Tuesday, November 8

Recycling?

If you read Martyn's blog you will know that we had a bit of a mishap with our greenhouse. A pear fell from a branch overhanging our garden greenhouse and smashed one of the very large panes of glass.

Replacing glass with glass on the greenhouse roof is just about impossible - no let me rephrase that - IS impossible and so we - the Royal we that is - sent for a large sheet of acrylic sheeting. It was cut to size and wrapped in lots and lots of bubblewrap.

Now, I was worrying about how our peach tree - that started life as a nectarine - would fare over winter. It did make it through last winter but having sampled its fruits I would be really upset if it was damaged or even killed during the coming - it must come mustn't it? - bad weather.

I'd decided that I was going to wrap the pot in bubblewrap to give it some extra protection and so the packaging material from the acrylic sheet was just the job.

The peach pot has now been wrapped in about four layers and I had plenty left over to also wrap up the pot in which the mini kiwi is planted - although that has been popped in the greenhouse for winter.

After all that wrapping I still have some left which I will be able to throw over the perennial cuttings once the weather turns frosty!
The wrapping is folded over the top of the compost but can be opened up if we think the tree needs some water. The pot does have little feet that raise it off the ground but we have also popped it up on some bricks so that if we have lots of rain and it finds its way into the pot it will hopefully drain out easier.

So that's the best we can do for the plants - now we just need to sort out some lagged piping for our central heating boilers condensate pipe to avoid a repeat of it freezing up as happened last year only a week after being installed. Hopefully British Gas will sort that out for us this week!

15 comments:

  1. I hope they will appeciate your TLC, and repay you with lots of fruit next year.
    What did we do before bubble-wrap was invented?

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  2. Nice idea! I think I will borrow next winter for my curry leaf tree which is taking awhile to come back this year...

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  3. I don't really know Mark, we used to use bubblewrap as a sort of double glazing in the greenhouse when we used to heat it!

    Feel free Liz, not sure whether it will work but it's bound to be better than nothing.

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  4. Sorry to hear about that predicament.Hope everything goes well.

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  5. The greenhouse roof is now mended - it's the second time we have had glass broken by pears - soon the whole of one side of the greenhouse will have a acrylic roof!

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  6. I don't think you could do anything more, Sue. Fingers crossed that we don't get as bad a winter as we had last year.

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  7. Fingers and everything else crossed, Jo

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  8. Hoping the bubble wrap does the trick. You guys had a very harsh winter last (I remember from all the cancelled football games on the tele ;) I do admire the efforts you go through to baby your trees!

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  9. Hope your plant strive well and produce a lot of fruit!

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  10. I was a bad winter last year Jenni - hoping that we don't have a repeat but best to be prepared.

    So so I Malar, just can't wait to eat freshly picked peaches again!

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  11. Sorry I have been AWOL for a while, Blogger has not been letting me leave comments.

    You might want to consider the "tea light candle" trick for raising greenhouse temp. a degree or two if it gets really nasty over winter although your pots do look very well wrapped.

    Thanks for the comment about lagging the boiler condensate pipe .... {thinks} must do the same thing.

    PS to Mark - recently I heard [can't remember where] that bubble-wrap was originally invented for greenhouse insulation, the packaging industry hijacked it from gardeners. Nice story even if it's not true.

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  12. Great idea! I could employ the same tactics here to further insulate pots from heat perhaps...

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  13. We used to buy bubblewrap to insulate the greenhouse BW. The gas people are replacing our condensate with one lagged inside - apparently a Scandanavian design!

    Maybe you could Mrs Bok. Would something white reflect the heat back too.

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  14. I love to recycle anything possible...it's the best way to go!!

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  15. Yes the bubble wrap came at just the right time, Tanya

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