Vitamin Green

I read about cloches on the You Grow Girl website. A cloche can be thought of as a bell-shaped mini-greenhouse that gardners use to protect plants from frost, insect or rodent attacks, provide additional humidity or general protection for plants until they are able to look after themselves.

I’ve been having trouble with field rats that seem to enjoy feasting on the roots of my baby plants. I thought this was an innovative solution to keeping the rats out till the plants are able to look after themselves. Of-course, these are made from recycled soft drink bottles and have all the positives mentioned in our previous post.

These are really easy to make. Take a pointy-tipped  serrated knife and poke a hole in the bottle about an inch or so above the base. Slide the knife in and cut the bottle all around so that the bottom comes away. Using scissors you can neaten the cut edge to remove all traces of clumsiness. And that’s it! Your cloche’s ready to use. Use larger 5 or 10 litre bottles for bigger plants.

Garden leaves are usually burnt in Goa. But that isn’t the healthiest option since the smoke disperses ash and adds CO2 and other toxic elements in our vicinity.

As this blog post says, its much better is to compost the garden leaves and use them to ‘fertilise’ your plants.

But, don’t just do it yourself – remember to educate your neighbour and maid too.

Via The Casual Gardener

If you live in an aparment, gardening has its own set of challenges. But you’ll be astounded at what can be achieved even with severe space restrictions. Window boxes, small pots and planters are enough for you to start a small kitchen garden.

For ideas on how you can start your own container garden, have a look here.

From Apartment Therapy