hi welcome back to garden ninja now today's update on the gardening without
plastic challenge it's going to show you how the seedlings are doing in the
greenhouse now the sun's out everything's bursting into life the
hedgerows are alive with the sound of birds how are things going with the
garden without plastic challenge well come on I'm gonna show you!
The wooden seed trays have been great the heats up really quickly along with
the germination happened a bit faster if you need to increase the temperature I
have used a sheet of glass you can see that there behind me to act as a
recyclable propagator because I can use that time time again clean it last for
up some years. We've also got terracotta part those have worked really well
the Luzula and some of the grasses like Milium have taken an awful long time to
germinate. We're talking three months now but they're slow growing anyway but it has
meant I've had to water them an awful lot more than ould do if I was using
say plastic propagators or plastics seed trays.
Now here are Helenium hoopesii they have finally germinated now when they're
at full height there'll be two sorts of 80 centimetres to a meter in height
they are very tricky to germinate. There's more heleniums called red and gold. Here are the Scabious I've grown and they really shot up.
You can see how big those are so I'm just picking these out the moment putting them into
individual containers around over here you'll see then I've got the rid of
mix of poo potss here, recycled cardboard we've got
the coir containers and I mean these are so thick they feel really robust and
then you've got your bottom of the line newspaper in these little plant plants
and as I said those are probably last max four to six weeks which is why I'm
only using them for picking up this is a a really good cheap and cheerful way to
bring on your seedlings. If you want to give it a bit more rigid to see you can stick
them in yes guess what, an egg box! So now they're at the stage of picking
them out I can also start to introduce these paper pots but the reason why I
didn't use them at first when I've sown the seeds is that they don't last very
long and as some of these plants have needed about two months worth of
germination and the newspaper simply can't withstand that amount of moisture
for two months they fall to bits but they're great if you going to prick on
seedlings and they are only going to live in there for about three or four weeks. So I'm trialling those now and you'll be able to see the progress later on in this year.
These Borage are ready to be hardened off now they don't like having
their root system disturbed so I've grown them in larger pots to begin with and then I will
harden them off I'm gonna plant you directly in these pots
if I take them out start faffing about with them they get a bit annoyed.
They kinda go flat for a few weeks so we don't want that so these are going in a cold frame.
The reason why we put them in a cold frame is that they've been in that
protective environment for a couple of months now and they simply won't survive
if we have a sudden frost or a real drop in temperature it's like putting them in
a cold frame which is just a fancy name for a box with a clear lid outside you
can get them used to those lower temperatures
and the fluctuations pop them in in the day you leave the lid up unless it's
really frosty, snowy of we have a cold snap leaves the lid up at night as well
they'll just get used to that change of temperature it is gonna be cold you pop
the lid down to protect them leave them in don't keep moving around and they'll
never get hardened up. So once your seedlings and nearly the size when
you're gonna be planting them out these boys need to harden them up kids have
lived in that glass house for we don't want couple of months they're kind of a
little bit tender what we need to do is to take them to a cold phone like this
one, in you go! I have not had any issues touch wood with damping off, powdery
mildew or any of the other humidity related issues do you think that's
because the pots and the trays can breathe and there's better air for
they're not being wrapped or smothered in plastic so as it slows the
germination down I think the issue for the disease and
especially a damping off can be reduced by not using plastic so you might be
wondering at this stage why is garden ninja showing us all these weird and
wonderful herbaceous perennials and there isn't there is a logic to the madness if
I can grow these tricky herbaceous specimens without plastic in things like
paper pots, poo pots, newspapers and toilet rolls then you can pretty much grow
anything so I'm taking difficult seedlings to grow and showing
you that they can be grown without plastic so even at home growing some
flowers Tomatoes, cress whatever you want to grow
it can be done without plastic so there we have it the next stage in the
gardening without plastic challenge I pricked up some of the seedlings I'm now
hardening them off and I'll be giving you an update soon enough about the next
phase of this the gardening without plastic challenge if you've liked this
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whenever loads of garden design hints tips and hacks. I've been gardening ninja the
sun's out I've got my sunglasses out happy gardening!