Your growing tips

[Laura Hillier]

Hi all,

As of spring we will be incorporating a couple of brief seasonal tips from readers into the 'Over the fence' page of GYO each month (as well as the letters).

So, what are your fail-safe tips and tricks throughout the growing year? Have you found any great ways to re-use or recycle? And do you use any unusual methods?

Tips may be edited and printed in Grow Your Own magazine throughout the year

Laura

[sparrow100]

Cat litter trays for leek sowing as the seedlings can be left to grow on in them till they get planted out, and the tinfoil-lined card to reflect more light onto windowsill seedlings in the first few months of the year.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Recycle polystyrene by using it as crocks in planters.

Recycle used compost by riddling and adding nutrients.

[muddled]

Recycle polystyrene by using it as crocks in planters.

Especially pots that will need moving later on.....keeps the weight down.

[Scarlet]

An old one from me - Plastic milk bottles with the bottoms cut off, turned upside down and dug in deep in a row between the tom plants in the GH. All the ground can then be mulched with newspaper to keep moisture in and stop the weeds and I water directly into the bottles.

[Scarlet]

Also all my hanging baskets get lined with old compost bags turned inside out with a few holes added for drainage. You don't see the bags when the flowers have grown.

[sparrow100]

Instead of growing beans in a wigwam, or a line in the middle of a narrow bed, build a munty frame so you can grow longer bean plants, the beans hang down for picking and you can grow other crops at the base.

[KevinM67]

Instead of growing beans in a wigwam, or a line in the middle of a narrow bed, build a munty frame so you can grow longer bean plants, the beans hang down for picking and you can grow other crops at the base.

Excuse my ignorance - but what is a munty frame?

[sparrow100]

Like the frame for a football goal, so the plants go up a few feet to the back horizontal and then up at an angle to the top bar. Usually it's strung with poiytwine (garden twine breaks too easily under the weight) rather than net, so the individual beans twine themselves along rather than growing into a tangle. Orient it so it is south facing and you should have a lovely canopy of beans, with enough light getting below to whatever you grow underneath (squashes, dwarf beans, lettuces etc)

If you Google munty frame and click on images you'll see hundreds.

A more detailed 'how to' is here, with tips from Munty himself: http://chat.allotment-garden.org/ind...?topic=50801.0

[Bren In Pots]

Overwinter your runner beans for an earlier crop by potting up the roots into dry-ish compost/soil then leave in a GH or cold frame until spring.

[Guest]

I grow strawbs in the greenhouse for an early treat and to maximise space and for easy picking I grow them in lengths of suspended gutter

[muddled]

Off topic (sorry) but wow! Norfolkgrey! fab idea....I am definitely copying that!

[Guest]

Off topic (sorry) but wow! Norfolkgrey! fab idea....I am definitely copying that!

You don't get masses but as I say it is an early treat

[KevinM67]

Cheers sparrow100

What a great and surprisingly simple idea.

[Penellype]

I did something a little similar to Sparrow this summer - having grown my 3 bean plants upa tripod, when they reached the top I improvised with a horizontal cane supported over my mangetout peas. The beans grew the whole length of the row (an extra metre further than the height of the tripod) and the beans did indeed hang down.

And I will be another trying Norfolkgrey's idea with the strawberries!

My trick is to use sections of plastic bottle with a ring of copper tape round to keep slugs off brassica seedlings, cucumbers etc - you can see one in the round pot on the right of this photo: