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.

Pellets are working for me.Several new Dahlias have appeared above the ground now they're not being eaten.The sheer amount of rain though means i will have to sprinkle a fresh supply on regurlarly though.Do pellets kill snails?Or do i have to pick those off separately.
I have just picked a beautiful bouquet of pink Roses,Astrantia in white and pink,purple Lupins plus Mint and Lemon Balm for scent and greenery.I am sitting here admiring it on the kitchen table.I think thats all the gardening i'm going to do today as heavy rain has set in.

Perhaps my mistake is using the naice organic pellets rather than the Napalm Destruction ones?!

I have resolved to pick a bouquet tomorrow. It had never occurred to me to include lemon balm but that would be fantastic, wouldn't it, for the scent and the brightness of the green? I might include one of the dark mints, too.

::weeps over the new lupins, which turned out to be expensive snail food and have been reduced to stumps::

Naice organic pellets have been ok for me so far, except that its been so wet I've not been out there to put enough out. I lost a load of petunias, reduced to stumps overnight, yet they still haven't found the tray of lupins.

That said, I did use a few napalm destruction pellets around pots by the back door the other day and the carnage they wreaked was awesome!

I use alchemilla as a lovely acid green foil to roses but will try lemon balm next time too, I always chop it off around this time to stop it seeding every where and much better to make use of it.

I didn't bother with the naice ones as the local hardware shop said they don't work round here.The dc's are trying to reassure themselves by saying there are no hedgehogs round here to be harmed anyway{ardent hedgehog conservationists }.
Apparently Constance Spry used to use lots of herbs and unusual greenery in her bouquets [for the time].Also Lemon balm and mint grow like weeds round here and i don't know what to do with them.As do Alchemilla Mollis and Euphorbia luckily.

My organic pellets say not to use more than three or four times per season, which I guess means once a month. Does anyone know why this is? I have blackbirds and thrushes in the area so really can't use the Napalm ones. I do kill several slugs and snails by hand every day, though. I feel like the Angel of Mollusc Destruction.

Just received my teensy weensy plug plant perennials from the Thompson and Morgan GW magazine offer. Presumably I am best off transferring them to small pots and keeping them in the conservatory until they reach a decent size?

I'm working at home today and fell into the trap of having lunch outside and then a little potter around... Ended up harvesting some onions (to add to the ones which have been drying out on the top shelf of the growhouse) and the three earliest-planted potatoes. Two were sacks and one in the ground. Utterly pathetic harvest all three types. Am very disheartened and don't really think I'll bother with potatoes again. Could be weather, could be my very lax feeding regime, could be some slug effects, but overall it is clear that spuds and I are not meant for each other.

The onions have done ok, shallots are tending to the rotten, garlic probably good. Must throw everything else possible into the ground now in the hope that we are going to get a late but fabulous summer.

Naice organic pellets seem to work here too, as long as there is not so much rain that it washes them away. The buggers are strolling around in broad daylight though. I have not previously been a dahlia custodian, but i have one in a pot now, so must start keeping up with pest control...

I use cheap wilkinsons slug pellets and at a £1 per tube i mind if i have to keep topping them up after each down pour. The birds and squirels dont seem to touch them as there is plenty of easy to reach food for them in the bird feeders and oak trees.

I haven't got any dahlias or slug pellets but millions of slugs.

Went to plant sale this morning and if Grockle was there at the start of it with a man then I think I spotted her. Would have introduced myself but then had a text from DH that he'd had to pick up DD from her upper school induction as unwell and that middle school had cocked up transfer info. At which point I started steaming and decided Grockle (if indeed it was her) probably wouldn't appreciated being accosted by a weird, ranty woman with steam coming out of her ears and legged it to meet a friend in the cafe who got some coffee and cake in me to calm me down.

But, did manage to fill the car boot and back of car with plants for £35. So have a lot of planting to do.

Magpies caught in the act of eating my slug pellets this afternoon. grrr

It has been raining solidly here. Magpies have been eating slugs etc. Everything in the garden is............wet.........what more can I say? I am fed up of it.
Munstead Wood has flowered but is looking very bedraggled. Maybe I should cut some flowers and bring them in with the lemon balm and sage......

Today has been the first day without rain in weeks and sods law means i haven;t been able to get in the garden at all bar hanging the washing out.
The bathroom fitter finished our new loo and bathroom this morning so i had no excuse not to do the housework. The house badly needed a good going over as i have done the bare minimum whilst the workmen were here as there was no point with the mess being trampled up and downstairs.

If the weekend says dry i am going the a couple of plant sales, cut the grass and may be able to twist my sons arm into giving the shed a lick of paint.

Picked a lovely bunch of sweet peas today - unfortunately we're off on holiday tomorrow so won't get to appreciate them but for tonight the kitchen smells lovely.

The one consolation with the rain is that our neighbour won't need to be watering our garden while we're away!

My organic pellets aren't touching the slugs this year either. I think on my return I'll be off to buy the evil ones.

Enjoy your sweet peas! I am rather jealous as mine are a long way from producing a bunch.

Have kind of given up slug hunting now and just putting pellets down. It is rather disheartening not to have any salad at all. Still, ate my first tomato and the inside cucumber is covered in small fruit.

I'm incredulous that anyone has pickable sweet peas. Mine have not grown at all this week.

I'm now getting rigged out in waterproofs, to go and pick my bouquet.

I've given up on my annual sweet peas. Was very very bad and went to the plant sale again this morning. My front doorstep looks like a nursery . I have:

Heuchera Georgia Peach
Astrantia Major Abbey Road
Salvia Sylvestris Caradonna
Phlox 21st century white and also blue
Corydalis China blue
Lavender Vicenza blue
Eryngium Bourgatti Picos Blue
Centaurea Purple Heart x2
Penstemon Husker red
Heuchera Peach Flambé
Heuchera Rave on
Sidalcea Elsie Heugh x 2
Echinacea Deep rose
Shasta Daisy
Eryngium Blue Hobbit
Penstemon Ice Cream Blueberry Fudge x 2
Teucrium Purple Tails
Scabious Pink Diamonds
Scabious Butterfly Blue x 2
Veronica Blue Streak
Pulmonaria Victorian Brooch
Achillea The Beacon
Achillea Lilac Beauty

They are all decent size plants and I can split them in the future (a few right now). I just need to dig a new border in the garden to put some of them in!

Oh wow, Wynken! What a fabulous haul. Were they bargains to boot? I wish we had plant sales like that near us, although we do have good sales at the gardening society.

I paid £55 for them which for 28 very decent size pots I think was really good. I'm hopin Grockle made it and did Ok too. It's a nursery attached to a local garden centre and they are all pretty healthy plants .

Wynken, I LOVE you! 16 sturdy plants for about £30. Brilliant. I will make this an annual event. We got there 10 mins after it started and it had been ransacked already! I suspect it was me you saw. Was I shouting at the man? He was useless when I said 'can you pick up that geranium?' & looked rather baffled so I took to grabbing pots and handing them to him to put in the trolley & he just followed me & did what I said. Much better. I can't remember what I bought but it included:

Dhalias
Delphiniums
Lavenders x 2
Lupins x 2
Echinacia with beautiful pink flowers
Erygnium
Penstemon
Salvias

& all sorts. Happy bunny . We stopped at the blueberry nursery on the way home & picked up 3 plants so I have lots of holes to dig today.

I have put crushed shells around all my new plants as I have no slug pellets - I am hoping they'll work. I also bought some cheap lager so I can make slug traps later.

Wow! How fabulous.

::really going to book a day return next year::

I miscounted, it is 33 plants and I've uploaded a pic to FB as I am a very sad person.

Grockle, so glad you made it ! Sorry I didn't introduce myself, I thought I recognised you from your FB pic but the day I was having you wouldn't have been you and I'd have made a right idiot of myself.

DS is itching to get his hands dirty and get stuck in but I'm too knackered at the moment. The idea of digging isn't doing it for me today. I've promised to help him move the swing.

We could all meet up next year, buy plants then go and eat Dorset Apple Cake in the cafe bit.

That sounds like a plan, although usually on nthis weekend every year we are busy.

Plants + cake = bliss.

if the cafe also sells wine elderflower presse, Wynken, I call "house!" (and yes I'm definitely in)

Oh yes, what a good idea!

er....I call house......where is it?can I come?