I was fortunate to be given some oak boards that were left over from a friend's flooring project, using a circular saw I cut 40 3" x 48" lengths to renovate 5 garden seats. There were still a few boards left over so I made this propagating frame for my greenhouse. I have installed a 12 metre warming cable and thermostat in it. The cable is buried in 4" of sharp sand, I used horticultural grade sand as this has been washed and is free from possible harmful chemicals. It is now ready for starting seeds which I will do very soon. I made a number of wooden labels and painted them white. When I first started in horticulture in the 1950's we always used wooden labels which were bought from the seed merchants, to make them go further we would split them down the middle to make two out of each one. Labels that survived a season were repainted on wet days.
Of course all the pots that we used were clay, they were known to us by numbers. We talked of 72's, 60's, 54's, 48's and 32's. I believe that the numbers referred to how many pots could have been made out if a given lump of clay. Another wet day job was cleaning the pots. Where I first worked we had the luxury of a pot washing machine. It consisted of an electric motor and belt driving a spindle on which were mounted two cut down lavatory brushes. The pots to be washed were in an old oil drum filled with water. It was a thankless task, however careful you were you always got thoroughly soaked, and your hands became so scrubbed and sore. However, the foreman was not without compassion and we would not be kept on it for too long.
This was in the potting shed which ran at right angles to 3 long greenhouses.The middle greenhouse was nearest to the boiler 'hole' where two sectional coke fed boilers heated the 4" diameter cast iron water pipes that ran under the benches of the greenhouses. In the centre house there was a doubling up of the pipes just at the entrance to create a propagating frame. The greenhouse stray cat had made a home in there and would occasionally be booted unceremoniously out when it curled up on a batch of newly struck cuttings. It was always fascinating to me to see how cuttings rooted so readily in this warm environment. coleus, hydrangeas, fuchsias, regal pelargoniums were the main stay. But occasionally some slightly more exotic species were rooted in there.
Of course all the pots that we used were clay, they were known to us by numbers. We talked of 72's, 60's, 54's, 48's and 32's. I believe that the numbers referred to how many pots could have been made out if a given lump of clay. Another wet day job was cleaning the pots. Where I first worked we had the luxury of a pot washing machine. It consisted of an electric motor and belt driving a spindle on which were mounted two cut down lavatory brushes. The pots to be washed were in an old oil drum filled with water. It was a thankless task, however careful you were you always got thoroughly soaked, and your hands became so scrubbed and sore. However, the foreman was not without compassion and we would not be kept on it for too long.
This was in the potting shed which ran at right angles to 3 long greenhouses.The middle greenhouse was nearest to the boiler 'hole' where two sectional coke fed boilers heated the 4" diameter cast iron water pipes that ran under the benches of the greenhouses. In the centre house there was a doubling up of the pipes just at the entrance to create a propagating frame. The greenhouse stray cat had made a home in there and would occasionally be booted unceremoniously out when it curled up on a batch of newly struck cuttings. It was always fascinating to me to see how cuttings rooted so readily in this warm environment. coleus, hydrangeas, fuchsias, regal pelargoniums were the main stay. But occasionally some slightly more exotic species were rooted in there.