Kitchen troughs

[Dynamo]

Last year I had a lot of success with half a dozen troughs that I fixed to the fence outside my back door. We grew some lovely salad stuff in them. A few of them tended to dry out quite quickly though. The reason for this I found was that they have holes in the bottom of them. Two out of the six have their own little reservoir so they didn't have a problem but the other four are made to stand in trays so this year I am trying a little experiment. This is one of the trays with holes in the bottom.



I cut the bottom off four 2 litre plastic milk bottles and placed them in the bottom of the trough like so.



I then partially filled it with some used compost from last year mixed with a bit of bonemeal,



and then filled it close to the top with new compost again mixed with some bonemeal.



Its all ready for planting now. Hopefully the troughs won't need to be topped up quite so often this year.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Under no circumstances block the holes completely they are there for drainage purpose's. Block them and you will drown your plants.

Potty

[Dynamo]

Under no circumstances block the holes completely they are there for drainage purpose's. Block them and you will drown your plants.

Potty

I know. That's why I haven't done that. :-)

[Harrod Horticultural]

Try our new Water Slices instead. These are awesomely simple to use and very effective. WE've been trialing them in the kitchen garden and at home and everyone loves them.

[Dynamo]

Further to this I thought I'd do a similar thing to my first year strawberry plants. I'm keeping the plants in pots for the first year after getting them as suckers at the end of last year. They are in the raised bed where they will be planted for real next year. This years suckers will be put into pots and put somewhere else.

Anyway, same as with my tubs outside the kitchen, these raised beds tend to dry out very quickly. This time though instead of having quite shallow reservoirs, I've made them a bit deeper.

Here it is placed in the hole.



I then half filled it with soil



and placed the plant pot on top of the soil in the cup



and finally covered the lot in soil.



Hopefully there'll be enough moisture kept in the reservoirs to keep the plants going without needing to water them quite so often.