Category Archives: Green gardening

Best plants for Bees

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bee in weigelia 300x225 Best plants for Bees

Best plants for bees

What are the Best Plants for Bees? What plants do bees love and why should we care? I tell all in my article 10 Best Plants for Bees, where you will find some pictures of the bees and plants in my garden.

Worldwide honeybee stocks have been reducing since 2004 because of a mystifying illness scientists call Colony Collapse Disorder. This causes adult bees to inexplicably abandon their hives and their broods. However, bees also appear to be suffering from other ailments.

We can help all bees by adding the plants that they love to our gardens. Find out more at the 10 Best Plants for Bees.


Removing leeches from a pond without chemicals

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Environmentally friendly pond 300x224 Removing leeches from a pond without chemicalsOne of the problems about trying to follow green gardening principles is that sometimes you have such a horrible pest to deal with that can have a devastating effect on your green environment and it looks like the only way to get rid of them is to use chemicals. Leeches in your pond is one such pest, particularly if you have fish.

Squidoo lensmaster Photosiamirabel was confronted with a leech infestation in her beautiful garden pond, which was so bad that they were killing her fish. But what to do?

All the solutions she researched involved using chemicals that could actually kill the smaller fish. Not only that, she also wanted to find an environmentally friendly solution.

And she did just that. It involved some thinking “outside the box” – or should I say can?

Photosiamirabel came up with an easily constructed device plus some easy to obtain bait. The resulting contraption was cheap AND environmentally friendly.

To discover what she did, visit her Squidoo lens How to remove leeches from your pond without chemicals. Not only will you find out how to get rid of the leeches in your pond in an environmentally friendly way, but there’s some beautiful photos, not just of leeches, but her beautiful pond as well.

Photo credit: Photosiamirabel and used with permission

Green gardening: liquid seaweed fertilizer

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beach bouquet poster p228972928008971793vsu7 325 Green gardening: liquid seaweed fertilizer

Seaweed makes a great natural fertilizer


Liquid seaweed fertilizer is great for green gardening! Seaweed is a natural source of trace elements, which stimulates root growth and improves the uptake of nutrients.

So, the next time you are at the beach, fill a hessian sack with seaweed that has been washed up. But don’t harvest living seaweed that is still attached to rocks or the seabed – that is NOT environmentally friendly!

Tie the sack, fill a large container with water and immerse the sack.

The resulting liquid seaweed fertilizer may stink, but it will provide a valuable natural fertilizer that can be sprayed or poured onto your plants!

And if you are not planning a trip to the beach for some time, then you can buy Organic liquid seaweed fertilizer to keep you going until you can make your own!

beach bouquet by dma847 on Zazzle

Best Plants for Bees – another Green Squidoo lens with a Purple Star

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European honey bee extracts nectar 300x237 Best Plants for Bees another Green Squidoo lens with a Purple Star

European honey bee

Internationally more and more people are taking an interest in the causes of the decline of the Honeybee and bees in general. As a keen gardener, who also enjoys attracting wildlife to her garden, I am always looking for ways to improve the conditions for the birds, honeybees and small animals that visit our backyard.

In the early Summer 2009 I published a Squidoo lens: The 10 Best Plants for Bees, which promotes planting flowering shrubs to help the bees. I was thrilled to be awarded a Purple Star for the lens on 09 July 2009.

Just recently I read about a £1m ($1.6m) grant that has been awarded to a Rothamsted, a British Research Institution and Warwick University to examine the reasons for the decline of the honeybee and information has been added to the lens.