Kitchen Garden Forum

My tips-

Strip old lampshades, make a polythene skirt, instant mini cloches,
or beg catering size glass containers.

Learn how to propagate, only buy one plant then make as many more as you need.

Cheap as chips aquatic containers, fill the upper leg part of womens old stockings with aquatic compost instead of buying special containers

Leftover icing sugar? - dip your cuttings, it works as well as rooting hormone

an empty icecream container will cut up into quite a lot of plant labels.

yogurt pots and toilet roll inners as small pots for starting off seeds

old tights and stockings as plany ties

plastic bottles turned upside down as cane protectors (i also cut wiings into them to also act as bird scarers too (particularly as the magpies had hours of fun pulling out all my labels and putting them in a pile in the middle of the garden )

Good suggestions Smurfy. Gotta love them birds, they don't play in my back yard 'cos we have cats, well they sometimes sit on the fence and purloin a few loganberrries but I have plenty of canes.

If you have a buddleia, prune it back every February and keep the pruned-off branches to use as supports for the beans.

If someone is growing some sort of fruit you are not, keep praising their crop, and you are more than likely to be given some.

Hi OH. Applause!!!! Trouble is my neighbours don't seem grow much produce
just low maintenance and square lawns.

oldherbaceous wrote:If someone is growing some sort of fruit you are not, keep praising their crop, and you are more than likely to be given some.

That's one of the best money-saving gardening tips I have heard for a long time!

Dry & save used teabags. They're useful for covering the holes in large pots for peppers, aubergines, etc. and act as a filter to stop compost being washed out through the bottom of the pot when you water.

That's a good idea Primrose, thank you.

I make lots of soup from our various home grown vegetables and use a stick blender to liquidise them. Once the soup is in this form, I freeze it in one pint plastic milk bottles which makes two adequate portions. I used to use the zip lock bags from Lakeland but they're quite expensive now and sometimes spring a leak whereas milk bottles are sturdy and can used time & time again. They're also useful for storing frozen fruit compote sauces when purreed down with a stick blender.

Primrose. What a clever idea.