Logs Direct Explains How to Make Everything in the Garden Rosy

The health situation in the UK has led to a surge of interest in gardens, with locked-down homeowners desperate to find productive things to do, whilst also creating a haven that can be their little oasis of joy amidst the unprecedented circumstances.

To help homeowners, fuel specialist and garden product supplier, Logs Direct, has some advice on what tasks to undertake now, to make your garden rosy by the summer.  

This is the season for composting, mulching and creating a lawn just perfect for your newly discovered love of croquet.  It’s the time to get on top of your weeding, remove dead heads on your flowers, sow seeds and support your plants, hedge and trees with nutrients and feeds.

Composting

Compost is an ideal way to feed your garden.  But with such a range of compost around, what do you use where?  

This question is a good one to answer - for your beds, baskets and your budget. Some big-brand suppliers may make it easier by packaging their compost for ‘roses and shrubs’, or ‘for vegetables’, providing you with pretty pictures on the pack, but this buying route can be expensive.  You could buy compost that can multi-task and cost less than niche composts. 

The key lies in ‘knowing your soil’, assessing whether it is largely acidic or alkaline.  Discovering this can help you make better plant choices and determine what to grow.

Mushroom Compost

This compost is great for vegetable patches, rose bushes, nourishment for trees and shrubs, ornamental garden use and mulching.  Vegetables in the ‘brassica’ family, such as cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, kale and kohlrabi will absolutely love it!

Logs Direct’s mushroom compost is made from wheat straw and horse manure and adds organic matter to the soil.  It breaks up heavy clay soils, whilst delivering vital nutrients.  

A big 900kg bag (approx.), for just £90, can serve many purposes.  But this is an alkaline manure, so should NOT be used around acid-loving plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas, heathers and camellias.  Do not use it if you already have predominantly alkaline soil either. 

Farmyard Compost

This is a glorious mix of cow, pig, hen manure and more, all processed to produce a super-powerful compost that will give you hedges to boast about and amazing plant growth.  It is a great favourite with customers and a valuable soil improver that increases the fertility of soil tremendously, releasing nutrients slowly and adding natural nitrogen.  Surprisingly, this Farmyard Compost does not have the odour you might anticipate, which is a real bonus, and it is sanitised and weed-free.  Now is the time to get this product applied in all the right places but do NOT try to grow seedlings in this compost.  It is such a potent compost that it would kill them.  Farmyard compost costs £90 for a dumpy bag containing approx. 900kg.

Yorganics Compost

This is the compost for the environmentally friendly – and possibly county stalwarts in Yorkshire, from where it originates.  As a non-peat-based compost, it does not contribute to the issue of diminishing peat reserves.  Instead, it is a 100% recycled product and a 0-10mm quality compost, suitable for use with fruit trees and bushes, vegetable plots, flowers, trees and shrubs, hanging baskets and growing plants from seed.  It is also an ideal lawn feed and dressing.

Amazingly, it is formed from household waste collected from Yorkshire homes, which is then processed, meticulously shredded and broken down and rolled several times, to produce heat that breaks down what’s inside. Metal particles are then removed by screening technology.

It’s a BSI PAS100 standard compost offering you a higher yield of fruit and vegetables, turf improvement, better water and nutrient retention and more workable heavy soil.  What it won’t do is give you the dramatic growth a nitrogen-boosted compost would provide but it’s this lack of manipulation that makes it such a natural product.

Mix Yorganics with some natural Farmyard Compost and you will have the best of both worlds!  Yorganics compost comes in single 40 litre bags (£5), or in 20 or 30-bag pallets.  There is also a dumpy bag costing £90.

Mulching

Keen gardeners should be considering mulching soon, to improve the soil around their plants, make the garden look tidier and reduce the time spent on watering and weeding later on.  Mulching means laying a material on top of the soil and mulches can come in different guises. 

Logs Direct’s mulch is high quality and manufactured from natural spruce bark, produced to a large chip size, to give it a longer life. Made from 100% British materials, this dark brown material is free from glass, metal and plastic contamination and has a really pleasant odour.  It comes in a big bulk bag costing £105 – a snip if it gets you out of back-breaking weeding!

Mole Repeller

If your lawn is a complete mess because moles have taken a fancy to it, now is the time to sort the critters out.  Logs Direct has a new mole repellent product – Kunagone – that uses the scent of a mole’s natural enemy, the dog, to encourage moles to potter off elsewhere.  The repellent comes in a foil bag, which just has to be removed before placing the repellent in one of your molehills, covering that with soil, and flattening out the area.  The product is made from a specific blend of dog fur collected from groomers, with natural additives that prolong the life of the scent, which effectively travels down all mole tunnels and lasts for three months.  Very quickly, your troublesome moles should be bothering you no more.  For £4.99 for two bags, it is a small price to pay if you want to lounge on the recliners, get those croquet balls out, or hoist the badminton net.

Logs Direct offers a free nationwide delivery service for orders over £90 and all products can be bought at www.logsdirect.co.uk Get your garden in order now and you can relax and enjoy later!

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Editors notes

Logs Direct is a specialist wood and fuel, gardening product, and pet bedding and feed supplier, based in Lancaster but serving the whole of the UK. It has been part of the Government's consultative process on the issue of wet wood and smoke pollution and supplies top quality 'Ready to Burn' wood with the Woodsure mark. It also has its own beech, compressed HACCP compliant range of 'Piccante' logs, for use in wood-fired pizza ovens, domestic, mobile and commercial and it supplies restaurant owners and mobile caterers nationwide. It has various environmental accreditations and supports causes such as red squirrel protection.