Supersize your garden with a mirror
The tip Place mirrors around your garden to make it look bigger: the reflection gives the illusion that your plot is twice as big as it is.
The catch This theory works in principle, but position your mirrors in the wrong place, and you’ll get birds flying into them, be blinded by glare from the sun, or end up reflecting that delightful view of your wheelie bins. Garden designer Kate Gould says mirrors can work in small, shady places, to bounce light about, but they’re hard work: “Mirrors have to be spotlessly clean,” she says. “As soon as they get dirty, the illusion’s gone.” If you insist on a reflective surface, try mirror-polished steel rather than a breakable mirror.
The alternative It may sound counterintuitive, but supersizing things (be they pots or pavers) also helps to make a small space feel larger by tricking the eye.
Grow roses in a potato base
The tip Stick the stems of rose cuttings into a hole cut into a potato, then bury the whole thing in the ground, leaving the top section of the stem above ground. The potatoes keep the cuttings from drying out while the root system develops, and the potato slowly rots away, leaving a healthy new plant.
The catch The jury’s still out on this one. There are various YouTube videos and blogposts providing anecdotal evidence that it works, but Michael Marriott, technical manager at David Austin Roses, says, “The question that comes to my mind is, why put them in potatoes? Why not just put them straight in the ground?”
And rose expert Rosebie Morton of the Real Flower Company says that while the basic principle of the potato technique (namely, to keep the cuttings moist) is right, it’s doubtful that it’s any more beneficial than the usual propagation technique.
The alternative Morton says she gets good results from taking a 30cm rose stem, cutting off the top at an angle and recutting the bottom straight across a leaf node. Sink the stem into well-drained soil or compost at a 45-degree angle and to a depth of 12-15cm, keep moist but not wet, and leave in situ for a few months. If the cutting takes successfully, it will start to produce new top growth and can be moved once established.
Stop slugs having a ball
The tip Copper is reputed to repel slugs, so take an old bowling ball (you’ve got one of those lying around, right?), glue pennies (or 2p pieces) to it, so they cover the surface, and use it as a decorative garden object that doubles as a slug barrier. (And if you want it to shine, soak the coins in cola first.)
The catch Not only is it debatable how decorative this actually looks, it’s also hard to be convinced by its efficacy as an anti-slug device. These days, British 1p and 2p “coppers” are made from copper-plated steel, plus there is at best only patchy evidence that copper repels slugs in the first place. Dr Ian Bedford, head of entomology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, has lab-tested copper slug repellers and found no evidence that they work. And even if copper did dissuade slugs, you’d need a whole bowling alley’s worth of coin-covered balls to have any meaningful effect. As Bedford points out, “You put a bowling ball in the middle of your lawn, but what’s to stop them eating the plants in your border?”
The alternative Go ahead and make your ball; just don’t expect it to deter slugs. For that, use a biological control such as Nemaslug or a nightly slug patrol.
Nail those blue hydrangeas
The tip Gather up those rusty nails from the back of the shed and put them in the ground around hydrangeas to correct an iron deficiency, increase acidity in the soil and, in the process, turn their blooms from pink to blue.
The catch None of it works. Here’s a mini-science lesson from Guy Barter, the RHS’s chief horticultural adviser: “Almost all soils contain a lot of iron, but it becomes unavailable to plants – especially ericaceous ones such as rhododendrons – in alkaline soils,” he says. “Adding iron nails to alkaline soil merely slowly adds a very small amount of iron to the pool of chemically locked-up iron in the soil. It is soil aluminium that influences hydrangea flower colour, and aluminium is most available to plants in the acid soils associated with blue hydrangeas.”
The alternative Add sulphur dust, not nails, to soil to increase acidity. Aluminium sulphate, often sold as hydrangea-blueing compound, is the best product to change flower colour in hydrangeas – try Vitax’s Hydrangea Colourant. Plants with iron deficiency suffer yellowing patches between the veins. Barter recommends treating them with chelated iron, an organic compound that prevents lock-up in the soil, allowing plants to absorb the iron they need.
Dish it out to the weeds
The tip Kill weeds by spraying them with a homemade brew of vinegar, epsom salts and washing-up liquid mixed with water. This mix of ingredients commonly found in our homes is touted as safer for pets and children than shop-bought weed treatments.
The catch Home remedies such as this are often billed as “all-natural”, but have you looked at the ingredients of washing-up liquid recently? Plus, it’s illegal under EU law to concoct homemade weedkillers from household ingredients (what happens after Brexit is a moot point). Linda Chalker-Scott, associate professor at Washington State University’s department of horticulture, spends her life arguing against such poor gardening advice. She points out that household products aren’t formulated for this kind of use: “You have a concoction that will strip away the protective layers of plants and associated organisms, which is not a sustainable way to approach weed control,” she says.
The alternative If you choose not to garden organically, buy a proprietary weedkiller and follow the instructions to the letter. Organic gardeners can control weeds with hoeing, mulching and hand-pulling. To remove weeds between paving slabs and other tricky-to-treat areas, Garden Organic recommends a flame weeder that uses propane or paraffin to kill weed plants and seeds.
Make a vertical herb garden
The tip Plant herbs in glass mason jars and hang them on hooks on your kitchen wall to create an indoor herb garden. Put a layer of gravel or rocks in the base of the jar to improve drainage, then add compost and your herb plant.
The catch Herbs have varied requirements: some like full sun and well-drained soil, others prefer some shade and more moisture. Most will be deeply unhappy in a relatively tiny pot in a centrally heated room, and away from a light source, so watering will need to be pinpoint accurate to avoid them drying out or drowning. Even if you do manage to keep them alive and happy, they will soon grow enough to be potbound, and therefore unhappy once again. Either way, you’ll end up with dead plants in pretty glass jars.
The alternative Some herbs (chives, mint and parsley, for example) will live relatively happily in a pot on a kitchen windowsill over autumn and winter, in bright but not direct sunlight, particularly if you repot them regularly. Make sure excess water can drain out into a saucer, and remove it promptly to save the plants from drowning.
Crack seed-starting
The tip Don’t throw out eggshells – use them as “pots” for seedlings instead (6). Cut off the top of a raw egg with a knife, rinse out the shell, make a hole in the bottom of the shell with a nail, then fill with seed compost and sow. When the plant is big enough to be transplanted, just put the whole thing in the soil.
The catch It may look cute, but this is the most fiddly and uneconomical way of sowing seeds. Have you ever tried making a hole in half an eggshell? “Fiddly” doesn’t begin to cover it. Eggshells, once empty, are fragile beasts. And if you don’t clean them thoroughly (one website goes so far as to suggest boiling them, which involves more energy-consuming faffing about), they will go mouldy and smelly.
The alternative You’d be better off recycling your eggshells by putting them on the compost heap. Sow your seedlings in conventional plastic trays, which can be washed and reused dozens of times (if you don’t want to buy them, reuse those plastic trays that fruit and veg are often sold in). If you insist on a compostable container, buy coir pots or a paper potter (£10.95, netherwalloptrading.uk), and fashion pots from toilet rolls or newspaper.
