The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: Plantoid on May 16, 2011, 10:46:39 pm
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Hello people of the earth .
I have been a sort of small holder for many many years .. I have had to give it up due to spinal probs and old age ..am now heading to a decent sized greenhouse 12 x 10 feet or so and 6 foot to the gutters , have just built my bottom heated mist propagation bed unit etc.
Am about to have built some five engineering brick built raised beds 9 900 mm high ) in linked runs of six mtrs in metre square beds. Photos to follow when the landscapers & builder start work ( imminent )
We are going for a whole re jig of everything for Mr Nearly who lived here nearly 6 yrs ago, nearly did ascape sacpe job , nearly renovated the place ,nearly installed a central heating system that nearly worked . ( got the idea of Mr Nearly yet ? ) He also built several small concrete carp ponds and nearly made then water tight .
Before spine probs took over completely I've been using a 3 tonne digger and heavy breaker hanging off it to smash up the concrete ponds etc and load it into 6 skips to get rid of most of it .. there is still 2 or 3 skips to go .
I'm especially interested in the greenhouse and mist propagation aspects for I want to clone some very small plants I've found in the local area to see if they can be used as ground cover around the pond ( in the new set up ) and also in small boarder beds.
I'm also interested in trying to locate or discover some of those yoghurt sized gel pots of rooting opaque jelly ( Miracle grow ??? ) where you put green leaf very soft cuttings in and they root in the jelly .
In the past I've used a fungicide free cellulose wall paper paste made with cooled boiled water & addeed a few drops of tomato feed & baby in it and dipped the cuttings in some cold willow twig infusion for a day or so .. it worked but nowadays I can't seem to find fungicide free cellulose paste .( I also used to pre hatch seeds for a fair 1 inch root in poly pags for things like carrots lettuces , onions and cabbages etc to get them quickly rooted and going )
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Hi and welcome from North Yorkshire. :wave:
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Hi welcome. I think you can pee in the yoghurt pots to make propogating compost. I heard that on Gardeners' Question Time
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welcome, from central scotland :wave:
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Hi and welcome from sunny Carnoustie :wave:
All sounds very technical - I'm a kind of "scatter and hope" gardener ;D
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I got fed up of hit and miss propagation so Years ago i started to look at better ways whee the plant was sown efficiently with no waste ... On 1996 or so I found a fab book called " Square Foot Gardening " by Mel Bartholomew ( ISBN code 0-87857-341-0 )
I read it several times and realised I'd been very fortunate to find such a useful book .
I think I have most of it under my belt nowadays .
Unlike the majority of who sow stuff Mel worked out that if you make up small beds and sow individual seeds in high density as smal grids you don't waste seeds , it keeps weeds down and reduces watering and crop tending .
He also realised that using this square foot method he could automatically re sow as soon as a crop was harvested and there was no need to stand on the gardens etc.
This square foot principle will be the basis of my greenhouse work and that of my raised beds.
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Hello Plantoid, wellcome to TAS from WOrcestershire :wave: I think Mr Nearly must have lived here too!
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Hi there and welcome from Ms Nearly in Worcestershire (after 20 odd years I am ashamed to admit) but - there's always next year ;D
All the best
Sue