Get the upper hand in this battle against our cool weather enemies!

The garden bed has been getting pretty bare as the cool weather plants are taking their last gasps. I want to throw in a whole lot of lettuce seedlings and directly sow some beans to grow up the tomato stakes as I transition from legumes to solanaceae.

Come High Summer when the tomatoes go in, the weather is going to quickly turn things crispy, delicate seedlings will fry!

Although not considered traditional companion plants, they will act as a

nurse crop. They shelter seedlings from excessive sun, reduce weed competition and prevent erosion.

The beans will protect the young tomatoes as they grow up their supports. On the ground established lettuces will shade the roots, so constant mulching won’t be necessary, and more importantly will protect the true tomato companions that will only just be ready for transplant when weather is getting hot – marigolds, basil, amaranth, dandelions, chives.

Unfortunately my plan was brutally cut off at the ground and silvery tracks betrayed the criminal. Soon it will be too hot for the slimey ones to show their heads, but for now they are having a field day on delicious, sappy new spring growth. What’s a girl to do?! I’m yet to find herbs that repel snails (they just live in them!) and coffee grounds just don’t cut it. Sharp calcium rich egg shells and crispy seaweed help, but these snails are seriously out of control! There is not enough beer in the world to drown their enthusiasm!

THE SOLUTION?

Build a fortress! Take the idea of the juice bottle greenhouse and bring it to the garden bed! All we need is a minor modification, keep the bottle top on and drill some tiny ventilation holes to prevent the nasties crawling in. Bury it deep enough to protect against cutworm as well! Only 1 is needed for a lettuce until it is established, but for beans they can be stacked 3-4 high until the stem is thick enough to hold its own. Just put a short stick inside the greenhouse for it to climb and when you remove the bottle simply tie this to the taller stake. The trapped heat will also help the beans and lettuces thrive!

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Sharp eggshells deter snails and slugs, but also add calcium to the soil, available for next years crop

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As a rule of thumb I only harvest my lettuce when it has more than 6 leaves so I don’t take too many of its “solar panels”. Following this logic when your seedling can afford to loose one or two leaves to the snails, you can take the bottle off!

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Stack the bottles as high as you need, wait for stems to be thick enough that they can’t be felled with a single chomp!

Check out my next post to see how I have snail proofed the nursery!

It begins…

with your overflowing recycling bin and a sigh of shame that you are not doing enough to be sustainable. But be warned what begins as a wholesome notion to re-use can quickly escalate and before you know it you’re that crazy lady

looking at the neighbours’ bins with a twitching desire to rummage through them for treasures.
It’s best to dial it back a notch at this point and stick to finding alternate job descriptions for your own rubbish, we can’t all be Tiffany Sedaris.

And besides when you have five housemates you have plenty of material to keep you busy.
The youngest drinks at least one 3L plastic bottle of orange juice a week, two if there are no bottles of coke in the fridge, that’s over 52 binned a year!

They might be recycled into the latest in green bag technology or a jazzy promotional hat, but I’m sure that comes at a huge energy cost. It seemed like a waste, so I started thinking about what else I could do with them…

Plastic juice bottle pots with bottle water tray

Watercolour design for a re-used plastic bottle greenhouse/pot for seedlings

Autumn came and it brought with it a slimy army of snowpea killers! I sliced the bottom off the juice bottle and dug it into the soil to became an impenetrable snail guard. The peas climbed upwards and their salvation became their prison as they clawed at the closed bottle lid. I set them free with a twist and the snails savaged them with a crunch.
I retaliated, slicing the top off the bottle as well and added another, then another bottle, stacking them to form a tower, the peas grew tall and strong and when they were released the snails turned up their nose at the strong tough stems and didn’t think to crawl upwards to the tender shoots.
The weather cooled and the bottles doubled as greenhouse to encourage young lettuces to be sweet while their unbottled neighbours grew world weary and bitter.
And now we come to the current day, the weather has mellowed and soon I will need to start planting my tomato seeds and I thought…

tomatoes despise being transplanted almost as much as they hate the cold, dry soil and wet feet!

Coupled with a general lazy attitude toward fiddly potting on, the bottle greenhouse was born!

Now we finally come to my experiment (Don’t you hate it when people take ages to get to the point? Ha!).

The “pot”

is a bottle with the top and bottom removed and is filled 3/4 with potting soil, then a piece of damp newspaper and 1/4 of seed raising mix. After this has settles the seeds are planted in the top in the more friable, low nutrient soil, when the roots are large enough to break through the thin paper they get a boost from the more nutrient rich potting soil.

A half bottle cut length wise is

the water “tray”

at the base. The “pot” is placed in the “tray” before it is filled which prevents the soil from falling out. Then from the top the soil is well watered until the water pools in the tray. While the seed settles the soil moisture levels will stabilise so it is neither too dry or too wet, if it is hot additional water may have to be added to the tray before planting. When the seeds go in the top should be gently misted and the tray filled with water.

The seeds won’t be washed away by overenthusiastic water spray and the water in the tray will slowly wick up through the soil to the developing seedling’s roots as it needs it.
Even it hotter weather the tray doesn’t have to be filled everyday so you are free to leave your nursery for a long weekend beach break without coming home to crispy reminders of what could have been. It will also encourage deep roots, which are preperable as shallow roots are more likely to dry out when planted in the garden.

A bottomless bottle acts as

the “greenhouse”

in cooler weather it keeps heat in and as it warms up it prevents too much moisture loss. Ventilation is important as the soil can get mouldy so the top can be left off. If pests are a problem the lid can be left on and small ventilation holes pierced around the bottle neck, too small for a slug.
When it comes time to transplant the “pot” can be gently buried, the roots undisturbed grow out the bottom into the soil with no transplant shock. The tomato experiment? More about that soon…

THWARTING SNAILS & SLUGS