My Science School

•  Film protection for seeds

If you've just sown flower seeds in a seedbed and are pleased with the spacing and soil coverage, you can go one extra step towards warming the soil and speeding germination, and keeping the earth moist and thwarting birds foraging for seeds. All it takes is spreading a layer of clear plastic wrap over the seeded area. Anchor the plastic with rocks and remove it as soon as the seeds have sprouted.

•  A salt that flowers crave

Epsom salts consist of magnesium sulphate, which, as a supplement to your plants' regular feedings, will deepen the colour of blooms and help to fight disease. Every three or four weeks, scratch 1 teaspoon Epsom salts into the soil around an annual or perennial's stem and water well. Alternately, dissolve 1 tablespoon Epsom salts in 3.5 litres water. Every two weeks or so, pour some of the solution into a spray bottle and spray the leaves of your flowers.

•  Prop up tall perennials

Peonies, delphiniums and gladiolus are among a number of tall perennials that generally need support. A wooden stake is the usual answer, but a less obtrusive option is a tall, old lampshade frame. Place the metal frame, narrow side down, amid seedlings when they're about 15cm tall, working the frame into the soil to a depth of about a centimetre. As the seedlings grow, tie them loosely to the top of the frame with twist ties. The leaves will obscure the frame as the blooms above stand tall.

•  Bromeliads like fruit

To encourage a potted bromeliad's rosette of leaves to sprout its pretty flower, place the plant in a plastic dry-cleaning bag with a ripening banana or three or four ripe apples. The ethylene emitted from the fruit will stimulate flower production.

• Splints for bent stems

If any of your flower stems are bent, pick one of these common items to use as a splint: for thin stems, a toothpick or cotton bud; for thicker stems, a drinking straw, pencil, ballpoint pen or paddle-pop stick. Fix the splints to stems with clear tape, but not too tightly.

•  Ties for stakes

‘Ropes’ made from old pantihose have long been used to tie snapdragons, hollyhocks, tomatoes and other tall flowers and climbing vegetables to stakes (they're soft and pliable), but pantihose aren't the only household item that will serve the purpose. Try these ties:

1. Gift-wrapping ribbon left over from birthday parties


2.  Broken cassette tapes


3.  Plastic garbage bag ties


4.  Dental floss (the thicker kind)


5.  Velcro strips


6.  Fabric strips cut from old sheets


7.  Strips of hessian or sacking material

•  Make a flower dome

 Get creative and use an old umbrella — stripped of both its handle and fabric — as a frame for a flowering climber or vine. In the spot of your choice, drive a 1.5-m metal pipe wide enough to accommodate the handle into the ground about 30cm deep, then slide the umbrella stern inside. Plant seedlings of morning glory or any other thin-stemmed flowering vine next to the pipe. Over the next few weeks a unique garden focal point will take shape.

•  Make hand cleaning easier

 If your garden gloves have gone missing but you need to work in the soil of your flowerbeds, just scrape your fingernails over a bar of soap before you start doing the messy work. The dirt will come out from under your nails more easily when you scrub your hands.

•  Bag bulbs to prevent rot

Brown paper bags filled with sawdust or coconut fibre peat are the easy answer to the winter storage of tender crocus, tulip, daffodil, iris and other bulbs and rhizomes. Put a 5-cm layer of sawdust or peat in the bottom of the bag and then arrange bulbs of the same type on top, making sure that they don't touch. Continue layering the bulbs and organic material until the bag is about three-quarters full. Clip the bag closed with clothes pegs or bulldog clips and use a marker to label each bag with the name of the bulbs contained inside.

•  Plastic bulb protectors

To keep underground pests from burrowing and nibbling on newly transplanted bulbs, seal the bulbs off in wide-topped plastic containers. Before planting, punch drainage holes into the bottom and sides of a large plastic bottle or carton, bury it in the soil up to the open top and fill it with soil and humus. Plant two or three small bulbs in the container or one or two larger bulbs. This won't stop rats or mice from attacking your bulbs, but it will protect them against burrowing pests.

Old plastic storage boxes are more space-efficient — and you may find other kinds of potential bulb protectors if you go rummaging through your garage or shed.

•  Flavour food with scented geraniums

Scented geraniums have edible leaves that release a fragrance when rubbed. Among the varieties to grow in pots (or, in warmer climate areas, flowerbeds) are those with the aroma of rose, lemon, apple, apricot, lime, coconut, cinnamon, ginger, mint or nutmeg. Foods that benefit from the addition of finely chopped scented geranium leaves include fruit compotes, biscuits, cakes and poached pears.

•  Newspaper protection for young trees

If you have planted out tree saplings that look a bit spindly, wrap the trunks in newspaper to protect them from the elements. Secure this newspaper sleeve with garden twine. Or make a foil sleeve, to prevent rabbit damage. Remove the newspaper or foil within a month to prevent insects from collecting inside the sleeve.

•  Lichens: love them or hate them?

Lichens are the ruffled, fungus-like organisms that grow on stones, brick walls and tree trunks. Many gardeners love the natural look that lichens lend to trees and paths — but if you're not among them, this is a simple way to make lichens disappear: scrub them with a stiff brush dipped in a solution of 2 tablespoons household bleach and 1 litre water. Be very careful that none of the run-off comes into contact with other garden plants.

•  Warm sleeve for standard stem roses

Standard roses are ordinary rosebushes grafted onto long rootstock trunks. To protect the graft in cold winter areas, cut the sleeve off an old jumper or sweatshirt. Prune back the bush's top growth in late autumn, then slit the sleeve and wrap it around the graft scar, tying it at top and bottom. Stuff the sleeve with coconut fibre peat or clean straw for insulation, then tie a split plastic bag around the stuffed sleeve for protection against severe frost. When you remove the sleeve in spring, your rose should grow more vigorously.

•  Speed rose-blooming with foil

 In mid-spring, place sheets of aluminium foil on the ground beneath your rosebushes and anchor the foil with stones. Sunlight reflecting off the foil will speed up blooming.

•  Feed bananas to roses

Most gardeners know that banana skins make a good fertilizer for tomatoes, peppers and their solanaceous cousins, but roses love them, too. Chop banana skins (up to three) into small pieces and dig them into the soil beneath a rosebush. The banana skins provide both phosphorus and potassium — important plant nutrients that spur the growth of sturdier stems and prettier blooms.

•  A grassy boost for azaleas

After mowing the lawn, lay some of the grass clippings out to dry. Then spread a thin layer of clippings around the base of azalea plants. As the grass decays it leaches nitrogen into the soil, supplementing regular feeds. Many gardeners find this 'something extra' speeds the growth of azaleas and darkens the leaves. Be careful, though: piling the grass clippings too thickly may make them slimy and, in turn, expose the plant's stems to disease.

•  Cola and tea for gardenias and azaleas

Occasionally watering a gardenia or azalea bush with a can of cola will increase the acidity of the soil, while the sugar will feed micro-organisms and help organic matter to break down. And tea? Place tea bags around the base of a gardenia or azalea plant and then cover with mulch. Whenever you water the plants, the ascorbic acid, manganese and potassium present in the tea leaves will trickle down to the shrubs' hungry roots.

•  Cleaning sap off pruning tools

Taking a saw or shears to tree branches usually leaves sticky sap on the tool. Use a clean cloth to rub any of the following substances onto the blade(s), and say 'goodbye' to sap:

1.  Nail polish remover


2.  Baby oil


3.   Olive oil cooking spray


4.  Suntan oil


5.  Margarine

•  Lubricate pruning shears

Rubbing petroleum jelly or spraying WD-40 onto the pivot joint of a pair of shears will have you snipping away at shrubs so smoothly that you will feel like a professional pruner.

Credit: Reader's Digest

Picture Credit: Google

• Make seed holes with chopsticks

Instead of buying a dibber — the wooden garden tool used to poke seed holes in the soil — use a chopstick or pencil instead. You'll get the same holes for free. Another choice is a full-sized pair of folding nail clippers, the blunt arm of which you can poke into the soil and twist. When the time comes to transplant seedlings, use the same arm of the clippers to work a seedling and its rootball from the soil.

• No dibbing (or watering) required

An alternative to dibbing holes into the soil of a seed tray is to wet the soil, lay the seeds on the surface then cover them with another thin layer of soil. Cover the tray with a tight layer of plastic wrap and your job is done. Condensation on the wrap will drip down to keep the seeds moist until germination.

•  Spice jars as seed sowers

Before sowing seeds directly into a seedbed, put them in an empty dried herb or spice jar — the kind with a perforated plastic top. Then shake the seeds out over the seedbed or along a row.

• Sowing tiny seeds

Seeds of impatiens, lobelia, carrots, lettuce and a few other flowers and vegetables are so miniscule that they are difficult to sow evenly. To remedy the problem and make seedlings easier to thin out once they sprout, combine the seeds with fine dry sand and add the mix to an empty salt shaker. This will put some space between tiny seeds.

•  Make your own plant markers

To label your seeds tray by tray so you won't risk confusing your specially chosen tomato varieties, turn empty yogurt pots, cottage-cheese tubs or other white plastic containers into plant markers. Cut strips from the plastic, trim the ends to a point and use an indelible felt-tip marker to write the plant name (variety included) on each. Stick the strips into the edge of the trays as soon as you plant seeds so you'll know which plant is which from the start.

•  Paper-cup seed starters

Small paper drinking cups make excellent seed starters. They're the right size, you can easily poke a drainage hole in the bottom and they're easily cut apart when it comes time to plant your seedlings. Note that we specify paper cups: polystyrene cups may sit in landfill until your great-great-grandchildren have come and gone.

• Dry-cleaning bag humidifier

To provide the humidity needed to root a tray of cuttings, lay a dry-cleaning bag over the cuttings, making sure that it doesn't touch the plants. (Paddle-pop sticks or pencils can serve as ‘tent poles’.) Clip the bag to the rim of the seed tray with clothes pegs or small bulldog clips.

•  Root rose cuttings under glass

An easy way to root a cutting from your favourite rosebush is to snip off a 10-15-cm piece of a stem that has flowered and plant it in good soil in a pot. Then cover it with a large glass jar to create a mini-greenhouse.

• Willow-tea rooting preparation

Soak a handful of chopstick-sized fresh willow twigs in water to make a solution of natural plant-rooting hormone tea. Cut 6-8 twigs from a willow (any species), then split them. Cut twigs into 7-cm pieces and steep them in a bucket filled with 9-12cm water for 24 hours. Use the tea either to water just-planted cuttings or as an overnight soaker for the base of cuttings.

•  A rolling seed tray

Recycle an abandoned, old toy cart into a seed tray on wheels. Poke holes in the cart bottom with a screw-hole punch and hammer, then fill the cart with coconut fibre peat pots or expandable peat pellets, labelling as you go.

•  Potatoes as transporters

When moving plant cuttings to another location, you can use a potato as a carrier. Simply slice a large potato in half crossways, poke three 2cm-deep holes in each cut side with a chopstick or pencil, then insert the cuttings, which should stay moist for about 3-4 hours.