Flowers yes I'd be a little more careful with using for watering food crops - if you use an environmentally friendly powder or liquid it should be okay.

This came up on Gardener's Question time recently - consensus was, if you use eco products, environmentally friendly as Moongrower mentions, then its okay, but if you use ordinary detergents, provided you haven't used too much, then putting that on the soil for flowers and shrubs is okay,as long as you don't do it all the time, but not in pots and not on food crops.

How do you get water out of a washing machine? Do you stop it between cycles?

It's easy usually, Drc - the plumbing often consists of the outlet hose being shoved in the top end of a specially fitted waste pipe, so you can just hook it out - if its not boxed in.

Thanks Bamboo - worth considering as its a lot of water?

Don't fancy it myself, would mean pulling the washing machine out from under the worktop every time, and what container's big enough to catch it all in? And anyway, I live up 3 flights of stairs, lol!

Our discharge from the kitchen sink and washing machine goes into a pipe that is not connected directly to the drain - would be no problem for us to tap into.

It was easier years ago with a twin-tub! In with a bucket and sloosh out the back door!

Washing machine in large bathroom. Slosh out through window down sloping roof out kitchen extension into water butt - drain from there straight onto the garden! Hubs shouts at me 'cos he wants water standing for his pots.

Ah, so that's the secret Hazeyboo - very convenient, never mind hubby, shouldn't use it in his pots anyway, lol!