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Badly explained help!

Like everyone here I always read all the gardening sections of newspapers, online and wherever we find them.

I quite often read the same 'solutions' that are often wrong or badly explained. Can you add that you have found or are just silly?

I will start with 'cluster your pots together during a frost for protection'

Plants do not release heat, so those pots all need to be in sun for a few hours to store any heat to provide any protection. Clustering pots anywhere where the pots themselves are not in sun is wasting your time.

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  • WelshonionWelshonion Posts: 3,114

    If the pots are clustered it makes it easier to throw some protection over them.  Perhaps they just needed to add that to make sense of the tip!

  • You're right, though, the advice does rather suggest that the plants can huddle together like sheep or penguins to conserve their body-heat.

    I suppose there would be some protection from the cooling effect of frosty winds. But as remarked already, the main benefit would be that youcould then protect the whole cluster with a layer of bubble-wrap or something.

  • Lupin 1Lupin 1 Posts: 8,916

    Ventilate GH's on mild Winter days. I think 15C is mild.

    I know what they mean but mild & Winter don't go together for me.   

  • I can't understand when you read 'Bracts' and 'Leaves' in the same sentence. I thought they were one in the same?

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,064

    They're different.  A bract is a leaf like structure found just below a flower.  Usually the flower is insignificant in form and size but essential for reproduction so the bract is brightly coloured to advertise it.  

    Leaves are for transpiration and photosynthesis.

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • Thanks obelixx,

    That makes sense, I understand now.

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,064

    KEF - It's winter yet it's 8C at head height on our north facing back wall.   That is positively balmy.

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • I find the labels with only hieroglyphs very unhelpful. Written for and international market but a lazy option nonetheless.

  • "Hardy"

    Bet it isn't up here, pal!!image

    I'm very pleased that the RHS have introduced a new hardiness guide - will the plant labelling companies use it??   3 guesses - 1 will do!image

    imageimage

  • In technical terms, the soil in the pots will radiate heat as infra-red radiation (heat) in all directions.  If a pot is surrounded by other pots, some of this heat will be absorbed by the other pots instead of being lost to the environment.  The effect of this is that (say) 10 pots clustered together will cool down more slowly than 10 pots spaced widely apart, so it is worth doing.

    image

    A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
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