The greenhouse glass got particularly dirty this summer.  I don’t know why.  I decided to clean it at the weekend.  I just use a detergent and warm water.  I went over all the inside glass and then used a plant label between the panes of glass to get the dirt out from between them.  It doesn’t take that much time.   The outside had moss growing along the struts and it took quite a time to remove all of this and clean out the gutters.    A good wipe over with hot soapy water soon made the glass sparkle. 

Once I was on a roll I thought that I might as well wash all the pots that I hadn’t had time to do during the summer.  It  is quicker if you brush out the pots before wetting them because the dry soil drops out of the pots much easier and you don’t dirty your water too quickly.  I washed over 200 pots would you believe. 

If you are trying to be a completely organic or natural gardener then cleanliness is very important.  Diseases only spread in untidy gardens and greenhouses.  I spent some time sweeping the floor and washing it with soapy water and the garden brush.  So I am a really clean bloke now.    All ready for the new year - in the greenhouse anyway.�

I compost anything that has once been alive and that rots down relatively quickly. Cotton and wool decomposes quite rapidly but if they are composted with artificial fibres you get a mat of thread which is a devil of a job to get rid of. So check them carefully and look at the label to see if they are 100% woollen or cotton. 

This could include woollen carpets and rugs, sweaters, shirts and trousers. 

Cotton is ubiquitous; genes, shirts, socks etc. 

Leather decomposes quite quickly but only if it is quite thin. Handbags and gloves are the best but I have also composted shoes, sandals, satchels and thick leather bags.

I would challenge anyone to find these in my compost after a year. 

Thin wooden baskets also rot down quite quickly. Paper and card rot well but seem to attract an unfair number of slugs and snails. Vacuum cleaner fluff rots down well.

All these things will take nutrients out of the compost until they have fully rotted down. I would suggest that they lock up nutrients that would otherwise leach out of the compost, though but I have no evidence to back this up.  I like to mix them with normal vegetable compost and with layers of soil and a dusting of lime. I often put stable manure on this compost if it has too many wood shavings in it.

If you regularly spread cow and horse muck over your allotment like I do there is sure to be quite a lot of germs in the soil. Wash your hands and cover cuts carefully. It’s always worth being cautious but never worth being paranoid.

 My mother used to preserve beans in salt.  She used the old glass sweet jars.  I sliced the beans with a traditional slicer and usually there were quite a few.  She used preserving salt and put the beans into layers of about 1inch or 2cm.  She did not blanch them.  I think that blanching does help to preserve the beans for longer by knocking out some bacteria from the beans. However, we kept our beans for a year at least and they were still as good as new.  If you want to keep beans for a couple of years, I think that blanching might help. 

She used to soak the beans overnight when she wanted to use them. Apart from fresh beans, I ate beans like this for years before I began to freeze them.
I seem to remember that the beans seemed to reduce in volume after you had filled the jar and more could be added after a few days.

It says in the books that sweetpea seeds need a temperature of 18-20 0C to germinate.
I think that this is a little warm and will make the plants drawn - thin and spindly. I plant mine in October in a cold greenhouse and leave them in there overwinter. I use a bog standard peat free compost but I add mychorrhizal fungi to it to encourage fungi root associations. Seems to have worked this year don’t you think? They are in open end pots and the pots are pushed into gravel. I find that they are more hardy than you expect. I am going to insulate my greenhouse with bubble wrap this year just in case. They need a lot of light to stop them becoming drawn and this reminds me I need to wash the glass in the greenhouse. It gets very mucky during the summer with tomatoes in there.
When the seedlings have grown their second or third leaf, I pinch out the growing tip to encourage side shoots. I pick what I consider to be the strongest one and then remove all the others. Some growers leave two side shoots.
I plant sweetpeas out fairly early - end of March or the beginning of April. I grow them as cordons i.e I take off all side shoots and tendrils and tie them to a cane. It is really the only way to get large flowers. The other secret, and please don’t tell anyone else, is to feed the sweetpeas with comfrey liquid. They love it.