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.

Please can anyone help me remember the name of a plant which grows about 6 foot tall, always gets wrecked by the weather and has stunning blue flowers. Cannot remember what it is for the life of me but I'm going to move it as it is annoying me.

Shrub? or perennial?

It is a perennial, serrated leaves, blue monkshoody looking flower...it is driving me insane as I absolutely do not remember it's name.

I've just been up the allotment for 2 hours and everything is growing insanely. I picked a whole carrier bag of rhubarb (yum!) as it was ready.

And most importantly some beautiful purple Alliums (pic on profile) to have in the house.

I've got tomorrow afternoon there to weed - weeds are mental - after 30 minutes weeding I made barely a dent.

the slugs are even eating the weeds at my house, there is not a weed in sight. It is bizarre.

Humphrey how can you possibly have so many slugs and he birds not eat them? Are you sure it is slugs and not, for example, caterpillars?

Thanks for the info ladies :) Looks like I'll have to replenish my parsley plants then... :(

I can't get corriander nor basil to grow from seed very well either... but for some reason I've had fab results with my outdoor cucmbers!

Haven't planted them out yet as it's a bit risky frost-wise, but they are going to be trained along the fence of my veg plot so I can use the bed underneath the fence for something else.

Bad luck Humphrey :( bloody slugs! (or caterpillars or whatever) How about a patch of comfrey? Have never tried it but heard lots of good things...
www.the-organic-gardener.com/Comfrey.html

I'm sure I could actually SEE my courgette seedlings growing today - every time I walked past, the leaves had grown, I'd put money on it!

I am pretty sure it is slugs, I have been out collecting them at night but it is impossible. It is like a plague.

The ground in the wildflower meadow is empty. Nothing at all except a few wisps of grass. It is totally depressing.

Humphrey - nasturtiums. They manage to survive the slugs here. Somewhat different from the wildflower meadow, but the bees still like them.

Monkshood, delphiniums and larkspur are all somewhat similar GO

Delphinium!

You are a genius, mistlethrush!

I'm not - just regularly get them muddled up and have to think about it carefully!

Humph - do you have chickens as well as pigs? If do, could you let them loose in the once and future wildflower meadow for a super slug buffet? My deluxe slug traps as recommended by Bertha have arrived. I must set them.

::evil cackle::

we do have chickens - but they are not allowed in the garden due to the fact that they grub up the seedlings. Do they get the slugs that are underground?

Am going out again tonight. This is war. Have also ordered stuff to put on, hopefully we should be able to save the round veg patch. Think the potatoes have had it though.

nasturtiums are a great idea. They grow fast too, don't they?

DH has just suggested that all the geraniums in pots all around the place (have loads and loads) should be put in one of the beds. So - nasturtiums in one, geraniums in another. Perhaps sunflowers in a third? I could grow them on in pots first (I know slugs do eat those but we could try and control them with pellets)

Maud - my hens never ate slugs... Too slimey. Mind you, they were properly free range in the garden so had many nicer things to find.

Ah, my friend's more urban chickens love slugs.

Humph - how about godetia and clarkia, too? Very quick and easy. Come to think if it, so is larkspur (but toxic, if your dc are likely to nibble it) .

Garlic spray reputedly works[or so i'm told-i don't have a slug problem luckily] but have a major greenfly problem inside the house,strangely.Humphrey i'm sorry for your loss.I can feel your devastation emanating off the written line

thanks teta. We are both sad. It was something we were really looking forward to as it was so amazing last year.

Cheers Maud

I have some larkspur seeds already.

Mine ate earwigs, worms, ants eggs, baby snails, leatherjackets, monkey peas etc etc etc. Oh and blackcurrants, raspberries, redcurrants, strawberries etc when they broke into the fruitcage....

My chickens just love a fat slug. Don't eat vegetables though; apart from peas. I'm breaking them in gently and hope to have them on a full range of greens within a few months.

Work's been manic this week so I've been working on sofa in evenings with Chelsea on in the background. Haven't actually seen much but heard all about it!

Also heard a tip for putting off slugs (but only for small areas unfortunately Humphrey) - composted sheep's wool. Apparently they don't like the texture or the lanolin. Don't know where you get it from though and I think it may be costly. Apparently good for protecting hostas.

I've heard of hair clippings too.

Humphrey, I've tried a few times to grow wildflowers from seed and always really struggled with growing them direct in the gound. They've taken ages to germinate and in the patch I gave up on last year, because nothing came through, a few things like corn cockles and poppies are growing this year that didn't appear last year - so all might not be lost.
I've had more success with perennial wild flowers I've grown in seed trays and transplanted but even they took a whole season to develop into small plants and didn't flower the first year - knapweed was esp good and I now have the most beautiful huge clumps of it, 3 years later. Admittedly my growing is small garden scale and not a meadow size! I've also succeeded with red campion, ox eye daisies, vetch and foxgloves in this way, mostly with collected seed. I've now got tons of all of them as they spread naturally round the garden.
Have you thought about bunging in something like cosmos? Quick to germinate, long flowering, great for bees and def not to late to get flowers this summer. Seeds are cheap too.

We have got far less slugs this year and I think its because our chickens are free range all winter and have raked up and eaten lots of the overwintering eggs and those nasty little pale slugs that do the most harm. We shut the hens in from the end of March or so before they can harm the new growing things. Whenever I do find any slugs I collect them all up and feed to the chooks who love them.

That reminds me that gardening bargain of the day is 1000 foxglove seeds (Apricot Beauty) in the good ole 99p Store.

Oh My GOD.

Have just come in from slug hunt. The potato plants were so covered in slugs that you could barely see the green. Thirty slugs on each plant, easily

It is biblical. They have stripped most of the potato plants bare this evening before we got to them, as most of them were fine earlier.

What was reassuring was the fact that we put pellets down on the round veg patch a few days ago and the slugs were hardly in evidence down there. I don't want to use pellets but I bloody will if I have to.

Cosmos is a good idea too, thanks. We will have to think again about what to do in that area. We were toying with the idea of a perennial meadow with mown paths, as that would be much easier to maintain and rather more tasteful than the explosion in a flower shop effect of an annual meadow.

Will let the chickens into the garden over winter too, next year.