And Cut Down On Your Heating Bills ...

At this time of year we’re all starting to sense the change in temperatures ... Nights are getting colder, frosty windscreens provide extra effort in a morning ... and at a weekend walking the dog now involves coat, gloves and scarf (hat to follow) as I crunch through the frosty countryside.

As well as you and I feeling the cold, so are our plants and Adrienne Wild from the Sunday Mirror reminded me this weekend that we can treat our plants well in the winter whilst still keeping costs to a minimum ...

“Cut down on greenhouse heating bills by making a heated propagator...”

Get Some Insulation In Place ...

Before you follow Adrienne’s advice and build yourself a propagator, remember to insulate your greenhouse first! There’s no point putting heat into your greenhouse if you let it all escape again and lining your greenhouse with an insulating material only takes a little bit of time and effort but will help to keep any heat in your greenhouse (even without a heater a simple lining of the greenhouse walls can often keep plants frost free). And once the insulation is in place you’ll be able to leave it there until Spring next year ... really useful as we sow new seeds and delicate seedlings start to appear.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot ...

Down at the allotment it’s all go at this time of year ... throughout March we’re had a mega planting time with early bedding plants and root crops being sown in seed trays and plug trays.

Without the luxury of electric at the allotment ... and being your typical ‘mean’ gardener when it comes to spending money we’ve created a hot greenhouse for giving our seeds a quick and healthy start to life and then transfer them off into our polytunnel ...

We keep one of our 6’ x 6’ glass greenhouses hot by heating it with a single burner paraffin heater.

It’s costing us about £12 a week in paraffin to keep this area hot enough to germinate our seeds as well as give some of our larger plants a spurt of growth ...

Although this may sound quite a lot for such a small area, we know we won’t need to keep the greenhouse to such high temperatures for much longer (hopefully the weather will start to improve) plus ...

we’ve absolutely jammed this greenhouse full of staging and shelving and every available space is covered in trays and trays of seedlings starting to grow ...

Once the seeds have started to grow we transfer them into our larger polytunnel – where we just provide heat overnight.
This helps the seedlings to grow strongly, preventing them from becoming drawn and leggy which can occur when they get too much heat ...

With all this new growth around it may be hard work … but it feels like its paying off ...

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things ...

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens ...” Julie Andrews ... eat your heart out! (You’re lucky this blog has not got sound ‘cause I sound like an old saw when I sing ...)

Seriously, when you first get a greenhouse you don’t really know where to start to make the best use of the space. You know what you want grow and you know you want it to grow well, but usually that’s about it.

But if you had to advise a new greenhouse gardener on just three things they could buy to help them get the best from their greenhouse, what would it be? Here are my suggestions ...

Aluminium staging – best with two levels, giving you storage for your pots and room to grow on the top – I’d always recommend aluminium over wood as it’s so easy to look after, in fact after almost 7 years mine still looks brand new!
Compost Sieve – I actually wasted a lot of effort by thinking I could cheat and use any old ‘reject’ sieve from the kitchen, but now I’ve got one with deep sides it’s really easy to get fine compost without it flying everywhere!
Water Matting – sounds simple doesn’t it, but you don’t realise how much easier watering onto matting is than having to water individual pots – and with water matting there’s no chance of knocking small plants flat with a deluge of water!

But I’m sure you’ll have a different opinion, so what would you choose???

My greenhouse tidying was brought to an abrupt end when a mouse ran past my foot!

I hate, hate, hate mice - sorry if I’ve offended anyone who adores mice, but I can’t stand them. Even though everyone says ‘the mouse will be more afraid of you’ I don’t believe it. I’m big, the mouse is small, but the mouse is fast and I’m slow so if it turned on me I wouldn’t get away fast enough .... I couldn’t outrun a mouse!

Can you imagine the damage a mouse could do .... I’d probably loose a limb and when someone asked ‘How did you loose your leg?’ I’d have to say ‘A massive, monster of a mouse ate it for breakfast’ (sorry, my imagination has gone off on a tangent .... I’ll stop now).

Anyway, this has brought an end to tidying out the greenhouse until I either forget the mouse is there or get my courage back. And at my age, forgetting a mouse has moved into the greenhouse will probably happen in the next 48 hours. Then I’ll be safe to go back in the greenhouse ....

Ok, so I’ve been putting off going into the greenhouse this year. The weather has been cold and wet, I’ve been busy doing other things and it’s been too tempting to stay indoors surrounded by my central heating. But I’ve decided today’s the day. I’m going to get togged up to keep warm and dry, drag the recycling ‘green bin’ towards the greenhouse door and start tidying up.

I know that as soon as my greenhouse is clean I can get started sowing my flower seeds …. there’s nothing like sowing the first seeds of the year and looking forward to a summer garden full of colour.

So wish me luck, I may be gone for sometime ……..