Never let spare ground "go to waste"

Gardening enthusiasts should never allow a piece of ground to remain empty and "go to waste", according to sector commentator Chris Thorne.

Writing in the online pages of regional news source Huntingdon Today, he suggests that if patches of land are left empty then there is the chance that minerals in the soil would leech through the ground.

"It is far better to keep something growing and retain those nutrients in the upper echelons of the soil profile," Mr Thorne asserts.

He explains that by doing so, gardeners can ensure that the growing plants will, theoretically, keep nutrients available to them and then return them back to the soil when they die and rot.

Mr Thorne suggests that another way of dealing with this is to harvest the plants, compost them and then use the waste material to return nutrients into the ground.

Online resource Garden Organic notes that around 40 per cent of the average contents of a dustbin can be used for compost.