Tales from Titchmarsh
Alan considers ways of being a thrifty gardener – and finds that some of the trusty old techniques are as useful today as they ever were
In the days when Geoff Hamilton used to present Gardeners’ World,
I would tease him mercilessly about his various economies. These ranged from glazing a coldframe with the thin polythene that covered a suit being returned from the dry cleaners (in itself a mystery, for I’m not sure that Geoff even possessed a suit), to making polytunnels out of the same stuff draped over wire coathangers moulded into shape. The teasing was good-natured and, if you stop to think about it, we all make similar economies while often being profligate in other areas.
That said, there is a mindset that stops some gardeners from spending fifty pounds on a well-grown tree, but about which they do not flinch when filling up the car with petrol every week. The tree – and the pleasure it brings – will far outlast the tank of petrol and, moreover, it will have a beneficial effect on the environment, unlike the carbon and exhaust emissions. Yet some people will still shake their heads at such costs, forgetting just how much loving care – and time – has gone into the growing of the tree by the nursery staff.
Then there is the art of growing your own vegetables – a laudable endeavour if ever there was one. Just don’t factor in your time, lest you should discover that a single pod of mangetout peas has cost you £2.45. What the heck – it tastes wonderful, you are fit as a butcher’s dog (or a fiddle – take your pick) and you are relieving pressure on the nation’s farmers and growers. What’s more, you cannot put a price on self-satisfaction (just try to avoid it morphing into smugness).
So where can you save money? By looking after your tools, for a start. And there’s no better time of year than this to give them an overhaul – a scrub, a rub-down first with emery paper and then with an oily rag. They’ll last a lifetime if you take just a little trouble.
There are old tricks to keeping tools in fine fettle. Years ago the great plantsman Roy Lancaster
(to drop yet another name) gave me a sawn-off dessert spoon. I have had stranger presents, but seldom any that are more useful. Roy had taken a hacksaw and sawn off half the bowl of the spoon. (It was a cheap one – not one from the family’s silver canteen bequeathed by great Aunt Amelia.)
Then he hammered the remaining half of the spoon flat, drilled a hole at the top of the handle through which a loop of twine could be threaded, so that the half spoon could be hung up in the potting shed, instead of slipping down between a stack of seed trays and getting lost. For the last 20 years I have
used this as the best spade cleaner ever. It skims off wet or dry mud better than anything I know, and every time
I use it, I have happy memories of a good mate.
The modern technique of shining up your spade involves the use of crumpled-up kitchen foil. Try it. Rub it over the spade blade and it brings it up a treat. Then you can buff it up with that oily rag or use the age-old technique known as the ‘ponica bucket’. You will find the term in no dictionary. It was coined by those from the last century who worked in private service – as gardeners around ‘the big house’.
The ponica bucket was filled with sharp sand, into which old sump oil had been poured. The two were mixed together to create an oily abrasive that had the double-edged benefit of removing any further residue of earth and, at the same time, coating the spade – or hoe or fork or trowel – with a thin layer of oil that would prevent rusting during those darker months when the tools are likely to get less wear. A small can of new engine oil mixed with sharp sand in an old bucket will make for an easier means of creating this relic of yesteryear. Ancient the idea may be, but it is as effective today as ever it was.
There are some old gardening techniques that I am not sad to see the back of – the routine spraying of roses, double digging on the vegetable patch and painting a greenhouse with whitewash to shade it in summer. But there are one or two I will happily retain. They are a pleasant link with the past and have yet to be superseded. Now go and find that dessert spoon…
So where can you save money? By looking after your tools, for a start. And there’s no better time of year than this to give them an overhaul