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Henry's Garden Hints & Tips 2

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

Simple Tool Care

We all know that tools work better and last longer if they are regularly oiled and kept clean. Your spade digs a little easier and the soil sticks a whole lot less. Hoeing is so much less of a chore with a clean sharp edge.

So an easy way to do this every time you use it is as follows. Place a bucket sized container outside your allotment shed door, filled with sand and mixed with that old engine oil from your rotovator or grass cutter or even from you car. When you have finished with your spade or hoe etc, knock off all the soil you can then plunge it up and down in your sand and oil filled bucket. The result is a well-oiled, very clean and de-rusted, re-sharpened tool ready for use next time.

Water for Drought Sensitive Plants

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Right at this moment it seems impossible to think that before long we will be back to wishing it would rain. When this does happen it would be useful to have a reservoir or two of water around those plants that are drought sensitive.

This can be achieved by planting 2", 4"or even 6"flower pots in strategic places. The plants you know need that water most. Pop some clean pebbles and some tissue paper in the bottom of the pots and when you water make sure you fill them to the brim.

The idea is to slow down the water seepage and give you that much needed reservoir, particularly those runners in mid and late summer when you cannot always get down the vegetable plot at the same time. Sometimes being even an hour or two late on a scorching day can check their growth.

You can use the smaller pots on tomatoes but do not over water them Use the larger pots on runner beans, which I find almost impossible to over water.

Hiding the Compost Heap

We all have or should have a good working and invaluable compost heap but sometimes they are a little unsightly. Made, as they often are, out of bits and pieces of wood, mesh and whatever was to hand at time of construction. Well to improve their appearance and also help them work, grow Common Comfrey or as in my case Symphytum Grandiflorum (Hidcot Blue) around them, Not only will they look so much better, you can chop some comfrey down now and then and add it to your compost heap to help it along. Which to me is a win win situation.

Carrot Fly

This tip about carrot fly sounds so daft I almost did not post it but it's true and it works..

If you suspect that the dreaded carrot fly has got past your defences, your netting and smell diversions and is living within your carrot fortress. Then place some bits of mirror along and between your rows of growing plants .The idea is that the female carrot fly will see her own reflection and charge at it knocking herself out!

Then you come along and remove her. I know you think I am kidding but I swear it's true, give it a go.

Incidentally, I grow all my carrots in dust bins sown in a spiral. The sun sorts them out so that they grow first on the outside then as you pick them this allows the inner ones some sun and they develop.