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Henry's Garden Hints & Tips 1

Guides to growing vegetables, hints & tips to help you get more from your plot from forum member mkhenry

Couch Grass aka Twitch Grass or Scutch, Wickens, Quick (Agropyron repens)

If wish to clear Couch Grass from your plot completely, plant the troubled area with turnip seed

The two will not mix and the couch will wither back and die. Even if you have cleared the grass it may come back if you have not removed every single root. So to keep it at bay give this a try. I promise you it will work. A lot of allotment plot holders know this trick, but a great many others may not have heard of it

Midges & Mosquitoes in Water Butts

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Water butts can and do attract midges and some mosquitoes. To avoid this happening float some olive oil on the top. Just enough to cover the surface with a very thin coating. After a week or two skim it off and replace with fresh oil. It may look a mess but it will not affect the water quality and I guarantee it will stop them from laying any eggs.

Before you treat your water butt, remove anything floating on the top.

If you have a water butt with a lid from which you draw off water from a tap in the bottom, then midges will lay eggs if they can gain access. They will breed in their hundreds if not thousands and become a nuisance when they start to bite. My tip is to help avoid this. If you have a tight well sealed lid that will also stop them but most butts are just not that tight. Normally a water butt only requires that you start off with a clean interior and that you draw off the water regularly to stop it becoming stagnant.

The only reason for using olive oil instead of the cheaper oils is that olive oil will not separate allowing minute particles to sink down into the water below. It also lasts longer without going rancid. Otherwise any oil does form a barrier and that's what it's all about.

Stop Lettuce Bolting

You can not wait to pick your first lettuce and suddenly you have too many to eat and they are not so tasty if you try to store them. So what can you do?

When you have too many maturing at once pick them very carefully, root ,soil and all and lay them in a shady place for an hour or two. Then replant them. This gives them a shock and will slow them down for 5 to 7 days thus giving you time to catch up. The flavour and quality will not suffer but make sure to water them in well .All to the good if they lay over a little they will soon pick up and you can stop giving away or wasting your beautiful plants

Discouraging Badgers

Urine has been a very useful by product for 100s of years. It was an essential ingredient in dyeing cloth. The finishing of Harris Tweed, tanning leather and one of the most important, the making of Gun Powder. Up until the first world war it was used to whiten shirts and sheets in the laundry process and almost every compost heap had more than its fair share.

However are there still uses for this liquid to day. Yep there is. If you have a badger problem ask all your men folk (sorry ladies but it has to be the men this time) to sprinkle around your boundary. Repeat this every 4 weeks and your problem will go away. Badgers will not cross the line ever again

Also, of course, it is still a great and very cheap activator for your compost heap but be very careful when and where you dangle your dingle.