Daily tips Plant of the day What's on What to plant Garden help

Home › Daily tips › Saturday 17 October 2026

Daily gardening tip · Southern hemisphere · Saturday 17 October 2026 · mid spring

Keep Seeding Weeds Out of Compost

Adding the wrong weeds to your compost bin can accidentally spread weed seeds across your entire garden later.

Keep Seeding Weeds Out of Compost
5 minuteseasycompost
  1. Inspect the weeds you have pulled from your garden beds today.
  2. Look closely for flowers, seed heads, or mature seed pods.
  3. Separate any weeds showing seeds from the rest of your garden waste.
  4. Throw the seeding weeds directly into your household green waste bin instead.
  5. Add only leafy, seed-free weeds to your home compost bin.
A garden in mid spring

Why it works

Home compost bins rarely reach the high temperatures needed to kill tough weed seeds. If seeds survive the composting process, they will sprout in your garden beds whenever you spread the finished compost.

Crimson Bottlebrush

Plant of the day

Crimson Bottlebrush

Melaleuca citrina

An adaptable evergreen shrub renowned for its dense, brush-like spikes of bright red stamens. The linear, aromatic leaves release a fresh citrus scent when crushed

Read about it →

Gardening news

Gardening news

UK economic growth slows in August

Official data shows that the economy in the UK grew slightly in August, which was slower than the previous two months but better than experts had expected.

The Dirt · 2026-10-16
New research

Plant internal clock found to control responses to soil salt stress

Scientists discovered that a plant's internal clock helps it sense and handle dangerous salt in the soil. When salt is detected, a key clock protein clusters together inside plant cells to turn on protective genes. This biological mechanism could help researchers develop crops that withstand saltier growing conditions.

source.washu.edu · 2026-10-15
On this day

Norwegian botanist Christen Smith was born on 17 October 1785

Norwegian botanist and explorer Christen Smith was born on 17 October 1785. He traveled through Norway, the Canary Islands, and Madeira to collect plant specimens. His field collections led to the discovery of hundreds of plant species previously unknown to science.

lindahall.org

Written for the southern hemisphere. Gardening north of the equator? See the northern edition

Your garden, remembered

Photograph anything growing and find out what it is, whether it's healthy, and what to do about it. Free to start. No card needed.

Open Bozlea