Learning to 'Flowerdew it'
Spring is poking its head round the corner - the snowdrops have long since appeared, the crocuses not long after, and the tulips are on their way. One sure sign that the new growing season is upon us is the arrival of the garden supplies catalogue. There is so much in it I want to buy…
…until I look at the price. And then I get apoplectic. £12.99 for a set of three flimsy polycarbonate cloches! Knowing how cheap cloches are to make – a matter of pence – it always makes me angry to see how much they go on sale for. I know we’re not digging for victory, and they have to be packaged and transported, but as a nation we could be so much more productive if we re-used some of the plastics we recycle on a weekly basis.
With some of the products you see in the catalogue it’s difficult to know how much the materials might have been to source, but when it’s just a lump of plastic…
However, I can give you details of a mini-propagator that will cost you absolutely nothing – provided you like croissants. Go into any of the big French supermarkets and you will find these little greenhouses stuffed with croissants au beurre, pain au chocolat or pain au raisin.
The sticker on the outside says ‘Offre Speciale’ and the special bit is that they get to live again, raising seeds, hosting plug plants, or maybe even used as a mini cold-frame.
The larger varieties can indeed be cut in two and pegged to the ground to protect young seedlings.
Supermarkets like Super-U will sell a variety of 12-16 croissants in the bigger packs, and they can come in handy oblong shapes as well. The nearest thing I found in my local Co-op was a small tub of mini flapjack bits, and as you can see from the photo, they don’t give you half the growing space of our French cousins.
Gardener’s Question Time favourite Bob Flowerdew is a great champion of using poly tunnels within poly tunnels to generate heat. In this system, we could ‘Flowerdew it’ and put the flapjack container inside the croissant container to boost temperature. Although because of the restricted size, it may not produce a horticultural prize-winning specimen – micro-pineapple anyone...?
