Humph's Happy Horti-cult: harvesting, preserving, mulching, leaf-gathering, bulb-dibbing, seed catalogue-surfing and hunkering down for winter

[Lexilicious]

Following on from the original March to August thread. For all - whether still gardening through the winter or planning to sweep the shed, hibernate, sharpen the tools and get started again in the spring.

Happy gardening again!

Having a flowers vs fruit crisis. In a 3 metre row on the south facing front wall of my house should I putraspberry canes or cottage garden annuals?

Am trying not to get my hopes up for summer evening patio sitting with fragrant night scents. I may not be able to plant enough stocks and honeysuckle to beat next door's dog shit. [grumpface]

Why choose? I think I'd put raspberries and low-growing annuals like nasturtiums (which I love, despite their blackfly-magnet qualities).

I am now having horrible flashbacks to our first garden, a roof terrace which on bad days smelt of the neighbours' dogs' wee.

Hello everyone - it's Christine here, with a NC. I bumped into Maud on another thread so thought I'd pop back to say hello. I'm not doing much in the way of gardening really - I had all the window frames painted before Xmas and the scaffolding trashed most of my beds so I'm not sure if things will come back or if I will have virgin soil - it's a bit of a wait and see.

I do need to revisit my main herbaceous border which I started last year. Some things were great, others didn't work at all so I will need to rethink some areas. My cannas didn't flower - I've never been able to make one flower. Am I just unlucky or do they need to be in a greenhouse or something to get going before planting out? I'm not much good with tender things.

My Stipa tenuissima is an utter joy though and I'm thinking of planting even more of it - I might come over all Piet Oudolf :o

Bah! Posted a long reply to Patti and the internet ate it.

I had said that my cannas never do well. My dad lifts his and keeps them in the garage over winter and they do splendidly. Mine left in the garden do not.

I don't really do grasses - the Piet Oudolf thing doesn't work for me - although I do like carex buchananii, which self seeds all over the place.

I have lifted my cannas and my dahlias so we will see. I don't think I will go entirely PO, I'm too keep on my herbaceous border and given I've only got 5 square metres to play with, I need to pack in a lot of interest.

The decorators may have done me a favour in some senses because they have destroyed part of the really established shrubs in the front that I don't love but they are useful for cooking (rosemary and sage) and I use them too much to wait for new plants to establish. They did kill my peony though so I think I will treat myself to a new one

Sounds like a good plan.

I have just treated myself to a climbing white rose (no further details) and a Paul's Scarlet from the 99p Store. I'm not sure why as the Paul's Scarlet I bought there last year died, but I guess at 99p one can be cavalier about such things. As roses otherwise do well here, I have decided to really go for it!

Veg seeds arrived today (and another catalogue...). Is it wrong to be so excited?

Have also just downloaded a new gardening app onto DH's iPad. Will report back once I've had a play at planning out this year's plot .

I knew I needed an iPad. Are there lots of exciting gardening apps available?

Oh, oh, oh. Very good-looking hippeastrums in terracotta pots in Lidl for only (IIRC) £2.95 today. I paid more than that just for a bulb.

hello everyone

could you plan my veg plot too please? I need all the help I can get.

Inspection next week so garden taking a back seat atm

Hello Humphrey.

My Crocus order has just arrived. I am (I hope) going to be in rosy heaven this summer. I blame you and your rose walk!

As for veg plot, I have always wanted to do the native American thing of beans growing up sweet corn and squashes in between. Have you tried that?

That sounds wonderful - I will look it up. We could do that!

Rosy Heaven mmmmmmm.

Three sisters planting

Yes, rosy heaven will be bliss, although I imagine it will take a couple of years to get going.

I've done three sisters planting on a small scale, with sweetcorn (supersweet), peas (kelvedon wonder) and courgettes (can't remember which). It worked fairly well, although the peas still needed a few twigs to start scrambling.

What a lovely term, 'three sisters planting' :)

My friend gave me one of the lidl hippeastrums for Xmas - it's an annual tradition. They are always beautiful and well worth the money

Rosy heaven sounds fabulous! I'm hoping to have a slice of that.

What are you looking to do with your veg plot Humphrey? What about adding some colour eg crimson flowering broadies, purple and yellow beans, Scarlett kale, rainbow chard?

New houses were built by us last year. There's a corner at the top which Borders their entrance and our driveway. There bit has been planted with some very boring evergreen shrubs and bark so I thought I'd do our side (not technically ours , think highways own it.

Scavenged round my garden and the scrubby bit there and have one hypericum, one vibernum, one Holly, two laurel, rose cutting to go up fence if they root, forget me not, violets, alpine strawberries, phlox, couple of poppy seedlings and a some tiny dianthus plugs I forgot to plant last year. I'm going to add calendula and cornflower seeds and possibly sunflowers as saved them from last year. Pretty pleased with that, hopefully should look good in a few years when they get bigger.

Thanks for the link, I love it. Will def give it a go.

Colour sounds great too - I think the problems is too much veg patch. I have two, one round and meant to be pretty, and one enormous rectangular thing we did last year. This is meant to be more functional. What actually happened is that they both got coverered with a lot of weeds as well as veg

Ah weeds, yes they are buggers!

What about breaking the rectangular bed into sections ? Did this on the allotment . Made a diamond in the middle filled with herbs. Then made a path down the middle and by side of herb bed and another path across it again round the herbs . Mine was weed membrane with bricks and stones edging it and smaller stones for the path.

Then you have 4 sections so can rotate if you can be bothered but it's easier to keep on top of things if you just wack a hoe round one section at a time . Do the 3 sisters in one quarter, in another you could do a fair few spuds, then ongoing sowing of carrots, swede, Beetroot, celeriac .

Rainbow chard, Scarlett kale, red cabbage, spinach, bush tomatoes and chillis in 3rd section. Then maybe a tuber section, Yacon and Oca are very low maintenance, with maybe some bush beans. Chuck in a few rows of marigolds as they cover weeds a bit.

In the round one do 4 rustic teepee jobs as they take up space and hide all the weeds in the middle which you only have to deal with at the end of the season . Borlotti as you don't have to pick, one of sweet peas, another of something like cherokee trail of tears then another of Purple Ecosse. Some soft fruit planted through membrane somewhere. Sow in rows with enough room to get the hoe through, have the rows going in different directions for variety but always with enough space for the hoe. Wolf Garten push pull weeded is fab and makes light work of weeding.

My anti-weeding tip is to use the black weed fabric on things that need lots of space between them - like the pumpkin patch. Everything gets planted through the fabric and ta-da! no weeding!

I planted my sweetcorn in my pumpkin patch last year so sort of half-way to three sisters. Worked fairly well, but everything gets quite hungry so rich soil required, would need even more food for beans as well.

Still haven't played with the iPod app properly but have made DH promise to leave it at home tomorrow as I'll probably find a free moment to plot some stuff. Looks like it makes great visual layouts though and puts in little pics of your veg.

This all sounds lovely. I like the planting ideas - I am only in my second year of growing veg and I don't really feel as if I have a handle on it at all. Marigolds around the round patch (this is divided into three large beds with paths through and round, edged in stone) would be gorgeous and stop stuff from overshooting the paths which I have had a problem with so far. Stepping over stuff all the time disturbs me - clear paths are essential for inner peace! I didn't even know that you could grow chillis outside here. Am off to google some of the other things you mention. I have to google stuff a lot as I don't know enough about plants. It is very frustrating.

Have I mentioned that my chickens are called Wynken, Blynken and Nod?

Your allotment sounds fantastic.

Humph - the Jungleseeds site does a lot of the lesser known veg that Wynken mentioned. Was tempted by Oca myself but don't have the space this year.

I am going to a seed fair this weekend. If anyone has anything they want me to look out for, PM me.

I have never succeeded with Cherokee Trail of Tears but, again, it's a lovely idea. Painted Lady beans are very pretty. I am toying with the idea of growing sweet potatoes this year - has anyone grown them outdoors?

Chillis are hit and miss outside I think. Last year was rubbish, year before great. DH is turning into a Chilihead so ours are going under lights this year, a job for this weekend.

Someone on the allotment did try sweet potato but I'm not sure how successful they were.

I have a few spare Oca tubers if anyone would like some. And possibly Yacon if I can get to grips with the whole growing tip propagation thing. Also bush ying yang beans Cherokee trail of tears and that purple French bean, oh and Borlotti - we had a lot of beans this year so dried a fair few. PM me if you'd like anything.

The point of three sisters planting is that the 3crops benefit each other. Sweetcorn gives peas/beans something to scramble up, pumpkin/squash gives ground cover and suppresses weeds, and peas/beans fix nitrogen from the air and store it in roots where the other 2 crops can use it as food.
Adding legumes to your veg patch means less feeding, not more

I did sweet potatoes last year under a polythene cloche outside. I wouldn't again. They need lots of warmth and light and water and a long growing season. They take up more space than i can afford to lose for the whole summer.

If I had a greenhouse sites directly on good soil I might do them again but I would have to have more other space than I knew what to do with...!