Go the Rocketeers, Again!

Good morning!

Last Friday I spent a lovely couple of hours with Kim Stoddart on one of her fab Green Rocket poly tunnel courses. Kim is also know as @BadlyBehavedOne on Twitter, is a gardener, journalist and a regular writer in Grow Your Own magazine, Country Smallholding magazine and The Guardian.

Kim hosts her courses on her smallholding near Synod Inn, Ceredigion in mid-Wales, not far from me luckily. The short course I went to was an informative and fun-packed two hours based on time and money saving hints when growing in a poly tunnel; I don't have a poly tunnel as you may know but we covered so much that helped me, too, and would benefit you when growing outside in open ground on an allotment or in raised beds in your garden.

We started off by talking about watering our edibles. Considering the very warm weather we had last year Kim managed to keep her watering to a minimum. The way she managed this was to water deeply and less frequently because surface watering will really do very little good. This is a far more effective method and, coupled with watering at cooler times of the day, you should be able to maintain your plants through any spell of warm weather as well as not needing to spend so much time surgically attached to your hosepipe or watering can.

Another time saving method is not to always take up plants when their harvest has finished. If you leave some plants in your poly tunnel/veg bed when they run to seed they will self seed and this can cut down on sowing some plants. A by-product of allowing this to happen is the encouragement of pollinating insects which can only be a good thing.

Talking of insects there are easy ways to attract predators into your poly tunnel or onto your veg beds to eat things like slugs, beetles and caterpillas and aphids; the latter are eaten by lady birds. A pond in your garden or the addition of a small one inside will attract frogs and newts. An easy way to distinguish between prey and predator is that the former move more slowly than the latter!

We also covered the subject of cutting back, pruning plants as you would fruit trees, bushes and canes to prolong their harvests. This is very effective with brassicas working well with sprouts, kale, swiss chard and purple sprouting broccoli as seen here on the left of the photo.

I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about the things we covered but you will get so much more out of the courses;all those who attend the courses are at different stages with their sowing and growing so shared experiences, hints and tips contribute to a great time. I really enjoyed myself and Kim has let me know that a new range of workshops will be launched soon so I suggest you keep an eye on her website, Facebook page and Twitter account as I'm sure there'll be something to interest you.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx