Useful tips

[Oliver Buckle]

There are a heck of a lot of useful tips scattered about the forum, often in reply to a question. There is a lot to be learned by reading through randomly, but the idea of this thread is to bring some of those snippets of knowledge together to make a good read for the novice, or not so novice sometimes. It might be that someone has given you a useful answer to a question, or it might be something you have found out and think worth sharing, for example,

If you are making up a potting mixture to promote root growth, for cuttings for example, it works well to incorporate some sharp sand. Horticultural sand sold for this purpose is expensive and I use the sharp sand sold for builders at a fraction of the price. However, sometimes it is mined from places with salt or brackish water that can be poisonous to plants, so I always buy it well early, then cut the top off the plastic bag and leave it where rain will get in, when the bag fills up with water I make a hole in the bottom and let it drain, and I usually leave it a bit longer to let more rain drain through.

or

When cutting a plant it is usually better to make a sloping cut, rather than cutting at right angles to the growth. This seems to be so if it is a soft cutting for rooting or pruning a branch off a tree. With one you make a greater area for water uptake, with the other it allows rain to shed off. It seems to me reasonable that it works as a general rule, nature does not use right angles usually.

have you been given any useful tips?

 

[Larisa]

Perhaps the advice I got for planting carrots is only good for my climate. But I really like it. I start planting seeds in the ground in early May. Success often depends on the weather. Previously, the climate was stable, but now we do not know what the weather will be like and how the plants will grow.

If I just sow carrot seeds in the ground, I will get a harvest. But the germination time can be very long.

Therefore, I do not plant carrots immediately in the ground. I take an old dry sock (or handkerchief) and I sprinkle dry carrot seeds into it. Then I make a small hole in the ground and pour some warm water into it. Then I put the sock with the seeds in there, water it, cover it with earth and water it again.

After 3 days I take out a sock with sprouted seeds, mix it with sand and sow. Then the carrots germinate very quickly and amicably. The point is that the essential oils that surround the carrot seed dissolve faster and the seeds begin to grow faster.

My neighbor buries the sock in the 20th of April and sows the seeds in the ground in early May, this also works well.

 

[CAP]

Planting alyssum all around your tomato plants will all but eliminate any aphid issues!! At least it did for me in my area. (knock on wood)

For years aphids terrorized me by sucking the life out of my beautiful tomato plants every year. I'd hose them off and/or spray neem oil and soap and kill them off but they'd all ways come back. All the while taking a toll on the plants.

Now i plant alyssum out a couple weeks ahead of the tomatoes so they can start attracting hover flies. Then later on if i find some aphids under the leaves of the tomatoes they don't stay there for long thanks to the flock of hover flies patrolling the plants and laying eggs. This little trick has really helped me enjoy my time spent in the garden plus the alyssum smells fantastic! Since then i have been adding perennials everywhere i can spare the space through out the garden such as yarrow, chamomile and hyssop to attract more hover flies and other insects.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Perhaps the advice I got for planting carrots is only good for my climate. But I really like it. I start planting seeds in the ground in early May. Success often depends on the weather. Previously, the climate was stable, but now we do not know what the weather will be like and how the plants will grow.

If I just sow carrot seeds in the ground, I will get a harvest. But the germination time can be very long.

Therefore, I do not plant carrots immediately in the ground. I take an old dry sock (or handkerchief) and I sprinkle dry carrot seeds into it. Then I make a small hole in the ground and pour some warm water into it. Then I put the sock with the seeds in there, water it, cover it with earth and water it again.

After 3 days I take out a sock with sprouted seeds, mix it with sand and sow. Then the carrots germinate very quickly and amicably. The point is that the essential oils that surround the carrot seed dissolve faster and the seeds begin to grow faster.

My neighbor buries the sock in the 20th of April and sows the seeds in the ground in early May, this also works well.

Nice one, thank you.
I plant carrots in a short strip of deep rain guttering in the greenhouse. Then I can thin them while still in the greenhouse where the carrot fly can't get to them before sliding the contents of the gutter into a shallow trench I make with the hoe. Try and match the earth in the gutter with the garden earth so they cross the barrier between them and keep the lengths short to avoid distortion when sliding out.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I recently put this somewhere else.

There is a group of weed killers used on grass crops that do not decompose and go straight through the animal fed them. At least one member has had his garden decimated by buying a load of manure and spreading it around, and it lasts a long time, think years before you can start growing normally.
So, if you get a load of manure take four pots and fill two with a mixture with the manure and two with one without, then plant beans in them and see if they come up normally. The ones without act as a check that it really is that doing it if there is a failure. Contaminated manure can be used on a grass crop such as sweetcorn, but remember the contamination may last several years, or gradually spread thinly on a lawn, but you will not be able to compost your grass cuttings for a while. Probably better to make a heap in some neglected corner and leave it for four or five years.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

This is pretty basic stuff, but probably worth a mention to someone.
When planting out or potting on seedlings and delicate young plants try and handle them by the leaves. Firstly they only have one stem, if it gets damaged it is probably terminal. The roots do not normally get replaced, leaves are replaced all the time by plants, whether it be because they are damaged, old, or just the time of year. They are the most easily renewed part of the plant.

When planting out a plant grown in a pot it has often come from a nursery and been grown in a compost mixture quite different from the garden soil. Make your hole a little oversize and knock as much soil as you can off the plant, then mix it with the surrounding earth. This helps the plant make the transition from one type to the other. A number of times I have had people say I could get rid of a plant because it is not doing well. When I have lifted it I have discovered the plant has never been able to make that jump and has become a sort of pot bound plant without a pot, just an invisible barrier between different soils.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Something I just mentioned elsewhere, when cutting back blackberry brambles it is quite important to get below the root/stem junction into the soft, white root below. If not you are just pruning them, and they will love it and come back with two stems for every one.