Dalefoot Composts’ tips on greener gardening
Predicted to be one of the key horticultural trends this year, regenerative gardening helps you grow in tune with nature. Nurturing your soil is the first step, according to the experts from Dalefoot Composts.
You can improve the natural health and fertility of your garden by using regenerative techniques, which enhance its climate resilience too. Productivity and disease resistance improve; wildlife thrives; flooding and heat problems are minimised and moisture retention gets bette. Also, the soil starts to store more carbon than it emits.
With decades of ecology and land management experience, Dalefoot Composts make premium peat-free composts and restore damaged UK peatlands. They’re experts in working with nature to improve the environment.
Co-founder Professor Jane Barker said: “Regenerative gardening is gardening for the future. It’s a way in which we can all take steps to limit climate change through our gardening, however, small those steps are. Make your gardening count!”
Here are the five first steps to becoming a regenerative gardener:
Regenerative gardening – Love your soil
Nourishing and protecting your soil is critical. Poor, depleted soil leaks carbon into the atmosphere, grows weak crops, erodes, and is prone to flooding. Use ‘no dig’ methods to improve your soil structure. Encourage beneficial mycorrhizal fungi and apply an organic mulch at least once a year. A soil conditioner like Dalefoot’s Lakeland Gold is perfect, adding essential nutrients.
Grow plants that are good carbon stores, such as amaranth – fast-growing, both its leaves and seeds are edible. Carbon is sequestered into its extensive roots, which create air pockets aiding the development of healthy soil. The plant is tolerant of dry, hot conditions and doesn’t need artificial fertiliser.
Reduce, reuse and recycle
Cut down on what you buy, get creative and reuse and recycle as much as you can. Make your own compost or leaf mould, and boost with peat-free fertiliser. Dalefoot’s Wool Compost Double Strength is designed to mix 50/50 with spent compost. Plant seeds in empty toilet roll tubes, harvest seeds from your plants, use water butts to store water and maintain your tools.
Regenerative gardening – Mix up your planting
Plant a wide variety of annuals, perennials, fruit, vegetables, trees and shrubs to improve the biodiversity of your garden.
Companion planting
Instead of using harmful chemicals, grow key plants together to ward off pests, attract pollinators and prevent disease. Calendula (pot marigolds), Tagetes (French marigolds), nasturtiums, garlic, basil and borage are all excellent plants to twin with various fruit and veg.
Regenerative gardening – Rewilding your garden
Let part of your garden grow wild to encourage wildlife diversity. Install a wildlife pond and bird boxes, raise fence panels for hedgehog highways, take part in No Mow May, allow weeds to bloom, plant native wildflowers and leave dead leaves where they fall on your borders.
Dalefoot Composts contain sheep’s wool, bracken and comfrey. A carbon capture crop, comfrey grows on a commercial scale at Dalefoot Farm in the Lake District, harvested four times a year. The company sources bracken from Wales and Cumbria, helping farming communities and local landscapes.
This mix of fully-traceable, natural, fertilising ingredients provides slow-release nutrition for plants, so no need to feed, whilst also reducing the need to water. The Soil Association-approves Dalefoot Composts for organic growing. For more information, visit www.dalefootcomposts.co.uk.
