Tricks of the trade.

[retropants]

Not sure whether this is useful or not.....
When you have pricked out your toms, chilis, aubys etc from the lidded propagator, I put the small pots in an open propagator, (adjustable temp all the better). This gives a nice level of bottom heat, but the tops are in the fresh air, so to speak, and grow nice and stocky. They must be kept moist, as the heat will dry the compost. Jumble sales and car boot sales are good for second hand propagators.

[oldherbaceous]

Very useful Retropants, and exactly what i do.

[oldherbaceous]

If your ground is on the heavy side and you end up with hard lumps of soil when trying to work the soil to a fine tilth. Try and wait until there has been a good shower of rain, and when the soil is just dry enough to walk on you will find the lumps will crumble quite easily.
You may want to do this a couple of times to get a really fine tilth, but do let the lumps bake really hard in between each time of working.

You can also soak the ground with a hose or watering-can, but give the water time to soak right through the hard lumps or it doesn't work.

Mother nature always has the answers.

[Elaine]

Regarding writing on labels. Those chinagraph pencils are good too and you can clean it off for re-use.

[PLUMPUDDING]

An easy way to give plants even spacing is to acurately measure the trowel you usually use to plant out. Say - the blade is 6 inches (15 cm), the blade plus handle is 13 inches (33cm), eg:- shallots a trowel blade apart, rows are a trowel length apart, brassicas two trowels apart etc.

I know you can now sometimes buy trowels with measurements marked on the blade too.

[Primrose]

Talking of trowels, you can never have too many of them as it's often difficult to remember where you left them if you're interrupted or distracted in the middle of a task. And it helps if the handles are painted in bright colours so that they're easy to find.

[glallotments]

I agree about the keeping of diaries etc. We keep a record of everything we do by taking digital photos. These are stored on the computer where the computer date stamps them and places them on a calendar. So browsing through the photos we can see exactly what stage everything was at during the previous years etc. You also need to write less as one photo can give lots of information.

We have just replanted our dahlia tubers and have no idea which tubers are which colour etc. We leave the dahlias in the ground overwinter and labels seem to disappear. This year we are going to create a planting plan with a photo of the flower of each dahlia plant copied onto the plan.

[oldherbaceous]

When i have made large heaps of leaf mould before, most years a mole gets into the heap carting large amounts of soil into the heap which seems to spoil it somehow.
Now i have put polythene at the bottom of the heaps before, but i always find it a real nuisance catching on the fork when emptying.
So last year before the leaves were coming down in any numbers the sweet chestnut casings were falling in large numbers, so i collected and spread a good layer in the bottom of the leaf mould area.
And this year, no moles and the best leaf mould i have made for years.

Of course it could just be a coincidence, but i have put the casings in again, ready for this years leaves.

[Larkshall]

As Geoff has brought up the subject of labels may I suggest that you write them in graphite pencil or crayon. Contrary to what the manufactures say there are no permanent marker pens as they all fade in sunlight. Also using pencil or crayon they can all be reused several times.
JB.

When I worked for HM Forestry Commission (on a 24acre nursery), my Winter job was signwriting labels for the beds. These were wooden boards about 24ins x 9ins, pointed at the bottom. They had all the necessary cultural information on them, kept me busy in the bad weather, sitting by the fire at home, signwriting.

We produced 3.5 million trees per year

[oldherbaceous]

Thought I would resurrect this little gem….brought back some lovely memories of members gone…

Well another tip to add, if you have hoeing to do at this time of the year and the ground is just that little bit wet to hoe, try and wait for a light frost, then get out early before the frost lifts and get busy hoeing…..the weeds cut off easily and the soil doesn’t stick to the hoe, too badly!

[Primrose]

Ah! Device from a master of the art!

[Stravaig]

Oh wow!

I'm so glad this thread has been resurrected. Fascinating!

BTW, since I'm more kitchen than garden, I'd be happy to start something similar on the kitchen side of things if it might be wanted.

[Westi]

Don't automatically throw away out of date seeds. Test their viability by popping on wet paper towel in a take away box & see how many come up. If no show rate is high then replace the packet but if not get those that have germinated in pots & sow how many more seeds you think you might need.

Don't throw your toys out of the pram & get all downhearted if things look great but then fail. Weather is the culprit not necessarily your technique, so review your weather pattern & if not to late re-sow with the appropriate attention like more water, shade, protection if the weather pattern is prolonged. Also consider this for future years.

If mice are a pain eating your freshly planted broad bean plants, nip the seed off when you plant out. There will be wee roots above the seed by the time they are sturdy enough to be planted out. The mice want the seeds as softened & easy to eat & not interested in the plant & it is their tossing out the plant to get to the root that kills it. There will be a check in growth while the wee roots grow more but at least you are not starting from scratch.

So many names from the past - I wonder where they are now as not all were older?