Osteospermumsnet.com - flutter your foliage, pick your produce, shake your seed packets and bring your blooms to the Spring Show

[Lexilicious]

Welcome to the gardening quiche :)

Earlier malarkey was here

All welcome whether you are a Sackville-West or a Dimmock, an Oudolf or a Swift. Whether you dream of digging or dig for dreams.

Fair weather or foul, we've got disco lights in the potting shed and fairy lights on the terrace. Bring gin, wine just doesn't cut it round here.

I think my dream panel would be Wilson for the garden, George Clarke for the house, and Benedict Cumberbatch for, well, entertainment.

I'm in for the Benedict Cumberbatch one!

Where did I say I was selling tickets, hm? They're mine ALL MINE!

Mind you if you bring a vicky sponge, and someone else bring the pimms and perry, I'll knock up some vol-au-vents, and we can make some polite conversation before showing them the potting shed/workshop/cinema room, as appropriate.

Will get dh baking then!

You are saucy, Lexi!

Met a lady who I bought more plants off today who gave me the tip of copper in plant pots to keep white fly away. Anyone heard this before?

ooh, I've just bought some copper plant labels - thought they looked nice but never realised they may have a dual purpose - and will be putting some in my pots of basil so I will report back. (usually suffer vwith green / whitefly on basil)

Chix - my mulberry starts getting ripe berries in July and I'm normally picking for 4-6 weeks. Messy job though, mulberry juice stains!

My mulberry tree hasn't done anything fruity yet but it is only a baby. We bought it the year I was pg with ds so it's been in for four years and it still looks smaller than the trees you buy in Aldi in February!
We are in it for the long haul though!

Thanks Bertha :)

We have a greenfly invasion in the dining room.They are somehow getting through the glass rooflight and are in drifts on the floor and table.The dc's are compaining bitterly about greenfly in their food and juice.I think they're getting through a vent which is underneath overhanging pine branches which seem to be covered by them.Its next doors pine tree and hence we can't do anything about it.Its also dropped lots of needles this year all over our rooflight since march.I suspect its sick or has possibly been damaged by our building work last year where we had to chop some of the roots back.I've already offered to pay to remove it but current people didn't want to bother as they were moving.What else can i do?

You're entitled to cut back any branches which overhang your property, regardless of who the tree belongs to - and sounds like it needs doing pretty urgently! I've never seen greenfly on a pine tree before.

All the alliums are starting to flower. Really excited about this, plus all the
iris we put in are going to flower after all. Hooray. There are huge fat buds on all the oriental poppies. I put in a successive sowing of opium poppies, some bronze fennel seed and some very cheap cornflowers. Also a load of things I don't know the name of - firecracker? Red foliage. We got them cheap at the stall in a NT garden we went to the other day.

Have discovered the weed-flower that gets everywhere in the garden is Linaria (sp?)

If only things will start to germinate. Am seriously worried about the wildflower meadow, nothing has sprouted at all yet. It has been about three weeks.

The new path is nearly done, and the hurdle man comes next week. We also had a carpenter replacing the metal uprights on the veranda/old coal shed with oak. This is going to look really nice.

I want a mulberry bush, just so I can dance round it and sing.

I am counting the days till I stop work. Can't wait. Especially as we have ESTYN in three days after my contract ends.

We have 2 pine trees next to our extenxion that are several metres high.Unfortunately we live in a conservation area so we have to apply for planning permission to do anything to the trees.Our other neighbours were refused permission to prune their pines even though some loose branches were threatening to fall onto our car/dc's down a 15 metre drop.At one point he heard a branch crack and warned us not to go near that particular part of the driveway.luckily strong winds brought it down safely.

Humphrey your garden sounds lovely.I planted loads of alliums this year too for the first time as well as iris which appear to be doing nothing.I saw stuuning drifts of a sky blue iris at a n.t. house this week lining a massive courtyard.This single colour looked absolutely beautiful on its own.
I really want a Mulberry tree now too.I can't remember ever having seen one before and i'm sure i've never tasted a Mulberry in my life.

Don't despair of the iris, they may well be later. Mine are only just starting to show flower buds now. I put it down to their being planted later.

Alliums are fabulous, aren't they? Edible looking. DH is in constant fear that a visiting toddler will be just too tempted to use one as a ball

Can't believe that you are stuck with dangerous trees

Humphrey - Your red thing is probably lysimachia punctata Firecracker. The flowers are (in my view) a nasty strident yellow but the foliage is gorgeous. As, by the sound of it, is your whole garden.

Mine is looking very green and lush, but the baby plants are being flattened by the fox cubs. I am drinking a gallon of water a day, so that I can use the empty bottles as protective cloches.

thanks Maud. We thought if we really don't like the flowers we will get rid, they really were stupidly cheap. I will google them now.

Just chop off the flowers, that's what I used to do with mine.

Morning!

Yesterday I planted out my leeks and baby sweetcorn (I hate baby sweetcorn ). My first Kitchen Garden magazine arrived so I'm going to settle in bed for 20 mins with a cup of tea and flick through it now

Morning. I'd encourage anyone to get a mulberry the berries are amazing! Ours is around 100 years old we think so a considerable size. Which is lovely but I've yet to find a way to pick the higher berries so most of them are wasted. I think they are very slow growing.

Today's job is to pot on the ornamental grasses. Fingers crossed the rain holds off.

I've finally completed the building application for the 'hobbit house' via the Planning Portal.Its taken me 2 days to do,including downloading block and site plans from streetwise.All this just to apply for permission to build a glorified garden shed in a conservation area.
Yes,Chix i am allowed to remove the overhanging branches apparently.But again i have to apply for permission to do this.I will try and sweet talk the neighbours as a one-sided 20 metre pine will surely be a little unbalanced!.
I am now well behind in the gardening stakes.I have 2 clematis,a passion flower and a solanum to plant plus the 3 fireworks hydrangeas.Morning glory to pot on[its too cold to plant outside yet].The last few erysimum to pot up and a compost heap to sieve.Luckily its a nice day here and the sun is shining.

Just sold another plant at work - hooray! I also have been spending money on The Book People - got an Alys Fowler foraging book and James Wong "Grow your own drugs" (and three others too for a total of £16 something!)

I am hoping to be in the garden this weekend sowing veg in my last 3m stretch of border, which I also need to make inhospitable to cats (possibly using a lots of tent pegs and netting). Have a primula to divide and plant, and a dicentra. Thinking about moving a rosemary that is in a damp dark corner and moving a fern there instead. Also going to take a long hard look at a rather elderly sage which is very leggy and woody - will be looking up whether now could be an acceptable time to propagate it from cuttings.

Front garden is not bursting back into weedy splendour as quickly/badly as I thought it would. The horsetail is reaching over from next door and I really need to figure out how to use a barrier material (and what that should be - I think heavy gauge plastic rather than fabric) that I can bury down into the earth and tie at the top to the wire fence about 30cm above the soil level.

Am at work so probably need to get off here!

Dh has been covering the allotment today. Ran out if pegs so not all done but what should we cover the fabric (in the pernanabt areas )in that is cheap? Bark/stones etc?

Weve also started hardening the majority of the outside plants off. We are going to have to have a clear out so some will be on the front tomorrow!

I don't think any path covering is cheap Harr1et. Bark will probably be cheaper but if you can afford it I personally think stones/gravel is better, both for the way it looks and that they will last longer.

Managed to pot on half the grasses. Ran out of pots again. I really need to sow less seed as I cannot bring myself to discard them once they've actually germinated. Beans are pretty much all up in the conservatory now - will have to move them back outside soon now I've solved the mouse problem. Also noticed today that I've got the first fennel seedlings showing in the veg plot.

I'm warming the in front of the fire in readiness for GW. Have given up feeling put out that I still need a fire in mid-May...