As much as I would love to be able to claim to be green-fingered, I really am pitifully useless in the garden!  My excuses for not doing something to remedy this area of considerable inexpertise are: a) I never have enough time; and b) I have an extreme and irrational fear of spiders!  I'm rather pathetic about any creepy crawlies in fact, but spiders would definitely provide George Orwell's "1984" Thought Police with the most effective ammunition, in order to make me comply with the State's rules!  So for me, the garden can be a bit of a panicky place, unless I keep to safe, open spaces and stay nervously on high alert during spiders' breeding seasons!  (Thankfully, my husband isn't such a wuss and he ensures our children have phobia-free fun, learning about and getting involved with what we have growing in our garden!)

However, I really don’t need to be very knowledgeable about gardening to recognise the impressive claims of a fantastic and very eco-friendly fertiliser product I've recently heard about - Takesumi Bamboo Biochar.  Now some of you may be eagle-eyed enough to have noticed that I've denounced bamboo fabric elsewhere on this website as being not as eco-friendly as many manufacturers and retailers would like you to believe.  Bamboo in itself is a very sustainable commodity but in order to harvest its fibres for textiles production, the bamboo has to be soaked in a very nasty and toxic substance, significantly spoiling its environmentally-friendly record.  The vast majority of bamboo fabric is produced using this less than desirable process. 

This is not the case though with this particular bamboo-based, sustainable biochar.  In order to ensure the highest quality, only a particularly strong variety of bamboo, is used, which has been matured for at least 5 years, providing a 3-5 times larger surface area than most other biochars.

Some of the many attributes that this product is said to offer, include:

• significantly boosting plant growth;
• protecting against pollution, by acting as a natural filter; and
• helping to combat climate change and reduce your carbon footprint, by increasing the absorption of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

There is a wealth of really interesting information on the Taksumi Bamboo Biochar's website.  Navigate around their site to find far more detailed explanations of how this bamboo biochar works, how it's produced and how it outshines other biochar products. 

Until now, my husband has used organic chicken manure pellets to give our soil a boost, but they really do smell utterly revolting!  So that's yet another reason why I'll be only too delighted to thrust a box of Takesumi biochar into his arms, the next time he heads out to do some gardening! 

If you'd like to read more about Takesumi Bamboo Biochar or to buy some, visit their website at http://www.takesumi.co.uk.  They're currently offering a promotion to buy two boxes and get one free.