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.

Our vegetable garden paths were bark covered but it needs replacing annually so in the long run its more expensive.
We replaced the bark with slate chippings and it looks lovely, especially in the rain!

I've got some lavender, rosemary and thyme to plant out and some sweetpeas and beans so I'm hoping for some dry weather this weekend.

The slugs have had a field day with my spinach so I need to do some serious slug hunting as well.

We have slate at home but was £££. Don't really want to spend at all much on the allotment!

I just use my garden chippings for my allotment paths. We've got quite a lot of trees, shrubs n stuff in our garden so we bought a big branch mincer. Now I take a big bag of garden mince up to the lottie and spread it down our path. It rots down after a while but I can't see how it can do much harm and it stops the weeds.
I planted four rows of bush beans today and some climbing beans. I still can't get a carrot to germinate. It's been three weeks now and nothing. I have managed to get the echinacea started though. My squashes are also proving quite reluctant. I've got one vif d'entempes cinderella squash plant out of three I planted. None of the little pumpkins have germinated and that makes me quite fed up cos I love eating them.

I took some sage and rosemary cuttings a couple of weeks ago and potted them up with all the rain they have survived and look as though they have rooted. The sage was getting leggy and woody so I took some of the newer top shoots off the growing tips for my cuttings and they have rooted nicely.

The other plant which has rooted is a clematis, one long shoot of which hung over the leggy sage and as an experiment I pinned down the shoot into the same pot as the sage and after a bit it rooted, and has produced its own shoots, and is now independent of the mother plant, which is nice as it is a white clematis and the sage is grey green.

I still have lilies and dahlias to plant out.

One of our Sage plants is flowering. Apparently you can make sage flower pesto so will get dh to experiment.

My sage plants are particularly leggy too. Will add propagating sage to my very long list of things to do this weekend (in the rain).

Obviously after watching GW tonight we'll also be digging out a fern grotto...and filling it with fairies .

I have a dahlia to plant out - is it safe to do so now? I'm a dahlia first timer and it's making me nervous.

I noticed that the army gardeners were just planting bare dahlia tubers, so Ii guess it's safe(ish) to do now.

I think I need a Japanese painted fern. Thanks Monty.

Sorry radiohelen I assumed my pumpkins, squash and corguettes wouldn't germinate so well, and now I need a bigger garden to plant them in!

Now I'm on maternity leave, I'm "allowed" to go back to the allotment for an hour at a time, when the shop is open!! Yeah! Although it's drizzling today!

Have lots of things need potting on, so have lots to do, between putting my feet up!

Need to get more compost today for potting on. Have used all our Dalek stuff doing the potato pots/sweet potatoes

I'm off to get some ferns this weekend after watching GW . Might not do the whole fern grotto though.
It's lovely & warm here but every time I try to get out to do some gardening DS wakes up & asks for another feed.
I'm also wanting to get some small colourful perennials for the front of the border, I've got a few gaps I want fill. Any suggestions?

Right, third time lucky to get outside & state tying back some roses & do some more seeds.

Dh into ferns and they keep appearing in the garden!

Anyone got a kiwi plant? I'm having trouble with slugs eating it. I thought they wouldn't like it's furry leaves wondered if it was common or just our super slugs (they eat potato & rhubarb leaves which are supposed to be poisonous)

I only got two and a half hours out there today but I'm wrecked! Might be more to do with the 5am wakeups DS has put us through for the past few days...

Still very envious of those with allotments and indeed those with enough spare space to fill you can be tempted by new things on GW at all! I am drowning in seedlings and I don't know what I'm going to do with them! I've just moved some foxgloves from tray to modules and they all grow on, I'll have 40 - along with about 15 lupins. I think they'll have to go in the front garden regardless of the R/W/B colour scheme which I am sort of regretting because of the high potential for naffness (but at least I'm not doing it in petunias).

Today I have moved around some lavender and taken out two rosemary plants to give a sarcococca more space and plant the dicentra I bought at Hyde Hall. I've now got the rosemary in a far more appropriate place (a large terracotta pot with masses of grit in the compost and crocks for great drainage) and I have saved a space beside the water butt for a fern or something.

Tomorrow we may be at Rickmansworth canal festival doing wildlife walks... or pest proofing the veggie beds. hopefully both!

My kiwi is like a triffid - nothing seems to eat it. It's huge, growing through two apple trees.

I've planted out some seedlings today so I hope it isn't going to get too cold tonight.
I've also potted on lots of seedlings.

I'm still having no luck germinating scented stock so I think I am going to have to buy some as I am determined to have some in the garden this year.

Are Kiwis easy to grow? I saw some plants the other day but assumed they'd need special care

I have just bought The English garden magazine as i really love the beautiful photographs. Interestingly the pelargonium nursery from the Malvern spring Show is featured -Firtree pelargoniums.co.uk.I have googled the variety i bought [pelargonium rubricintum cordifolium] and no other stockist come up amazingly.Its been raining here so i have done no gardening but have spent the day musing what to put in my summer pots.I always traditionally have a couple of pots of michaelmas daisies but should i change the scheme to airy pots of pelargoniums[my favourite pots last year were filled with Gaura that looked like little floating butterflies hovering above the ground].

My kiwi was about 18 inches when I got it & it's lived outside for 6 years (oop north too!) and it's about 12 feet tall and a couple more where it's turned a corner.
I wrap it in winter and feed it when I remember as its in a pot but I don't do anything special really. Never got fruit but it's interesting and has hairy leaves but they are getting slugs

Lexi- we've an allotment but we haven't cleared it fast enough for the trays and trays of seedlings to go in.
We've loads of lupins too, didn't realise how easy they were from seeds. Loads of stuff is going out in the next week or so & there's a plant swap next weekend do hoping I can get rid rather than just coming home with loads.

I was just reading, you need a male and a female plant to get fruit from kiwis. They look interesting. Thanks!

There's a Jenny which is self fertilising. That's what I have

Ooo, I need a Jenny. And they like acidic soil, so would be perfect! Must find one.

I have an assai kiwi which is self-fertilising and produces the mini hairless kiwis - at least it's supposed to. It grows with great vigour this time of year then something kills it off before it does anything interesting. This is its third year and if it happens again it's being culled. It's growing in a pot on the patio and is supposed to be trained up wires along the walls but has never got too far along them.

Re-did the three rows of beetroot that didn't take or got slugged today. Also planted out some chard and some lettuce. The chickens had their second foray into the garden and the wood and had a great time. Considerably easier to get them in this time too so they're learning. Also managed to have a BBQ!!!! Think it's raining again tomorrow though...

We inherited our kiwi - I've been told it is self-fertilising but on the only occasion it produced flowers we had an early frost and they all died.
It has flowered this year so I shall have to wait and see what happens

Glorious day today and spent most of it gardening . Cleared and sorted out loads of small perennials in pots and have planted lots, pinks, foxgloves, knapweed, eryngiums and lots of echinaceas. Unfortunately I still have 4 bread trays full of plants and a greenhouse full of seedlings and no more room! Am seriously considering carving a new border out of the edge of the lawn.

In the end I started being ruthless and have dug up and chucked out some of the more sickly, elderly and woody things. If I could fight back the ground elder forest I'd have more room too.

Sadly realised that only one of my lovely clump of blue iris is in flower because the buds of the other 4 have turned to mush on the outside and won't open. I don't know if that's down to cold or damp or both.

A beautiful day in Melbourne, so I did lots of pre-winter tidying. Hacked back the cannas, and moved them to a less torrid bed, where they'll do better next year. Moved five gardenias for the same reason.

I planted up 7 bromeliads into small pots to hang on the fence of the shady border which is full of clivia, aspidistras, hoya and swiss cheese plants. All of them tolerate dry conditions, while relishing the rain, so it looks lovely and tropical all year round.

I miss the massed blooms of the English garden in spring, but have learned to love my Aussie patch. A bonus of the eight possums who live in my garden is constant supply of slow-release native fertiliser.

I love the international feel of MN. Possums in the garden!

I replanted a couple of the big pots on the garden yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find a dahlia sprouting - I would have assumed it had died over winter. Now to google the gladioli that came from GW magazine.