David L Haigh - Enjoy Your Greenhouse: The Revised and Up-dated Version of How to Grow the Tastiest Food Crops in the Small Greenhouse

ENJOY YOUR GREENHOUSE

By David L Haigh

The revised and up-dated version of How to Grow the Tastiest Food Crops in the Small Greenhouse

David L Haigh 2020

All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 Hygiene, Heating and Compost

Chapter 2 Grafted Vegetable Plants

Chapter 3 Tomatoes

Chapter 4 Cucumbers

Chapter 5 Aubergines

Chapter 6 Sweet Peppers

Chapter 7 Chilli Peppers

Chapter 8 Pests, Diseases and Disorders

INTRODUCTION

My easy-to-follow guidelines in this book give you all the information needed to grow your own delicious, eye-catching food in an unheated greenhouse, or polythene tunnel.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillies and aubergines are available in the shops all the year round. To produce these crops in the United Kingdom for 12 months of the year would incur massive heating costs not a practice I advocate. The crops I grow between March and October only require a tiny amount of artificial heat in the propagation stages.

For twenty years I grew my fruit and vegetables in Carlisle, Cumbria. In June 2019 we moved to Castle Douglas in Galloway. As in Carlisle, we have a relatively short growing season. Any attempt to produce reliable crops of tender fruit and vegetables outdoors is likely to fail miserably. My 2.4 metre by 2.4 metre aluminium greenhouse, which moved with us, provides the ideal protected environment.

Grow-your-own reached even greater prominence in March 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown. Discovering the joys of gardening and appreciating the mental and physical benefits of growing plants coupled with the desire for food security has reached an even bigger audience.

Produce bought in supermarkets doesnt come with much choice. The varieties on sale have been grown for yield, storage life and looks. Flavour and nutrient content comes at the bottom of the list of desirable attributes.

Choosing which varieties to grow is great fun. Like me you will probably acquire a list of favourites. But, like me you will probably try out a few new ones each year, Lockdown meant some of my favourites sold out quickly in 2020. I had to try more new varieties than intended, two of which I will include in my list for future years. The varieties I recommend in this book are those which I find reliable and tasty. I include them for the benefit of readers who are new to greenhouse growing.

Managing the soil and choosing which composts to grow your plants in puts you in control. You will know the provenance of your own food. The ability to walk out of the kitchen door and pick your crops minutes before cooking and eating makes it as fresh as it gets. Whats more; no air miles are involved.

This book is intended to be used. Take it with you into the greenhouse. Put it down on your bench and refer to it as you follow the steps which will lead to success.

Having experienced the sublime flavours of a range of varieties of tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, peppers and chillies - your taste buds will sing out for more. You will not want to return to the bland offerings on supermarket shelves.

CHAPTER 1

HYGIENE , HEATING AND COMPOST

Pay Attention to Greenhouse Hygiene and Start with a Spring Clean

In the artificial environment of a greenhouse, pests and diseases spread with alarming speed. Its therefore vital to do everything possible to prevent their arrival in the first place.

Cleanliness is the first line of defence. Greenhouse hygiene is of paramount importance. Before the growing season starts in March the greenhouse should be completely emptied. Pots, trays, propagators, mobile staging and anything which can be moved should be taken outside. Then thoroughly wash the structure inside and outside with greenhouse disinfectant. The fixed staging, floors, door knobs and key holes must be deep cleaned. This gets rid of mosses, algae, disease spores and the overwintering stages of pests.

In spring young plants need as much light as their expanding little leaves can get. Clean glass allows the available light to reach your seedlings, which in turn leads to faster, stronger growth. If dirt has built up where panes of glass overlap this can be removed with an aluminium plant label.

Everything which was taken out of the greenhouse must also be thoroughly disinfected before being returned to its new hygienic home.

Keep Heating Costs to a Minimum

Heating a greenhouse is expensive. To keep down costs take measures to reduce unnecessary heat loss. Replace missing and cracked panes of glass. Make sure ventilators fit snugly and doors shut tightly.

I keep the cost of raising my plants to a minimum by germinating the seeds in an electric propagator (the running cost is similar to an electric light bulb). The young seedlings are then grown on in more electric propagators. I have five in total. Ventilation is gradually increased before the propagator lids are removed. By the second week of May the propagators can be switched off. Although I have an electric fan heater which is very efficient it costs far too much to run. Its a good insurance against a late cold spell and I have to keep a close watch on the weather forecast.

Most importantly, there is nothing to be gained by sowing too early. The third week of March is soon enough to begin. If sown too early, plants are ready for their final destinations in the cold greenhouse, whilst there is still a high risk of frost. If plants have to be held back to avoid death from frost the growth will be checked and yield will suffer.

Choose Good Quality Compost

Always use new good quality compost for germinating your seed and raising the young plants. Peat-free composts are improving with each passing year. In 2020 I grew 50% of my plants in peat-free compost and 50% in peat-based. I couldnt tell any difference between either compost in terms of plant health. However, I must add that my trial only involved one non-peat product. The brand I used contained a certain amount of coir. It dried out very quickly when we had a mini heat wave. The moral of this story is to be prepared to adjust your watering regime when using peat-free products and be alert to the need to provide shading when the sun is too severe.

Never be tempted to re-use old compost or make your own concoctions using materials such as garden soil, soil from mole hills and the like. You may have some success, but due to the unpredictability of these ingredients you could just as easily end up with a disaster.

CHAPTER 2

Grafted Vegetable Plants

What are grafted vegetable plants?

Grafted plants are resistant to fungal, bacterial, viral and nematode-carried diseases. Grafting is a delicate form of horticultural carpentry. Two varieties of the same type of plant are joined together by uniting the top part (the scion) of one plant to the root system (known as the rootstock) of another. This allows tasty and productive varieties to be grown onto specially developed, disease resistant rootstocks.

In the 1960s grafting was used by commercial tomato growers as a means to avoid soil-borne diseases. However the advent of easier soil sterilization, together with large scale production using hydroponics, meant a move away from the labour intensive and costly technique of grafting.

In the 1950s and 1960s the amateur could buy seeds of tomato rootstocks from mail-order catalogues. The gardener had to grow from seed their own rootstocks and their chosen varieties of tomatoes. Then, using a razor blade, they had to perform the tricky grafting operation themselves. Not surprisingly it wasnt a success.

For the amateur gardener, methods of growing in isolation from the greenhouse soil were introduced. Namely, ring culture and the most popular system of all, the use of grow bags. Consequently, grafted tomato plants were confined to garden history.