Sir – It’s great you’re featuring articles about allotments. Or it would be if your chosen writer wasn’t trying so hard to be ‘entertaining’ at the expense of anything useful.

It’s beyond me why he would write about worm composting when he’s killed two batches of composting worms.
I’m all for gardening writers and broadcasters being less than perfect — it encourages the rest of us — but still.


Worm composting involves finding, begging, or buying ‘tiger’ worms and setting them up in a container to digest kitchen and garden waste and turn it into very nice compost.


Most of us just do the kind with a bin or heap, which may of course attract said worms anyway.


Now I don’t do proper worm composting myself, never have, as I’ve never had a place to keep the worms alive in the winter. (Outhouse, garage, a warm enough shed with a bit of space inside it)
My concern is that people will, firstly, not know what he’s writing about and secondly, be put off worm composting or composting in general.
So let me reassure everyone that it’s perfectly possible to compost without buying worms and that worm composting itself can be done year-round with the right precautions.
I can send anyone who wants it and Tim Hobden, who needs it, copies of a short article from The Organic Way, the magazine of Garden Organic, called: Your wormery in winter. Problem solved.
I suggest anyone wanting information about composting checks them out: www.gardenorganic.org.uk Because on current evidence, they ain’t going to get it from Tim Hobden.


Meanwhile, we can read the interesting and informative Val Bourne and the gardening articles in Leys News: www.leysnews.co.uk
Liz Hodgson, Oxford