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.

echt that's the salvia I got at the flower show!! Will they be tough over winter in the UK though...

and Norky I worked from 03-06 round about where you are. A certain Fort...

Just googled 'you're beautiful ', it's really lovely. Has everyone been buying plants today then ? I'm being good for a whole 24 hours.

I love that Echt has plants with names like Kangaroo paw in the garden !

Harvested some basil today and had my first ripe Mara de Bois, it was utterly divine and I can see what the fuss is about. DD off to upper school for her induction this week and I'm a bit nervous so plan to distract myself with lots of gardening, hope it doesn't rain...

I've looked at the RHS site, lexi and it looks OK in a dry sunny spot, perhaps prune back bit in winter? They mention H3 which I'm guessing is a climate zone.

Here, 400yds from the sea, we don't get the kind of frosts you get in the UK - it got down to 2 degrees a couple of nights ago, there was only frost in open areas, not gardens, and even then not the real crispy stuff, a hoar first I suppose. That particular salvia is marketed in the Mighty Tuff section of the garden centres, i.e. drought resistant. I noticed that one i have in the front garden which gets real summer heat drooped its leaves a littles bit at 35+, but perked up in the evening.

I didnt see Monty-I expect he was sensibly at home with his feet up.

Ah, of course 'tough' means the opposite in Oz!! I was thinking of its winter hardiness but a greater threat is the drought you get. Duh!

Who asked about tomatoes? I have one forming in the middle of a plant (the last planted one of three, I can't remember the variety, but it'll be yellow). I have been a bit lax about nipping out the side shoots too. All three plants are about waist height, in a deep trough planter (so maybe 20 inches tall really). The chillis on the plants I overwintered indoors are going red, and the new plants I grew from seed started February are also developing fruit - they've been outside for a month or so in the growhouse.

My lawn squelches like a sponge.

I have 20 courgette plants that actually have the the teeny courgettes rotting because of the weather - hopefully if we get a decent dry spell then it will just be the ones on the bottom.

The weeds are mental though

Yep, my weeds are impressive too. I don't know what they are but they are growing very well. I wish my veg were too. My strawberries are rotting and it's just miserable out there.

Pie & chips for supper & not a sign of homegrown veg

Weeds are doing very well on the allotment. We got an email today reminding us we are responsible for maintaining the paths and that they recommend Roundup. It went on to say once applied it needs to be dry for the next 6 hours, ha ha !

wynken. Chance'd be a fine thing... are you flooded up there? We sat and watched the river break it's banks last night. It's a good 6ft above it's usual level with water gushing under the bridges. Whole trees were being swept downstream and the power of it was preventing the tide coming in. It's a spring tide too, so just as well. They evacuated homes last night & it's all a bit scary. I'm glad I live a little way up the hill. Another torrential downpour has just started. My decorator said he'd paint the front of the house on Friday, subject to weather. I guess that won't get done then!

I am ordering seeds - cornflowers & other pretty blue things.

'up there' was aimed at everybody, not just wynken - everybody is likely to be north of me!

Oh dear. DH has been looking at veggie porn in the new Diggers' catalogue and now wants raised beds in the back garden. We used to have an allotment in the UK, which he dutifully maintained, as well as a veggie patch in the back garden.

The garden is in levels: a deck, then a drop of two and half feet to a four foot wide bed which is full of tall plants we can see from the family room, then a two foot drop to the rest of the garden which is manky lawn running down to a tea tree which grows sideways across most of the garden and is underplanted with clivia, aspidistras, bromeliads and New Zealand lilies.

There's room for two 6 by 4 beds, and it would sort out the headache of grubbing up the terrible lawn and laying down another, i.e. grubbing up the lawn and laying a smaller one. The other good thing is that in the arrangement of our gardening lives, I do lawns while he does veggies, so I might be on to a winner here.:o

Flipping heck Grockle, I saw a scary looking photo on front of the paper but didn't have a chance to look properly. Glad you're ok. It's very wet here but we're at the top of a hill. The sky is going dark again so I guess it will start with a vengeance. We're supposed to be having our house painted soon, can't see that happening for a bit, think he'll be weeks behind. Just blow dried DD's hair for first day at upper school, am sure she'll be drenched before she gets there.

My Dorset Naga has about 20 chillis growing on it and loads more flowers. Rather belatedly I've just realised I'll have something else to keep out of reach of the dog !

I've just been daydreaming about house plants shoot me now ... Thing is, I can't seem to keep a houseplant alive, so what I'm doing flicking through a streptocarpus catalogue, heaven knows. I don't even know why I have it. Possibly may be something to do with the tiny v cute plug plant my mum bought for PFBGS at Hampton court, "Texas hot chilli" variety.

Anyway, if I was to have houseplants they would not be in every room. When we are rich and only very slightly (manageably) famous we will have a medium sized rambling house in the country with a bit of land, and once i have totally pinched all of humph's ideas and done the edible/veg/play/cutting garden we will put on an artfully distressed orangery conservatory and I will put ground source heat pump pipes under raised bed things and Portland stone benches, and I will grow semitropical plants in there in the summer and overwinter my tender pots there in the winter. I will have cute but obedient dogs and waft around dressed in a style somewhere between Alys Fowler and Helena Bonham Carter in my own mind while DH is reminded rather more of Camila Batmanghelidjh

Has been wet here but not much of a risk of floods for us. My county is called Three Rivers, and they all combine just down the way from me, so it's possible that roads near me could have problems if the rivers can't move the water. However, I think we're on gravelly geological layers so only if the water table is really stuffed to the gills will the rivers have a problem.

Stay safe, anyone in a risk area.

Go for it Echt, you'll actually get something edible out there unlike us over here!

Am totally sold on Lexi's daydream , apart from the slightly famous bit. On the subject of houseplants, my cinnamon basil was starting to flower so I cut it off to keep it growing leaves. Googled images of the flowers and I think they would make a lovely flowering plant so next time I'm going to stick it in water and see if I can root it.

Echt, sounds like a good plan to me! I had a beautiful Dorset Naga chili but it died last summer. I can't eat the chilis!

I'm going to move in with Lexi when she's rich and famous.

The famous bit could get wearing, I know. I would actually genuinely quite like to be an estate manager. There was one on Country House Rescue recently and I thought yes, I could definitely cope with that lifestyle.

I have just made 4lbs of uncooked raspberry jam - equal parts jam and sugar, cook in oven for 20 minutes until hot but not boiling, put into sterilised jars, dip those circle thingys into brandy and put on the top. Will keep for a year.

It was noble of me considering I am low carbing

thingies ?

I dug the Astrantia 'shaggy' out and potted it up to rescue it from slugs in the over-shady corner and it was just putting out little leaves when-this morning- it was stripped again. Poor thing. Likewise a very healthy dahlia plant has been reduced to bare green stems.
The birds round here are quite full of slugs thank you very much, and even they aren't managing to eat all of them.
I think probably this year is a good year for cuttings due to the rain.
Most other stuff is thriving but not (apart from roses and honeysuckle and violas and valerian and buddleia) flowering very much.
No portland stone benches for me, I like to sit in comfort. So what is an adirondack chair like to sit in? I have always wondered.

No spare time to keep up with anything at the moment but am totally taken with your vision Lexi and would like to move in too please. I have a houseplant, just the one. A money plant thing, but it's huge, flowers every year and almost rivals the one in Wisley glass house. I kill every other house plant though

Oh dear. It's a bad sign if slugs are eating astrantia - that always seems to be one of the stalwart survivors. Astrantia Roma and Gloire de Sarf London are flowering here, but Venice has only just produced its first leaves of the year. In fact, one of my best plant combos of the moment is Astrantia Roma and Echinops ritro Veitch's Blue.

Slugs have eaten 9/10 courgette plants so the one left had better look lively. After quite a good start slugs are here with a vengeance now and scoffing everything in sight. Loads of my cosmos have been utterly beheaded and they stripped a tray of petunias overnight. I've got loads of tomato plants (maybe 25?) the ones in the green house have green toms on now but outside still only flowers. I wondeer if they will get enough sun to ripen at all?

I like the sound of Humphrey's uncooked jam. I think even I could manage that. DH does the preserving in our house and has been making strawberry jam tonight - the gorgeous smell is still wafting round the house. Sadly not from our own strawberries which have all been slugged.

Houseplants in every room here plus lots of assorted cuttings in jam jars, snapped off roses in egg cups etc. Lexi I've had a lovely steptocarpus in the bathroom for years, but divided it last year after it outgrew the pot and since then have managed to kill it and all its offspring bar one, even the leaf cuttings which all took got killed by a surprise early frost in the greenhouse. Bah. What does do well here are bright pelargonuims in matching ceramic pots along the south facing kitchen window sill. They are really cheerful and impossible to kill!