Are You Trying Any New Methods In 2017

[maverick451]

Do you guys not have access to any municipal compost?

Here in croydon you can get 'croypost' from the local tip, limited to 3 bags a day (I use huge potato sacks) I must have got about 5000L atleast of compost last few months, I go there nearly every day, they must be sick of me!

[burnie]

I used the "municipal compost" from my local tip as a soil conditioner as my soil is thin and sandy, works well at adding fibre and humus. Years ago I used to get spent mushroom compost, but that doesn't seem to be available round here.

[Alicante]

Do you guys not have access to any municipal compost?

Here in croydon you can get 'croypost' from the local tip, limited to 3 bags a day (I use huge potato sacks) I must have got about 5000L atleast of compost last few months, I go there nearly every day, they must be sick of me!

Only if we buy it. I think it's called pro-grow and it is made from green waste collected by HCC.

[Mr Bones]

Do you guys not have access to any municipal compost?

Not that I'm aware of, besides our tip is a 14 mile round trip away. A heaped barrow of chips covers 1 square metre, The plot's just over 500sqm so minus sheds, composts and path there's probably about 400sqm to cover. At least I'm getting fit from all the barrow work

[Penellype]

I need to try something new with my tomato supports. The Sungold are ok - I simply put in a load of canes and stakes and tie the branches to anything nearby. The fruit are small enough not to weigh the branches down and it works.

However, I have issues with other varieties:

Shirley (greenhouse) - this year I used strings to support the plants which worked reasonably well, sloping towards the apex of the greenhouse. But once the weather started to cool down I found that where the string wound round the stems it caused injuries which allowed grey mould to get in and rot the stem.

Roma (greenhouse) - does anyone have a decent method of controlling rampant bush tomatoes? I'm completely stumped. They form a thicket of stems and then get grey mould. I lost a lot of this year's crop which rotted before it ripened.

Ferline (outside) - the plants I grew this year produced huge fruit on the bottom truss, which in one case was heavy enough to break the main stem. Any suggestions for methods of stopping the stem sagging under the weight gratefully received as I adore these tomatoes.

Mountain Magic (outside) - grown as an indeterminate bush these produced enough tomatoes to bend a metal stake and snap a broom handle which it was tied to in an attempt to hold the thing off the ground. Canes were hopeless. Thinking of putting up a wire fence and training it as a fan.

[maverick451]

Penellype, the only way ive found to stop the stem sagging on tomatoes is to tie the stem in very often, every few inches so it cant get awsy from the main support

[Snadger]

• Keyhole gardening
• Use of blue debri netting for brassicas
• Straw mulches
• Cut down fruit trees as stepovers
• Grapevines,indoor,outdoor and half and half
• Legume bed with collapsible growth towers that can be used on any of the four main beds
• Passion flower/fruit trained on outside of summerhouse
• Wall trained morello cherry