This week via my blog, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages I’ve had some brilliant gardening advice from other keen gardener;

including help with my carnivorous plant, tips on planting pumpkin seeds and feedback about my blog from other young bloggers and it made me think how great social media can be for us young gardeners.

How my blog came about

I met florist, Simon Lycett at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and he said, “hey you should write a blog“; he said it would be a great way to update people on what I was doing in the garden and a great way of inspiring other children to give gardening a go. Now I’ve been blogging for over a year I can definitely say, “you’re so right Simon, ain’t social media brilliant!”

Twitter

My Twitter friend Reuben and I  have talked in the past about our passion for plants; he’s a big fan of Zingiberaceae plants (that’s the ginger family). He’s been busy this week checking over his garden after winter weather shredded his mini-greenhouse – same happened to ours pal! He’s managed to do a bit of gardening though – mainly mulching and weeding and pruning his buddleia  – great to get out and about again eh!

Facebook

Mr Lister, my epic ICT teacher from my old school got in touch via Facebook and gave me some great advice on the nepenthis (pitcher plant from the tropics) I bought last week.

First of all, like all carnivorous plants it needs rain water as the chemicals in drinking water (that enables it to be safe for us to drink) can be deadly to a carnivorous plant, plus the soil needs to be moist at all times. Now if you are like me and like to keep plants in your bedroom, then you will know that it is tricky to feed insects to carnivorous plants, if you have no insects in the first place. Mr Lister gave me a great tip to feed my nepenthis, (other carnivorous plants may vary) every month or so with fish pellets or some dried mealworms (bird food) and your nepenthis will be well happy.

Thanks again to Mr Lister who I got lots of information from about this plant and my venus flytraps too.

YouTube

YouTube is great for uploading short gardening clips – I’ve done a fair few videos over the past year and us kids really love YouTube. Videos can be uploaded so quickly and instantly too on mobile devices – for example, whilst at Chatsworth I filmed Dan Pearson’s garden. I uploaded it there and then and within seconds Dan Pearson was retweeting the clip on Twitter #Crazy

This week I’ve loaded my original RHS Campaign for School Gardening video on to my channel. I’ve also had some great feedback about the video I did for the RHS #GreeningGreyBritain campaign; here it is if you haven’t watched it.

Blog

My blog sometimes lists who has been looking at it,  so it was great to see that a Primary School Class had been having a nosey and even better that they left comments about what they thought of it.

Their teacher, Mr H had set homework based on blogs that had been written by children or teenagers. He thought they were ‘amazing examples of the variety and quality of blogs created by and for young people’ and mine was one of them! He asked his pupils to write about which was their favourite, which was most user-friendly and then to think what they would write about if they had a blog too

Blogging in front of the fire

I really enjoyed reading what the pupils said, because its important to know what other children think of your site. Here’s what a few pupils said:

ibrahim2015 – My favourite blog is Green Fingered George for he seems incredibly enthusiastic due to the frequency in his posts. My second reason is simply because gardening is one of my most preferred hobbies

Hey Ibrahim2015 – thank you for commenting and I’m glad you like gardening too, it’s people like you who help to get  more kids involved in gardening

Usman2015 – I think that Green Fingered George is the most user friendly blog because it is the easiest blog to use in any occasions.

Hey Usman2015 – glad you think my blog is user friendly – that’s important to me too. I know that if you are reading a blog and it uses incredibly hard words you will not know what they are going on about so you will turn it off, that is why I try to explain things better

Toby2015 – (On) Green Fingered George (site), where you have to scroll through the whole blog to get any information. Green Fingered George also takes a while for the screen to load, when I went to scroll to the top of the screen to exit the blog it takes ages to refresh the page even though it had already loaded.

Hey Toby2015 – I didn’t know the loading of my page was a problem, or that scrolling back up took a long time to refresh – so I’m glad you told me about that – I need to sort that out – apologies folks if you have the same problem with my blog

abbas2015 – I think the most user – friendly blog is Green Fingered George

Hey, Abbas2015 cheers for saying that; it’s one of the things that I really try hard to do, make it  very informative, easy read and friendly blog as nobody wants to read a blog written by a moody person.

Halima2015 – My favourite blog is the Green Finger George. Why? The reason why I like it ,is because it sends a message on how vital the world is and we should look after it.
Which blog is the most user friendly?
In my opinion I would it is the Green Finger George. I chose this because he sends child friendly pictures on his blog ,and he sends interesting advice on his blog, which makes improvements on the world.

Hey Halima2015 – glad to hear from someone else who is passionate about looking after the world, nice one. I especially work hard on making the information and images child friendly so kids, who this blog is aimed at, can understand it.

So guys I listened to what you had to say about my blog and others young bloggers too.  I read that some of you hate adverts that pop up on blogs, I do too – I’m moving over to a ‘paid for’ site soon – big steps – that should get rid of the adverts. I’ll also look at adding TABS to the layout as some of you liked searching for topics this way.

Cheers guys for your comments, I hope to read your gaming, foodie, lifestyle, wildlife and sporting blogs soon!!

P.S.  Mr H sounds like a cool teacher

There’s some great things about social media and some risks too – a lot of the kids talked about online safety, I totally agree with you and that’s why my Mum and Dad manage some stuff online for me.

The blog has been great and helped me reach people all over the world (13,400 visitors since I started) from Australia to America from Brazil to Burma.

Check out all the countries that have viewed my blog

Please leave me your comments too, about what you think of the blog, I really appreciate them.

Has spring sprung yet – I’m not sure?!?!?

One thing I am sure about though is….. it’s time to buy some seed potatoes, ready for chitting, it’s time to do a bit of post-storm clearing up in the garden, it’s time to start work on extending the pond and it’s time to start thinking about our growing plans for 2017.

Wellies on, I’m off out to the garden, have a nice week folk.