More greenhouse gadgets – the quadgrow system

Today was quite a productive day in the garden, despite some heavy showers (really heavy – heavy enough that they drowned me out while I was filming in the greenhouse).

The first job for today was to pot the courgettes up into their final pots to be put out into the garden in their final homes.

I kept 4 of the courgette plants, although if we get a good crop, 4 will be far too much. However I have no idea whether they are green or yellow. There was a small labeling accident, and I knocked the labels over so it’s a bit like courgette roulette. As I said, I kept 4, I actually had about 7 good plants this year, but my friend Alex has taken some for her garden, so they didn’t go to waste.

I don’t know why, but having the courgettes out in their proper place feels like things are right with the world, like it’s all coming together. I think it’s just cause I’m so used to seeing the plants sitting between the veg beds, that things look bare otherwise.

The other big job I got done today was to set up my other new gardening gadget, my quadgrow system.

One of the biggest things that needs to be managed in the greenhouse is the watering of the tomato plants. It is so easy to miss the signs and before you know it, your plants are desperate for a drink or you over water them and the fruit splits. This basically means you can never go away, not even for a weekend because the plants need so much care.

The fancy new widget should hopefully help with this, letting us finally get a honeymoon this year.

The quadgrow, is essentially a water reservoir, which the tomatoes sit on top of. Inside the tomato pots is some capillary matting which sits through the pots and into the reservoir, theoretically meaning the plants pull the water from this when they need it, rather than me watering them from the top of the soil.

The sales pitch for this says that it also means you get double the crop because the watering is so efficient and plant is never under stress. I’ll be happy if I just come home from my holidays and my plants are still alive!!!

It’s a very simple system, but I’m hopeful that it will live up to expectations.

For those of you who want to know more, I’ve made a really short video for my youtube channel showing how the system works. It’s also fun to watch just to hear how bad the rain gets.