Harvesting Comfrey and Nettles For Next Years Free Liquid Plant Feed - Part 2

As you'll have seen from:

Harvesting Comfrey and Nettles For Next Years Free Liquid Plant Feed - Part 1

I decided to grow my own Comfrey and Nettles in the corner of the garden.  Of course nettles are available everywhere but I discovered that finding Comfrey was very difficult and that garden centres which allegedly sold Comfrey seeds no longer do so.  It could be that the quality of the Comfrey tea fertiliser meant that sales of expensive liquid feeds went down ;-) so they decided not to do it.

If you find some comfrey in the wild then if you steal a little of its roots, from a chunk of root you'll get a whole new plant.  I got my chunk of Comfrey Root from a professional gardener on a nursing course I attended, she hacked off the root for me, which was about 4 inches long and about 1 inch thick.

She advised to plant it in a pot but warned it could break out, so as can be seen in the picture below:

I planted it in a huge solid plastic tub from which it hasn't 'Triffid Like' escaped.  She said if it gets free it would take over very rapidly and spread.  I decided to do the same for the stinging nettle, it too is in a pot. Both are doing well and have produced the goods this year.

So if your thinking of following suit and growing your own Comfrey I recommend you do the same, pot it in an indestructible plastic pot, so it can't escape.

#fixed1tgardening

Harvesting Comfrey and Nettles For Next Years Free Liquid Plant Feed - Part 1

Save money on your home grown vegetables for next years by making brewing your liquid fertiliser teas now. #fixed1tgardening

Are Potato Grow Bags Better Than A Compost Bag For Growing Potatoes?

I've been growing potatoes in specially purchased 'Potato Grow Bags' for many years.  The crops aren't particularly large but they are delicious and its very easy and rewarding to do and something that the kids could do with a little help and supervision.

Growing Potatoes is simple, they are:

Easy to plant
Easy to maintain
Easy to harvest
Taste Great

The costs are pretty negligible:

Potato Grow Bags
Fresh Compost (from a garden centre)
Rotted horse manure (often free at a local stable)
Potato Tubers (potatoes)

The main cost items are the Potato Grow Bags and the bags of compost.

This year I started the chitting and planting process with 4 new Potato Grow Bags and put three chitting potato tubers in each bag.  After planting the tubers in the bags, I realised I had a number of spares left over and rather than throw them away, I thought it would be interesting to grow the remainder in the empty plastic bags the new compost came in.  These bags tend to be very thick painted on the outside by most importantly Black and None See Through on the inside.  I planted them all at the same time, using the same feed and water regime and harvested them when the plants had died back leaving thick white stems sticking out of the bags, within a few days of each other.

Although not a scientific experiment, in this way I could see whether the planting bag made any difference to the crop yield, i.e.  if you got more potatoes for the extra cost of the 'Potato Grow Bag' versus the black painted compost bag.

The first bag I harvested was the Potato Grow Bag

and below is the link to the video:

Harvesting Home Grown Potatoes From My Potato Grow Bag

After brushing the loose earth of the potatoes I weighed them, the black plastic compost bag delivered a crop of:

1406 grams of fresh potatoes (just over 3 lb)

Sao what about the potatoes in the compost bag?

below is the video:

Harvesting My Potatoes From A Compost Black Bag

After brushing the loose earth of the potatoes I weighed them, the black plastic compost bag delivered a crop of:

1245 grams of fresh potatoes (just over 2 lb 7 oz)

1406 - 1245 = 161grams (just over .35 lb)

There the using the potato grow bag increased the yield by just over 11%.

Therefore, from this casual experiment I concluded that the potato grow bags are better than black plastic bags for growing potatoes, but given the sized of the crop, and the additional expenses of the bags, it is more cost effective to grow the potatoes using the Compost Bag than it is to invest in specialised Potato Grow Bags.

#fixed1tgardening

Ripening Green Tomatoes In Doors. Part 2

In my last video I showed you how I ripen Green End Of Season Home Grown Tomatoes in doors.

Here is the link if you haven't seen it:

How To Ripen Green Tomatoes To Eat And Not Just Compost Them

In this video I show you the results after just 3 days of following the fixed1t How To instructions I gave in Video 1.  If you haven't seen video 1 don't worry a link will appear towards to end of the video. #fixed1tgardening

Discount Store Jaffa Cake Ruse - What You See Isn't What You Get

The majority of what we think we see is actually from memory, and this leaves us open to simple deception by familiarity, i.e. you see something you've seen before and your mind assumes it knows what it is.  So we can easily be exploited by clever marketing and sales tactics.  Here is one I found, do you have other examples?   

How To Ripen Green Tomatoes To Eat And Not Just Compost Them

It turns out some people through away tomato plants with green tomatoes still on them as they haven't ripened.  What a waste, they can be ripened indoors.



If you didn't watch the video to the end, you'll have missed the helpful links to the second video in this series below is the link:

Video 2:

Ripening Green Tomatoes In Doors. Part 2

#fixed1tgardening

Harvesting Home Grown Potatoes From My Potato Grow Bag Sack

It turns out some people through away tomato plants with green tomatoes still on them as they haven't ripened.  What a waste, they can be ripened indoors.



If you didn't watch the video to the end you will have missed the link to the second video in this series, the link is here below:

Harvesting My Potatoes From A Compost Black Bag

#fixed1tgardening

Harvesting My Potatoes From A Compost Black Bag

If you watched my first Potato video, you’ll remember that I bought custom Potato Growing Sacks to grow Potatoes in, and I harvested them and weighed them in video 1.  At the same time I planted three Potato tubers in the Potato Growing Sack I planted 3 others in the plastic bag the compost came in for devilish  comparison.  

If you haven't seen the previous video, click on the link below:

Harvesting Home Grown Potatoes From My Potato Grow Bag Sack

Here is the video of the Compost Bag Harvesting.




#fixed1tgardening