Bringing you some of the gardening news highlights
Use your smalls to grow big
Gardeners are being urged to ‘plant their pants’ as the first day of spring draws near. The season of optimism officially starts on March 20 and this year the Country Trust is asking gardeners to help test the health of their soil by digging a hole and planting a pair of their cotton pants!
Healthy soil will break down or degrade cotton more quickly than soil with low levels of microbial life, so if you’re left with just the elastic, it’s a good sign that your soil is active and healthy. Jill Attenborough, CEO of the Country Trust, said: “We all depend on soil for our existence but as Leonardo Da Vinci said 500 years ago, ‘We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot’. The response to Plant Your Pants last year exceeded all our expectations, and we can’t wait to get the nation planting pants again.”
And here at AG we are encouraging our readers and their families to sign up as partici-pants (sorry!) of the campaign and let us know how you get on. Simply bury a pair of cotton pants in a corner of your garden, allotment, patio container or window box, then dig them up eight weeks later to see what’s left of them.
The Country Trust is an educational charity that aims to build connections between disadvantaged children and the land via hands-on fun and learning. Last year, 23,000 youngsters took part in activities organised by the Trust, learning about the importance of healthy soi
