’ employees are getting ready for the market, washing vegetables and bagging greens. That includes Miguel Villa Nava, who’s here on a visa from Mexico. He said he enjoys the element of organization the job requires.
“It feels good at the end of the day, when you are finished, and you can see everything is in order,” he said.
For washing some of the vegetables, he’ll use one of the farm’s capital expenditures, bought in 2017.
“This is called a rinse conveyor,” said David. “We know it as Mr. Scrubby.” It’s essentially a washing machine for vegetables.
“It’s really a cost savings in terms of labor,” David said.
Miguel Villa Nava, one of four full time employees at Sassafras Creek Farm, bags vegetables in the farm’s pack shed. (Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace)
And reducing labor costs is something a lot of organic farms think about — smaller ones like Sassafras Creek — and bigger operations, too, where labor is still a major expense.
“Ideally, it’s 40% of our sales. If it ticks over 40%, we’re in trouble,” said Anaïs Beddard, who owns Lady Moon Farms, which is also certified organic. It’s a combined 3,000 acres, with sites in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida.
Beddard owns Lady Moon with her dad, who started it in the 1980s. She said in the last three years, their labor costs have gone up about 30%. Their prices are up only 3%.
“So we’re working on razor thin margins right now,” she said.
There is new technology that could help. But Lady Moon has many crops. It also rotates where they’re grown, to keep the soil healthy, which is a production practice in certified organic farming. And if Beddard is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new piece of equipment, she said it needs to multi-task.
“If you’re a monocropping giant who just does tomatoes, you can invest in all of that, because this new equipment will work across all of your acreage. But if I buy a new piece of equipment, it might work for tomatoes, but not lettuce. And then that doesn’t make sense for me financially,” Beddard said.
Instead, she’s focused on improving the workflow.
“How much time is it taking a person to walk their box to the trailer, and then back to where they were in the field?” she said. “And how can I reduce that to save on the total labor costs?”
Beddard said thinking about the finances of the farm keeps her up at night.
“I’m kind of betting on myself and my team. I think we can figure it out,” she said. “At the end of the day, I’m doing something that I think is really important and valuable.”
At Sassafras Creek Farm, the Paulks also believe in organic farming, as both a mission and a business. “It may not be easy,” said David. “But that seems to be where the action is.”
In other words, the future.
The Paulks also feel a sense of history. They know the land Sassafras Creek is on has been farmed for hundreds of years. David pointed out a few farm artifacts he found recently while plowing.
“It’s a drill bit. A 30-odd six shell. There’s a nail. This all came out of the ground,” he said.
Someone, he pointed out, has been here before.
David Paulk points to some farm artifacts he found recently while plowing. The land Sassafras Creek is on has been farmed for hundreds of years. (Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace)
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How is it July already? How are you all doing?
Let’s do the British thing and talk about the weather first!
Well we went from it chucking it down to full on baking sun didn’t we, (well a few days of it anyway) and despite all the rain we had this saw me having to turn on the irrigation for the flowers and run about like a loony watering by hand all the areas that are yet to be hooked up to the irrigation or that are too far away from a water source.
All just after a few days of better weather!
There’s plenty of jobs to do in the garden this July.
I don’t mind too much though, gets the steps in and keep me fit.
How are all your gardens fairing?
You should now be seeing the first glimpses of the Dahlias peeping their glorious heads, I have also had a few cosmos flowers showing up too, this year I have sown Cosmos Apricotta and Cosmos Xanthos (a yellow bloom) so I am excited to see how they get on in the field.
I threw all caution to the wind this year with the Sweet Pea sowing, starting some off in August and then direct sowing (lots) in spring.
They took an absolute age to get going due to the lack of sunshine, but now I have the most glorious, filled wall of sweetly scented magical blooms.
They are not the most profitable of flowers for me to grow as they don’t last too long in a vase, they are also fiddly and time consuming to maintain.
I cut off the clinging tendrils once they have secured themselves at the bottom as this then puts the energy into the flowers and you get longer stems.
If you cut them regularly i.e. daily, then you will also get more flowers from them. I use this as a form of meditation, and it is a beautiful and relaxing little moment of calm when the sun is setting, and you can use it as time to sort out your thoughts from the day.
Last month I talked about British Flowers Week and the workshops I was running; it was a great success and all the lovely ladies that came had a wonderful few hours walking around the flowers and then creating a beautiful spiral hand tie to take home with them.
It was a great time for me to explain the benefits of supporting and growing British flowers and how people can find their nearest local flower grower. Please do get in touch with me if you would like to know too. We consumed lots of tea and cake too which of course, is the proper British thing to do.
The workshops were so much fun that I have decided to run these monthly. You can find all details of these and all the autumn and dare I say, Christmas workshops that have been added too. It really wont be long until its here again so ‘Be Prepared’ is my motto.
You can find all the workshops HERE
There is always SO much to do in the garden as along with the bounty of flowers, fruit and veg we also do get the weeds in abundance, but I am really trying to spend some time actually enjoying the fruits of my labours, as we are here for a good time and not a long time aren’t we.
I have started to take a cuppa (or a wee glass of something stronger) over to the wildlife pond and just sit and breathe in the scents of the flowers and listen to the song of the wren and the beautiful blackbird, that I feel very fortunate to share the space with. I hope you get time to do this too, it really is important for our mental well-being.
After these peaceful moments and nature appreciation you can get back on it by looking forward to next year and sowing your biennial flowers, larkspur, foxgloves, sweet William, forget me nots and wallflowers.
Time now to cut lavender for drying, choosing newly opened flowers for the best fragrance, then hang up in a cool, dark place.
Giving your dahlias a liquid feed, I use a tomato feed and also my homemade nettle. Keep them well watered and tie the shoots of tall varieties to sturdy stakes as they grow.
It is a boring but necessary process, but hand weed borders often, this will prevent the weeds setting seeds and less problems next year.
Feed, water and deadhead your summer bedding regularly, especially those in pots, and hanging baskets. Feeding also applies to your Roses and don’t forget to dead head them regularly to encourage more flowers.
In your vegetable garden check your crops regularly for aphids and rub or wash them off straight away before they multiply. Water well and regularly, your thirsty plants such as celery, beans, courgettes and pumpkins.
Heavy crops of apples, pear and plum can be thinned out and be sure to remove any damaged or small fruits.
If you grow strawberries, you can now peg down any runners into new pots for more strawberry plants next year (fill a pot with compost, use a stick or metal garden pin/peg to secure the offshoot runner to the compost and it will take root, you can then cut the runner from the main plant once it has rooted).
Finally, don’t forget to pick your courgettes regularly so they don’t turn into massive marrows.
Happy growing, what a Jewel July truly is…a parting July poem for you as always
By George Meredith (1828-1909)
Blue July, bright July,Month of storms and gorgeous blue;Violet lightnings o’er thy sky,Heavy falls of drenching dew;Summer crown! o’er glen and gladeShrinking hyacinths in their shade;I welcome thee with all thy pride,I love thee like an Eastern bride.Though all the singing days are doneAs in those climes that clasp the sun;Though the cuckoo in his throatLeaves to the dove his last twin note;Come to me with thy lustrous eye,Golden-dawning oriently,Come with all thy shining blooms,Thy rich red rose and rolling glooms.Though the cuckoo doth but sing ‘cuk, cuk,’And the dove alone doth coo;Though the cushat spins her coo-r-roo, r-r-roo –To the cuckoo’s halting ‘cuk.’
Sweet July, warm July!Month when mosses near the stream,Soft green mosses thick and shy,Are a rapture and a dream.Summer Queen! whose foot the fernFades beneath while chestnuts burn;I welcome thee with thy fierce love,Gloom below and gleam above.Though all the forest trees hang dumb,With dense leafiness o’ercome;Though the nightingale and thrush,Pipe not from the bough or bush;Come to me with thy lustrous eye,Azure-melting westerly,The raptures of thy face unfold,And welcome in thy robes of gold!Tho’ the nightingale broods—’sweet-chuck-sweet’ –And the ouzel flutes so chill,Tho’ the throstle gives but one shrilly trillTo the nightingale’s ‘sweet-sweet.’
Sally Robinson, (AKA The Yorkshire Flower Faffer) Born and bred in Doncaster and owner of Field Good Flowers, a British Seasonal Flower Grower in Hatfield.
Sally is an avid lover of nature, gardening, writing and art and is a mum to three rescue dogs, always passionate about sharing her love and knowledge of all that is mentioned with you and others willing to listen.
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