Sarah Raven’s washing up liquid hack will work wonders in your garden

It's a household staple, which usually performs miracles in the kitchen sink, yet according to Sarah Raven, the humble washing up liquid can also work wonders in the garden, too.

The gardening and cooking expert appeared at Good Housekeeping Live, in partnership with Dyson, where she spoke on stage and shared her top tips with readers.

When discussing how to nurture tulips, Sarah revealed that washing up liquid (specifically, Ecover) can help to revive the pretty flower.

Sarah began by advising readers, "You're much better to wait [before planting bulbs] - as long as you keep them cool, so they don't start sprouting and go soggy. Even put them in the fridge if you can, until Christmas."

While Sarah did reveal that ideally, bulb planting should be complete by the end of the Christmas break, she admitted that she's "not worried" about planting them later.

She then reminisced about working on the beloved BBC Two programme, Gardeners World, revealing that the team once experimented with a trial, which involved planting "a wonderful light flash green tulip" called Spring Green, every 10 days from the middle of September until the end of January.

According to Sarah, the flowers planted in January bloomed in June and were just as good as the ones panted in September - if not better.

Sarah then gave her top tips on tackling tulips which have been ridden with a common fungal disease called fire.

"If they're in pots, you can clean them. We use citrox, which is an organic liquid and less invasive than Jeyes fluid," she said.

"The other thing we treat them with is a very natural treatment: mix bicarbonate of soda (two teaspoons) with sulphur (one teaspoon) or a teaspoon of liquid soap (Ecover) in a litre of water."

She added: "We had huge success with that last year with mildew, which is fungal - as is Tulip fire.

"But you need to get the prevention in there as early as possible. You must start as the tulip starts to come up - you can't wait until you've got it. It's not like an antibiotic."