What is (your) neem?

The other week we were chatting with a gardener friend about those damn fungus gnats that in the summertme usually plague our plants on the kitchen windowsill. She recommended using some Neem Oil which we’ve never heard of before and brought some for us the other day. We have no idea if it will work, how it works and what you do with it apart from diluting it and putting it on your plants. Any ideas? Does it work and what’s the best way to use it? Do drop us a comment.

About the weather

We’ve just found out that it’s supposedly going to be sunny and 16° this Saturday, how mad is that? And it was only a couple of weeks ago we had snow!

There’s also signs of life in the herb pots we started off (above: Basil) using the indoor house plant compost as we don’t want to invite those fungus gnats back into the house. We were told that the supermarket bought herb plants also have been known to house the critters. Fingers crossed we don’t get the small clouds of them this year as we’ve had in the past.

We popped into Shannon’s this week and got a few bags of compost for the raised beds in the back, more indoor houseplant compost for starting off some seeds (as we don’t want to take any chances!) and some seed potatoes which are presently chitting by the window in the back room. There’s the argument that chitting don’t do that much as they’ll grow anyway but we’ve done it for a few years now and they always seem to help the plants get a good start. We may also use the “cut ’em in half” technique to get twice as many potato plants to plant. More on the process of chitting here. Here’s to the start of the gardening season.

And here’s a nice and melllow tune from Sum Total called Bakery for a Thursday evening in lockdown.

How can I understand the flies?

fungus-gnatA big thanks to everyone on the Tim and Joe on BBC Leeds Facebook Group for their help on the escalating fungus gnat situation on the kitchen windowsill. Do join the Facebook group (here) for some brilliant information, answers to your gardening questions and tips galore!Fungus gnatsWe’ve a few pots of various herbs that have attracted a load of those pesky gnats of late. Now after posting on the group, there’s a combination of grit on the top of the pots, yellow sticky traps, a sprinkling of cinnamon, a lack of water and finally a trap of cider vinegar with a couple of drops of washing up liquid in it. If this lot don’t work, the pots will be forced outside as we can’t take them damn midges any longer!