Greenhouse vegetables

This section does not really belong to the topic "no-dig". You can read a lot online about how to grow in greenhouses to extend the growing season and grow warmth-loving plants that are difficult to thrive outdoors in parts of the UK.

But we still want to say a few words about how we supplement our "no-dig" garden with greenhouse crops. Our method is one of many - we do not claim it is the best, but it suits us.

We do not use the greenhouse to extend the growing season. We think it is nice to take a much needed rest from mid-September to mid-March, when the indoor sowing begins. We use the greenhouse to grow tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, with brilliant results. We will also try different kinds of melons in the coming season.

In our first year we tried hydroponic growing and bought an Autopot system. The promises of a carefree way to grow greenhouse vegetables with sparse irrigation intervals, appealed to us. It worked wonderfully well until we started to get blossom end rot on the tomato plants. Once it has started, it is difficult to stop. The supplier told us that using this system has led to such problems with tomato plants (our eggplants and peppers were good). That it was one of the hottest summers ever in Sweden may also have played a role, but we did not dare to chance again. We have heard that Autopot has now launched "Smart Pot" which can be used with the Autopot system and which uses soil as a medium. We might try this sometime.

Last year we bought Hozelock growbag waterers and are incredibly satisfied. They are quite expensive to buy but we hope they will last for many years to come. We put a whole 50-liter bag of organic tomato soil directly on the bench (ie we do not empty out the soil). The irrigation spikes sticking up in the sack keeps the plants constantly watered from the water reservoir under the sack. At the end of the season we dump the soil in our compost.

We give the plants a little organic algae based nutrition (Green Future) once a week. Since the pH of our water is too high for tomato plants, we add a pH-lowering agent (Gold Label Ultra Ph-) to the water tank from which we water our grow bag waterers. When it starts to get really hot, we also add a Cal-Mag which contains calcium, magnesium and iron that helps prevent nutritional deficiencies, top root etc.