Category Home Science

•  Coat-hanger cold frame

To protect seedlings in heavy planters that you are unable to bring indoors when it’s cold, straighten out two wire coat hangers and then bend them into arcs. Cross them and insert the ends into a planter just inside the rim, leaving headroom for the seedlings. Cover this wire frame with a plastic dry-cleaning bag, securing the plastic to the planter by wrapping it with loosely tied string. Temporarily remove the plastic whenever the seedlings need watering.

•  Extra insulation

If you are keeping seedlings or hardening off young plants in a cold frame and a hard frost is forecast, line the inside of the frame with sheets of newspaper; it’s a first-rate insulator, as is bubble wrap, if you have any handy.

•  A newspaper blanket

When a frosty night has been forecast, make tents from thinnish sections of newspaper and place them over seedlings, weighting them down at the edges with stones. They will keep your plants nicely insulated from the cold until the temperature climbs the next day.

•  Baskets of warmth

In cool climates, old-fashioned woven baskets make excellent plant protectors, keeping cold winds out while letting in some light – look around for old broken baskets you can leave outside in the wet. At night, drape them with black plastic for extra protection.

•  Improvised cloches

 The French came up with the idea for the glass cloche, or bell jar, to protect seedlings from frost. Elegant glass and practical plastic cloches line the shelves at garden centres, but a simple household substitute will do the job just as well. Some ideas for plant protectors include:

1.  A tall flower vase, placed upside down over the plant.
2.  A large-glass fruit jar.
3.  A 2-litre soft-drink bottle. Slice the bottom off with a sharp knife and place the bottle over the seedling.
4.  A 4-litre juice bottle, used in the same way as the soft-drink bottle.

•  A warm cosy glow

If frost threatens to damage a large container plant sitting on your patio or verandah, or perhaps a tree that’s bearing young fruit, string Christmas lights through the branches. Cover the plant with an old sheet and switch on the lights. Your plant will stay warm and frost-free throughout the night.

•  Pinpoint weeds with salt

Salt will kill many weeds that can’t be pulled up from the roots. Use a garden fork to scrape the soil away from the base of the weed and then cut the stem as close to the ground as possible. Pour salt onto the wound, trying your best not to spill any into the soil.

•  Drive weeds from cracks using salt and vinegar

If weeds or grass sprout from cracks in your driveway, path, patio or any other outdoor paved surface, squirt them with a salt and vinegar solution. To make it, combine 2 cups (500ml) vinegar, 2½ tablespoons salt and 2 drops washing-up liquid in a jar, screw the cap on tightly and shake well. A simpler alternative is to pour boiling salted water into the cracks. When applying either weed killer, make sure that no run-off reaches your plants.

•  Newspaper and plastic smotherers

If one part of your garden seems a little too weed-friendly, try one of these mulches to keep undesirable plants from sprouting:

1. Newspapers Wet several sheets of newspaper so that they cling together and then lay the mat over a patch of weeds. Camouflage the mat by topping it with wood chips or other mulch. Remove it once the weeds have died.
2. Garbage bags Split the seams of black plastic bags to double their size and use them to blanket the problem spot. Cover the plastic up with wood chips or a similar camouflage and leave it in place for 10 to 14 days — by which time the weeds should be dead.

•  Free mulch quest

Mulch is usually there for the taking if you know where to look for it. Besides the dead leaves and grass clippings you can collect from your own garden, check with agricultural businesses and local governments to see if they have any waste material that they would like to be taken away. In particular, ask for items such as chipped bark and wheat straw.

•  Strawberries love sawdust

Sawdust mulch benefits strawberries in two ways: it gives them the acidity they crave and keeps snails and slugs at bay. Raise the foliage of each plant and mound sawdust 5-7cm high around the stem. But be aware of what you’re using: sawdust from certain species, such as cedar or chemically treated wood, may contain toxins that are not suitable for garden plants.

•  Recycle the tops of root crops

What can you do with the leafy tops of the carrots, beetroots, radishes and other root vegetables that you grow? Once you have harvested the roots, lay the tops between rows of your vegetable garden to mulch the crops that remain.

•  Black plastic for a small space

If you have a tiny garden — say a 1.5 sq m patch of soil in a paved courtyard — don’t bother to buy the black plastic mulch sold at garden centres. (Black plastic is the standard weed-eliminating underlay for bark-chip mulches.) Plain, black plastic garbage bags will do the job equally well. Just spread out the bags side to side — and when it comes time to restyle your small garden months or years later, you can use the bags for their original purpose — to hold rubbish — so you’ll be saving money and recycling, too.

•  Foil and paper heat-beaters

Single-layer mulch made from aluminium foil or brown paper (the latter coated with clear varnish) will help to decrease soil temperature because both materials reflect the sun’s rays. On very hot days, keep the roots of a favourite plant cool by laying foil or paper around the base of the plant, taking care to keep it away from the base of the stem.

• A matchbook fertilizer

This is for when you want to add sulphur to the soil to lower the pH for acid-loving plants. Tear out the matches from several matchbooks and throw them into the bottom of planting holes for such plants as hydrangeas, azaleas and gardenias. Add onion skins for extra effect.

•  A freebie from the fireplace

Hardwood ashes from a fireplace will supply potassium and phosphorous to the garden. But don’t use wood that has been treated with preservatives (or anything else). To fertilize plants, spread a 1-cm layer of ashes a few centimetres from the stem and dig into the soil. Caution: If you store ashes outside, protect them from the rain or their nutrients will be depleted; and don’t use ashes around potatoes, as ash can promote potato scab.

•  Limit your plants’ coffee consumption

It isn’t the caffeine in coffee grounds that garden plants like azaleas, rosebushes and evergreens love, but rather the acidity and aeration that the grounds provide — not to mention nitrogen, phosphorous and trace minerals. Just be sure to dig the grounds well into the soil to keep them from becoming mouldy.

Dig about 100g coffee grounds into the soil near the roots, repeating once a month. And don’t overdo it: fertilizing even acid-loving plants with coffee grounds too frequently could increase soil acidity to undesirable levels.

•  A tree-feeding drill

To make sure that fertilizer reaches a tree’s feeder roots, put a power drill to work on something besides wood: the soil. Use a bit at least 30cm long and 20mm in diameter and bore holes in the soil around the drip line — the imaginary circle beneath the outermost tips of the tree canopy. Space the holes about 60cm apart, then bore a second ring of holes about 75cm from the tree trunk. Funnel a slow-release fertilizer into all of the holes. Plug them with soil and water well.

•  Add sawdust and leaves to ageing manure

Fresh or raw, manure must be aged so that it doesn’t burn your plants’ roots — and only the most committed home gardeners will be prepared to wait the six months it takes. If you’re one of those gardeners, water a fresh manure pile, cover it with a tarpaulin so that the nutrients won’t leach out during rain, and turn the pile with a pitchfork every 10 days or so. To control the odour (especially in summer) and create an excellent texture, add untreated sawdust, dead leaves or wood chips.

•  Use a toothpick to test when it’s time to water

Just as you can test a baking cake for readiness by sticking in a wooden toothpick, you can do the same to see whether a flowerbed is in need of watering. Stick the toothpick into the soil as far as it will go, then examine it. If it comes out clean, it’s time to water. If any soil clings to the pick, you don’t need to water just yet — test the soil again the next day.

• Saving splashes…

Flat smooth stones collected on a trip to the beach can be used as a splashguard in a window box. Watering plants in window boxes often splashes mud onto windowpanes, as does driving rain. To solve the problem, simply spread some water-smoothed pebbles over the surface of the soil. They look great and also help to retain moisture.

•  Recycle unsalted cooking water

Boiled foods release nutrients, so why pour their cooking water down the drain? Let the water cool and then use it to give a garden plant a healthy drink. Caution: when cooking any of the following, do not add salt to the water as it is harmful to many plants. Try these foods:

1. Eggs Boiled eggs leave several minerals in the cooking water, so use the cooled liquid to water calcium-loving solanaceous plants such as tomatoes, potatoes and all peppers.
2. Spinach Plants need iron too — and spinach water gives them not only iron but also a good dose of potassium.

•  Milk-bottle trickle irrigation

Tomatoes aren’t the only garden plants that like lots of water. Other thirsty plants include zucchini and rosebushes. How can you keep their thirst quenched? Bury plastic milk-bottle reservoirs alongside each plant. Start by perforating a bottle in several places. Dig a planting hole large enough to accommodate both plant and bottle and bury the bottle so that its opening is at soil level. After refilling the hole and tamping down the soil, fill the bottle with water. Then top it to overflowing at least once a week and your plant’s roots will stay moist.

•  Water ferns with weak tea

When planting a fern, put a used tea bag into the bottom of the planting hole to act as a reservoir while the fern adapts to its new spot; the roots will draw up a bit more nitrogen. Another drink ferns like is a very weak solution of household ammonia and water (1 tablespoon ammonia to 1 litre water), which will also feed them a little nitrogen.

•  Cocktail time for plants

After serving summer drinks, save any stale club soda to give to your plants. It adds minerals to houseplants when watered into the soil.

•  While you vacation…

Houseplants will survive well while you take a short holiday if they are placed in the bathtub or in the kitchen sink (if it’s big enough to fit). Add water to the tub or sink, but no more than one-third of the pot’s height. Too much water will cause sodden soil. Plants need oxygen for their roots and will die if pots remain saturated. If you have a collection of pots to keep moist while you’re gone, the one-third rule applies to the shortest pot.

•  Hose punctured?

If water is leaking from a tiny hole in your garden hose, stick a wooden toothpick into the hole and then break it off at surface level. Wrap electrical tape or gaffer tape around the hose to secure the toothpick. The wet wood should swell up and form a tight seal.

•  Lawn tonics

Some highly successful lawn growers achieve great results with lawn tonics made from the most ordinary items. Add any of the following ingredients to the reservoir of a 12-16-litre garden sprayer and water your lawn with the mixture every three weeks or so. Adding 1 cup (250ml) washing-up liquid each time will help to spread the solution more evenly and make it stick to blades of grass. Try some of the following lawn tonics:

1.  A 330-ml can of non-diet cola or beer. The sugar in both stimulates microbes that help to break up the soil.
2.  A 1-cup (250-ml) dose of golden syrup or molasses. (See note on sugar, above.)
3.  A 1-cup (250-ml) dose of household ammonia. This will add nitrates, the primary ingredient in most fertilizers.
4.  A ½- cup (125-ml) dose of mouthwash. The alcohol in mouthwash kills bacteria and spores and helps to deter some pests.

•  Recycle your grass

Take a cue from public parks and golf courses and ‘grass cycle’ when you mow your lawn, which means leaving clippings on your lawn when you finish. Just mow often enough to make sure that only a third of the length of the grass blades is chopped off each time. The resulting clippings serve as beneficial mulch and keep garden waste out of landfill sites.

•  Three temporary tree-trunk protectors

If you are growing a number of fragile tree saplings that would suffer badly if they were accidentally rammed with your mower, wrap them up before you mow. Wrap slender trunks in bubble wrap or several sheets of newspaper secured with masking tape or gaffer tape. An old towel pinned with two or three large safety pins will also work. All three wraps are easy to put up and take down.

•  Oil your mower blades

Spraying lawnmower blades and the underside of the lawnmower housing with olive oil cooking spray or WD-40 will help to keep cut grass from building up in your mower, so whip out a can and spray away thoroughly before you use your mower.

•  A pair of pantihose for a power mower?

Believe it or not, yes. A few layers of old pantihose (or two fabric-softener sheets) will protect the air-intake opening on your power mower — specifically, the carburettor intake horn. Just cut the material to size and secure it to the horn with gaffer tape.

•  Coat-hanger topiary for ground covers

If you take the low-maintenance route and choose a decorative ground cover in preference to a grassy lawn, you can ornament the expanse with a mini topiary or two. Turn wire coat hangers into frames in the shape of your choice: a circle, a heart, animals and birds — even someone’s initials. Anchor the frame into the soil and train strands of the plants to cover it, using clippers to neaten the growth as necessary.