As the days get colder and colder, it can sometimes be difficult to feel motivated, especially when it comes to maintaining your home and garden. Winter can also be one of the busiest times of year for gardening, with various tasks requiring your attention. Luckily, there are a number of ways you can make life easier for yourself, and to help you feel relaxed at home, after a hard day gardening!
Blackdown Range Composter
When you have an abundance of garden waste such as grass clippings, dead leaves, and more, one of the best solutions is to compost it. Not only does composting your garden waste help to keep your garden clean and tidy, it will also supply you with nutrient rich compost that you can use to maintain and keep your plants healthy and flourishing. Compost is generally high in nitrogen, which is an essential component for helping plants to fight diseases. Composting sacks can help keep your composting material together if you’ve got an open top composter, they can also be placed amongst plant beds once full and will naturally breakdown to provide a great mulch.
If you’re growing fruit and vegetables, compost can also help to increase the yield of any crops, a wormery (which works much in the same way as a traditional composter, with worms) will provide vermicompost, which is the most nutrient rich of all compost.
Our Blackdown range of composters are a fantastic way to start composting in your garden, and their modular design makes it easy to add additional modules if you feel the need to expand your composting capacity, or if you need a slightly different design.
Aerobin
If you’re looking to add all types of kitchen waste to your composter, you can’t go wrong with an Aerobin. Aerobin’s can take all your usual garden waste, in addition to being able to take food scraps such as meat and eggs. In a traditional composter these sorts of items will struggle to break down and can attract the likes of rats and other vermin, due to the Aerobin’s hot composting design, food waste will break down at an accelerated rate before it has the chance to attract pests.
Because of its unique design an Aerobin breaks down waste through aerobic decomposition, something that is normally done by turning and mixing a compost pile, with an Aerobin this is no longer necessary. You can have usable compost within 12 weeks, without turning the contents, much quicker than most other composters, with the added benefit of being odour free.
Garden Fleece
We spend all year cultivating our gardens, with plants becoming the pride and joy of our displays, of course there is nothing worse than all that hard work going to waste when adverse weather sets in. There are a number of ways to protect your plants, but one of the most effective ways is by using a garden fleece. Made from a variety of different materials, a garden fleece will normally provide you with years of use, protecting your plants from frost, wind, snow, and more. Garden fleeces are even more imperative if don’t have a greenhouse to keep your plants in over winter.
For smaller plants there is also the possibility of using a garden cloche for protection. These durable items can help shield your plants from the worst weather, while still allowing your plants to get the valuable sunlight they need to sustain them. Keep check on any plants which have any sort of cold protection, slugs and other pests can sometimes proliferate without notice and damage your plants.
Rhubarb Forcer
Cold weather limits the range of fruit and veg that we can grow during the period, but one plant that can absolutely thrive during this season is rhubarb. Rhubarb naturally grows during spring, but ever since it became popular during the 1800s, people have found ways to force rhubarb to grow out of season. Rhubarb forcing should ideally be done to an already established rhubarb crop, forcing a newly established rhubarb plant to grow in winter may be possible, but it will likely not have the energy to grown and may actually damage itself in the process.
By placing a rhubarb forcer over the roots during winter, the rhubarb will be insulated and will continue to grow as it would during spring. Due to the lack of sunlight, the rhubarb that is produced will look slightly different to rhubarb that is grown the rest of the year.
Bird Feeders and Nests
Winter is one of the most important times of year for birds, especially when it comes to feeding. Food sources tend to be scarce in winter, so birds rely on external food sources such as bird feeders even more. Smaller birds tend to eat up to a third of their own body weight in food each day, this helps them to build up their fat stores for those cold winter nights. Providing bird food via a bird feeder is a great way to sustain bird populations throughout the year. You can even make your own fat cakes for birds:
- Mix unsalted peanuts, currants, sultanas, oats, breadcrumbs, and grated cheese together with lard or suet. Mix well until everything binds together
- Place the mix in a yoghurt pot with a hole in the bottom. Thread a piece of twin all the way through and out the bottom. Place in your fridge overnight then hang it outside!
It’s important to make sure you provide the right foods for birds too, as many birds have varying dietary requirements. Seeds, berries, and fat balls are common options for birds, but it’s always best to check what is suitable for the species of birds visiting your garden. In the peak of winter it’s advisable to supply birds with food twice a day. A sturdy bird box or nest will help any chicks survive the coldest of conditions.
Storage 
In winter you’re not always going to need access to all the tools you would use the rest of the year, plus you’re also going to want to store your garden cushions and summer accessories, so why not use an affordable yet durable storage solution? With a generous 190L capacity, wheels for easy movement, and a padlock loop to keep any dangerous items away from children, this heavy-duty storage box is ideal for use in the garden or at home. With it’s watertight design, you can even keep the storage box outside all year round, it's also available in 175 and 145 litre capacities.Don’t just take our word for it, here are just a few of our customer reviews:
Keeping Warm
Gardens can be a communal, and a productive space, but no matter how you choose to use your garden, there are ways in which you can ensure that you, and your friends and family can stay warm. There are a variety of products on the market which can keep you garden nice and toasty, but we prefer the more traditional methods, something a bit more elemental, something that can make a statement.
A traditional method for keeping warm, as well as for cooking, a chimenea is a historical design that has been used for several centuries. Distinctive due to their unique shape and design, chiminea’s are most often produced in clay, but can also be made from Iron and other metals, both are exceptionally good at retaining heat and very durable. You can even cover your chimenea when it’s not in use to stop it becoming weathered in adverse weather.
Fire bowls and pits create a unique ambience, being much more open to the elements than other sources of warmth. For this reason, there is an extra element of safety involved, embers and ashes can be spread around much easier, so this is something to consider when looking at fire bowls and pits. Like chimeneas, some fire bowls and pits come with grills to cook food.
Keeping Comfortable
One of the biggest problems with garden furniture is that is completely exposed to the elements, the last thing you want to happen to your garden furniture is for it to degrade over time. This Rownlinson Bunbury Sofa Set does not have this problem, in fact it is specifically designed to be completely weatherproof, so you can be safe in the knowledge that you won’t have to put your furniture away during the worst of weather. The set comes with a sofa, two armchairs, a glass topped coffee table, and cushions, luxurious yet affordable. Relax in your garden no matter what the weather brings!
