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| Please admire the abundance of moss in my lawn |
Seeds are in my opinion little
buggers, excuse my French. You provide
them with fine quality soil, the correct depth, warmth, light, moisture and on
the whole they do nothing… nada. It’s a
miracle there are any plants at all.
Because of this complete lack of desire to sprout and succeed in life I
have been trying to give my seeds the best start so I might one day finally get
my hands on a home grown cucumber. On a
trip to a garden centre several months ago I was hunting for some seedling pots
that the mother had seen and thought might be handy but alas, too many keen
gardeners in Sussex had already been through and cleared the shelves. Instead I plumped for these grow tubes which
are meant to be ideal for growing Sweat Peas and the such like as you just
plant the whole tube in a pot when the time comes and it biodegrades.
That’s a lovely theory, but my
experience has been less favourable than the packaging suggested it would be. The first problem I encountered was in even
getting the compost into the tubes, they are far narrower than the average
trowel so makes for a very messy business and definitely needs to be carried
out over a container. Then comes the realisation
that said tubes lack a bottom so the compost you have just wedged in just falls
straight back out the bottom. So needing
to be stood in some kind of container I used the bottom tray of an indoor
greenhouse. To stop them falling over as
tall unstable things tend to want to do I tied them together with string as the
packet suggests, watered and placed in a warmish spot. Returning to check on them several days later
I discovered a thick fluffy beard of mould.
Now this is where this growing method starts to lose me. It says ‘tie string around the top of the
tubes to keep them upright in the tray’ and ‘water thoroughly’ but goes on to
say ‘if the tubes are too close together in warm damp conditions, a white mould
may appear on the side of the tube’.
Forgive me, but how do you tie tubes together without them being fairly
snug up against each other? And do seeds
not require ‘warm, damp conditions’, a fatal flaw you would agree. While the mould might be considered ‘normal’
the smell most certainly is not. It
stank.
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| Sat in a washing up bowl. Im fully aware my Sweet Peas shouldn't be this leggy. It was too warm and they shot off too quick. Luckily I managed to save a few by cutting them down- more on this to follow in another post |
Once transferred into the garden they have
been sat in a washing up bowl and old container my mother used to make soup
with in the microwave as both are tall sided.
Every time it rains they collect water and have to be emptied. It is a pain.
The tubes are only meant to last 12 weeks at which point the roots
should be bursting through the sides denoting their readiness for planting
out. There is no bursting, my roots
remain firmly contained and unless they somehow get their hands on a knife will
continue to do so. However my Sweet Peas
are definitely showing signs of wanting to be planted out regardless so I
have. I can only hope that once
surrounded by damp soil we might see signs of this bio-degrability.
Im sure that this particular
brand of growing tube is no better or worse than any other. Instead in my opinion the whole concept is
flawed. Im not even sure why you would
want the tube to biodegrade anyway?
Other than to save on throwing away plastic. The plastic segmented seedling trays I also
used produced far more seedlings, and I can bung them in the back of the shed
to be re-used next year. Now that’s a
selling point I like.
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| Tubes nicely wedged in plastic container, again too leggy I know but thats life |
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