No gardening

As with much of the country, there's still lots of snow here. Not much point in going out to look at how the plants are doing. But rather than not write anything, I thought I'd go back to something I mentioned in an earlier post, namely coir.

Coir is wonderful stuff, especially if, like me, you grow in containers. It comes from the outer husk of coconuts and is often sold in small dehydrated blocks - excellent if storage space is limited or if buying heavy bags of compost is difficult.

Although there's not much nutrients in coir, it is light and clean to handle and can be mixed with soil or compost to bulk it out. And if you grow in containers, you will have to feed your plants regularly anyway so the lack of nutrients won't be a problem.


The blocks are usually about 20cm/8 inches x 10cm/4 inches x 7.5cm/3-inches deep and once reconstituted, make about 7 litres of compost. It only takes about 20 minutes to reconstitute the blocks. It can be used much like peat except it's obtained from a sustainable source.

I've found the easiest way to reconstitute is to place it in a thick plastic carrier bag - make sure there are no holes in it - then add the water and leave it. It's made my life much easier - I love it.