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Recommended Gardening Products

These are products I use and know are good, either designed by me or made by suppliers I recommend.

Plantsurge magnetic device

Claim an automatic 10% discount when buying from this link. Or use the code Nodig when buying from plantsurge website.
If in North America, best click on the plantsurge link for there.

It's a device in two halves, each with a magnet. Magnetic attraction between the two halves holds the device onto standard half inch / 12mm hoses or pipes. It works for diameters up to 20mm.

I have noticed improvement in growth from using it when watering. For example the polytunnel salads were extra productive from December 2022 through April 2023, after some unusually cold weather.

I find it also softens the water here. For example the kettle now has little new scale of calcium carbonate.

Veda Austin on Instagram does microscope analysis of water quality and wrote to me that her plantsurge device made a noticeable structural improvement to tap water. She wrote "I even use it on my shower hose because it's so simple to apply".

She visited Homeacres October 2023 and helped me to do an ice crystal analysis if the tap water here. It has beautiful imagery! A heart shaped leaf under a gable roof, with many ladder structures nicely organised.

CD module trays, made by Containerwise

Module trays of my own design, made of recycled polypropylene which is strong and durable.

The trays have wide holes at the bottom that enable plants to be pushed up easily and also improve drainage. The tapered cells require less compost and result in no waterlogging around the roots. The polypropylene creates smooth and solid cells that help plant rootballs  slide upwards with little or no damage to the plant roots, and none to the tray.

More information in these YouTube videos:

The trays are available in three sizes – 15, 30 and 60 cell, and available from the following distributors (prices vary so best to check the individual websites).

Cell size is the same in all of these trays. The only variable is number of cells per tray.

For the 60 cell tray, there is a board for both making holes and popping up each rootball from below - a dib popper. It's dual purpose with dowels of 9mm for sowing and 16mm for ejecting rootballs. Available here: https://containerwise.co.uk/product/dib-popper-cd60/

UK: Containerwise / The Refill Room

Ireland: Quickcrop

The Netherlands: The Farm Dream

Denmark: FantastikeFroe

Also Denmark by Barney DK

Norway: Lindholm gård

North America: All About The Garden

Australia and New Zealand: Sow your Seeds (Tasmania)

Long-handled ash dibber

A long-handled ash dibber of my own design which is made in the UK by an expert woodturning company. As you would expect for a product of this quality, the dibber is superbly sanded and finished with the best product available, Danish Oil.

You can buy the dibber for £34.95  via the Garden Imports UK website. The latest model features grooves notched into the timber at precise intervals (more info on this, and how to use the dibber, on the Garden Imports website).

We also have a stockist in North America, All About the Garden.

Covers – fleece, mesh and netting

I recommend the website Gardening Naturally for fleece, mesh and bird netting.  My affiliate link is here.

In summer, I recommend to cover new brassica plantings with fine veggiemesh.

In early spring, it’s worth covering new plantings with fleece. There’s a lot of poor quality stuff available, but this fleece is thicker (30gsm), stronger and will last you for several years of use. Also you never need to wash it.

Sometimes the thicker fleece is a little too heavy to sit on top of plants. Also it’s frustratingly opaque so you can’t see what is happening underneath and, therefore, I like to use also the 25 g/m², available on eBay.

Quickcrop also sell 35 gsm fleece.

Clothing

For that no dig reminder and to keep you warm in the garden, please visit the Teemill site to see a clothing range of my own design!

The T-shirts, sweaters and hoodies are all made from organic cotton.

Copper tools

I recommend the beautifully made copper tools sold on the Implementations, who are based at a biodynamic farm in Berkshire.

My favourites of these tools are the Castor trowel, Hydra hoe, and … Orion spade. A spade? So good when planting trees and shrubs, plus when removing stem-roots of brambles.

The tools are 95% copper, and 5% 10 which gives a lot of extra strength. Strictly speaking that is bronze but colloquially, the word copper is commonly used.

Because they do not to rust, the blades stay smooth and shiny, sliding easily through compost and soil with minimal disturbance. Also the capillary structure of soil is not damaged and that's based on the work of Victo Schuberger who first advised using copper. That was in the early 1930s when he was called in by the king of Bulgaria to advise on why their wheat harvests were declining. Schauberger noticed worst problems were where they had switched from using wooden mouldboard ploughs to iron. When they reverted to wood or used copper in some form, the harvests went back up.

See this book Living Water.

Trimmer and shredder

The hedge trimmer I use is a Stihl HLA 85.

And a Bosch AXT 25 TC electric shredder, which chops and crushes up to 45mm diameter.

Steel hoops

Reddifast Steel make the 4mm high tensile, galvanised, straightened wire – buy from Sharanya Eco Garden.

A less expensive alternative is 5mm, softer and not high tensile wire. This site sells it in long rolls. You will notice that the hoops bend more, but can still support the weight of fleece and mesh. Thanks to Frederic Berkmiller for this information.

A supplier in The Netherlands: www.degaasgigant.nl

Analemma

A friend of mine bought me an Analemma 'wand' (my term!) as a gift. It has been developed by a group of scientists in Europe, over the last two decades and with extensive trialling. With people and on plants.

By stirring the with the Analemma device, which holds "coherent" water, you can transform tap water, even beer and wine, into liquids with wonderful flavour. Just to be clear, the water stays as water and does not become wine! The most common feedback I have is that it's so smooth!.

The water molecules become aligned and the feel of the water when you drink it is soft, also a little viscous. This aligns with the work of Gerald Pollack, in his book, The Fourth Phase of Water. That phase is defined as existing where the H2O molecules have flattened down into a hexagonal framework, such as one sees in a honeycomb. Another term for it is liquid crystalline, or semicrystalline water. Other people call it structured. There is no one agreed term.

The only UK distributor of Analemma is Atta Life and they point to all the research carried out by the Analemma team. It's fascinating to read of the health benefits not only for us but for plants too.

I have now fitted a garden hose Analemma and I will be doing a trial to see the difference in health and growth of my plants. If you would like to look into this further please use this link.