Geoff Hamilton on Gardeners World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UmPgaBa_g&feature=related

3 part YouTube video of Geoff's last programme.

Preparing the garden

Have added a lot of home-made compost to the raised beds, both outside and in the polytunnel, ready for the new season.

Will be using a heated propagator to start off some early veg, then transferring to polytunnel.

Here's a picture from last year's vegetable garden -spuds, runner beans, peas etc...

Willow rooting solution for propagation

I'm experimenting with an old method for making rooting compound from willow twigs. We have an old Rose bush and we cut it down to the ground each winter. I thought I'd take a dozen cuttings this time and see how they go with 'willow water' to encourage rooting. Watch this space for results. I've put the cuttings in a deep pot with sand at the bottom and will keep them moist in the polytunnel until they root. Some growers take the cuttings at the Full Moon, when the sap is drawn upwards in the same way that tides are affected. (Watch out for werewolves).

I've pinched some info from online somewhere:

“Willow Water” – How it Works

“Willow Water” is a homebrew plant rooting hormone that is easily made and can be used to increase the strike rate (growth of roots) of cuttings that you’re trying to propagate.

The way that it works can be attributed to two substances that can be found within the Salix (Willow) species, namely, indolebutyric acid (IBA) and Salicylic acid (SA).

Indolebutyric acid (IBA) is a plant hormone that stimulates root growth. It is present in high concentrations in the growing tips of willow branches. By using the actively growing parts of a willow branch, cutting them, and soaking them in water, you can get significant quantities of IBA to leach out into the water.

Salicylic acid (SA) (which is a chemical similar to the headache medicine Aspirin) is a plant hormone which is involved in signalling a plant’s defences, it is involved in the process of “systemic acquired resistance” (SAR) – where an attack on one part of the plant induces a resistance response to pathogens (triggers the plant’s internal defences) in other parts of the plant. It can also trigger a defence response in nearby plants by converting the salicylic acid into a volatile chemical form.

When you make willow water, both salicylic acid and IBA leach into the water, and both have a beneficial effect when used for the propagation of cuttings. One of the biggest threats to newly propagated cuttings is infection by bacteria and fungi. Salicylic acid helps plants to fight off infection, and can thus give cuttings a better chance of survival. Plants, when attacked by infectious agents, often do not produce salicylic acid quickly enough to defend themselves, so providing the acid in water can be particularly beneficial.

Willow water can be made from cuttings of any tree or shrub of the willow family, a group of plants with the scientific name of Salix. The more cuttings that are used and the longer they are soaked in water, the stronger will be the resulting willow water. Recommendations for the exact method of soaking vary. Cold water can be used, and soaking times of four or more weeks are often quoted. Other gardeners use boiling water to steep the willow twigs and soak the mixture for around 24 hours.

How to Make “Willow Water”

Here is the procedure for making willow water:

1. Collect young first-year twigs and stems of any of willow (Salix spp.) species, these have green or yellow bark. Don’t use the older growth that has brown or gray bark.
2. Remove all the leaves, these are not used. Don’t waste good green material though, compost the leaves or throw them in the garden as mulch.
3. Take the twigs and cut them up into short pieces around 1" (2.5cm) long.
4. The next step is to add the water. there are several techniques to extract the natural plant rooting hormones: a) Place the chopped willow twigs in a container and cover with boiling water, just like making tea, and allow the “tea” to stand overnight.
   b) Place the chopped willow twigs in a container and cover with tap water (unheated), and let it soak for several days.
5. When finished, separate the liquid from the twigs by carefully pouring out the liquid, or pouring it through a strainer or sieve. The liquid is now ready to use for rooting cuttings. You can keep the liquid for up to two months if you put it in a jar with a tight fitting lid and keep the liquid in the refrigerator. Remember to label the jar so you remember what it is, and write down the date you brewed it up, and to aid the memory, write down the date that it should be used by, which is two months from the date it was made!
6. To use, just pour some willow water into a small jar, and place the cuttings in there like flowers in a vase, and leave them there to soak overnight for several hours so that they take up the plant rooting hormone. Then prepare them as you would when propagating any other cuttings. The second way to use willow water is to use it to water the propagating medium in which you have placed cuttings. Watering your cuttings twice with willow water should be enough to help them root.

Scenes from the garden in Autum

Pictures from the garden and surrounding fields in late summer and autumn

Raised vegetable beds

The beds are now sown and duly rotated. Here's a new photo. Since I took this, I have strimmed around the beds and added some slug barrier pellets which claim to deter the feckers. The netting is to keep the white butterflies off the cabbages.

Shallots in modules

Good old Monty Don (BBC TV Gardener's World) shared a good tip for preparing shallots for their summer beds. Place the 'sets' sitting in modules filled with compost (any old stuff will do). After a week or so they will have developed huge roots. I tried this and it worked a treat. In fact I had to cut them out of the modules. They are now growing like mad under nets to stop birds uprooting them.

Polytunnel

At long last I've got my polytunnel up and running.
It was supplied by a new company in Carlow:
www.JM Polytunnels.com


At 16ft by 10ft it is huge inside and the vertical wall design makes the most of the floor and vertical space. See their website for a YouTube movie of it being built (by yours truly).


Update: April 2011. Full production going on at the polytunnel. Seeds are sown in modules, toilet roll inners etc and, once big enough, make their way to the coldframe. Once they have acclimatised to outdoor life, they go into the raised beds. Thanks to my mate Mim Scala, these beds have plentiful, well-rotted horse manure dug in (except where plants don't need it). The polytunnel is great for almost certain success in sowing seeds. Even hard-to-germinate Dwarf Green Beans have uncoiled from their toilet rolls. Some plants will be staying indoors - strawberries, peppers, chillis, courgette (just one of them). I also bought some beefsteak tomato seeds and germinated them early in my Lidl heated propagator as they were expensive. (We had them in Turkey and they are fabulous but too thin-skinned to export and probably contravene some Fourth Reich EU regulation). There is a lovely sweet smell in the tunnel from strawberry blossom. Might have to pollinate them by hand as the few bees to enter the tunnel spend all their time batting themselves senseless against the plastic. Am now supplying friends with small veg plants as I sowed too many of everything and realised I wouldn't have enough beds to put them in. Am now looking forward to Nature's bounty.

click for youtube video - building a polytunnel in Ireland