Kitchen Garden Forum

Can I have a copy of the lecture, please. MP3 on a CD will be fine, then I can put it in my brand new ALDI disc player as entertainment during all the tedious jobs. It will be very interesting to compare notes with my experiences.
Seriously, though, all this 'potty' stuff takes me back to Chase and my soil block machine, several times rebuilt. The soil blocks worked very well for tomatoes and sweetcorn but you have to have the right soil mix and productivity is low. Nowadays it's a blend of 7x7 square pots and module trays and I'm afraid the Propapacks are doomed as you can't get them any more. My experience with Jiffypots apart from expense is that they didn't break down if the soil wasn't wet enough. However I have acquired a consignment of one-trip 7x7's in sheet form from LBS at a very good price and the plants prefer that size with virtually no root disturbance. The only problem is planting the square rootball in the round hole generated by any planter that I have so far, bulb planters are too small, the potato planter is far too big so that one goes over to the engineering department for future consideration. Meanwhile if anyone has such an object actual or projected please let me know, any necessary finance will be available.
It so happens that we are surrounded by Wilkinson's but at a distance of 20 miles plus so it's a bit too far for a casual visit, Aldi is 1 mile by bike along the cyclepath, Lidl 2 miles on the other side of town.
Have fun
Allan

An advantage not to be overlooked about brassicas in pots is that it gives a headstart if you have clubroot problems, the plant has its own clean rootball and will generally survive better than a bare root plant. To me the additional advantage is that there isn't quite the same panic to get the planting out done just at the busy time of year, mine always have to wait an extra week or two but with a foliar feed they don't suffer unduly.
Allan

Allan

On The Big Dig there was a guy at the Rhondda Valley Allotments who had a square "bulb" planter made to plant out from square pots. Is that what you're after?

I vaguely remember seeing that but I expect he would miss it if I took it, and that was a short one. I'll try to make one sometime but it will have to be with long handles to avoid all that bending, otherwise back to crawling with a trowel.

paper pot makers??? I use an empty wine bottle. Simple, open up an old news paper, and on the centre page, place the bottle at the end nearest to you and roll up the first sheet of newspaper. Apply glue stick or similar to the final strip of newspaper and complete the roll-up. Gently tip the cylinder to allow the bottle to slide out for the next roll-up. Each cylinder can be cut into 4 or 6 pots. I find I can get twenty four pots to the seed tray ie. four in each of six rows.
To plant out I use a bulb planter and simply drop the paper pots and seedling into the hole and wallah, jobs a good 'un.