Gardening Tips

From our local gardening community

Slug Gone

Here’s the latest product to keep the slimy munchers at bay. All natural and no killing involved. Slug Gone is made from the "dirty" bits at the back end of a fleece (so waste recycling as well). Made into pellets with some gritty sand, it swells when watered to provide a mulch and barrier to the slugs. They find the tiny barbs on the wool uncomfortable and will not cross it. Meanwhile the nutrients from the fleece (manure and sweat) are seeping into the soil. I have used the pellets around crops, making a margin around e.g. my sugarsnaps and lettuces and they have all survived. It will last the year and can then be dug in and continue to be of benefit to the structure and water conservation of the soil.  I bought in bulk, so that it cost about £1 per litre whereas in a 3.5 litre tub the price trebles. “Growaid” is the web site. One small thing - it does smell of sheep so maybe not so desirable to use in a small garden. Slug Gone is soil association approved.

Make Your Own Sulphur Candle

I followed, I think it was Garden Gnome's good advice, about using a sulphur candle in the green house, last year. Very effective it was too. I think it cost about 5 or 6 pounds. This year I noticed aphids on my small lettuce plants. Time for another sulphur candle I thought. 

    As part of my rationale for growing vegetables is to save money on food bills, I baulked at the idea of spending more money. I realised I had some sulphur dust. I put some in a small pot moulded out of kitchen foil, rapped round a small yogurt pot. (Remove the yoghurt pot from the foil). Put a wick made out of string soaked in olive oil into the foil pot and filled it with the sulphur dust and lit it. (You need a bare quarter cup of sulphur powder, possibly less). The greenhouse was soon full of choking fumes – don’t breathe them in. Just as effective as a sulphur candle but a lot cheaper.  I dont' know yet if the aphids are cleared but the sulphur candle substitute appears to work.

NB Although the sulphur fumes put paid to pests, in my case it also put paid to the foliage of all my plants. Early potatoes lettuce seedlings leeks, cabbages, Christmas tree seedlings and numerous flowers, all turned white and shrivelled up. So use the sulpher candle before you plant anything in the green house.

Growing onions with carrots is said to deter carrot fly but you have to grow a lot of onions to protect the carrots. Instead you can make a liquid garlic solution and spray this around the carrots. The fly is confused by the scent. Another idea is to mix the carrot seed with feathery leaved annuals such as nigella.

Make your own plant labels

by cutting up old plastic margerine containers. Use a permanent marker pen to write with and they should last the growing season.

Growing on the Windowsill

If you haven't got a greenhouse, lets hope you've discovered the very cute long windowsill seed trays. The ones I like have five little trays divided into cells, a drip tray and a plastic cover. Can be bought for under £4 if you look around. London road is a good place to start .....Pound stretcher had them last year.
A home made light reflector really encourages growth as the seedlings don't waste energy reaching toward the light and then doing the same thing again when we helpfully turn them.
Here's a tip on how to make a reflector for the faint hearted: Cut a piece of cardboard the length of the tray and about 10 inches wide so as there is enough to fold and tuck under the tray. Cover with tinfoil (one side will do) and you're away. Removing the cover in the daytime is best to avoid soft growth and when the second, true leaves appear and the weather's clement they can begin their transition to the "nursery" under cover of some kind.
Caroline

Seed sowing

You don’t need to sow every seed in the packet: sow a few of each vegetable you want to grow rather than rows and rows of them. It’s far nicer to have a few of a wide range of vegetables than a glut of just a few. There’s a limit to how creative you can be cooking courgettes and runner beans. This also leads into learning about successional sowing: sow one short row now and another short row in a month's time, and you’ll have a much longer harvesting season.

Keep a record

Another tip – take lots of photos so you’ve got a record through the seasons and from year to year – helps enormously when it comes to plot rotation and also remembering how much space different crops took up!

Steve

Chard

My short tip would be grow chard! Nothing much eats it, it stands and keeps growing for ages-all through the winter, looks pretty (lots of different colours) and is a really tasty alternative to spinach (which tends to bolt) and cabbages (too many pests) and is really easy to collect seed for the following season- foolproof.

Flo

People often have trouble with their tomatoes, so give a good feed of tomato food and cut the tops of the tomato plant to help the tomatoes develop and ripen quicker.  Some people's tomatoes have been affected with blight, leave the plant alone and don't pick off the affected tomatoes it may be possible that some will still ripen, if left on the plant, as blight is different every year.

Cats

Another problem is cats, there is a plant called Coleus canina which deters cats as it has a horrible smell.  There is also on the market now a cat repellant by Growing Success, and Lion Poo most often sold under the name of ROAR is also supposed to be good.  However I would like to know the success of all these products.

Free plant pots

Use the cardboard cores from your loo rolls to act as plant pots.  They are particularly useful for sweet peas and climbing/runner beans.  You can put the seedlings directly into the ground without disturbing the roots and the cardboard gradually disintegrates as the season goes on.
Maria