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.

Well, have planted out my sweet peas, and lots of scabious I grew from seed last winter. DD and I planted lots more seeds and pricked out seedlings. Did a hard prune (massacre?) of very overgrown forsythia and used the cuttings as pea sticks, which back fired last year as half of them took root. Weeded through the biggest border and weedkillered all the blackthorn suckers that are coming up all over the place. And mowed the lawn.
Phew, just as well DH likes cooking.

My chooks love slugs and have trained DCs to hunt for them and sling them in the hen pen. DS is also collecting snails in a bucket for 'science' project at school. All good as so wet here we even have slugs in the house.

My chooks won't eat slugs. Nor will they eat worms despite my poor DS lovingly digging them up as a treat for the girls. They'd rather eat cake.

Welcome Grockle. I'm jealous of the chickens but am a bit over run with cats and a dog and have sworn no more. Humphrey has gone a stage further and has pigs. We have them on our allotment site but I have a policy of non engagement after Boris ended up in the local butcher and everyone was a bit hesitant over eating the sausages at the BBQ.

Cantspel, I'm further along the coast, Dorset.

Flipping heck, just reading up the thread, loads of you have chickens and Morning Glory, I feel left out ! Am loving the way Humph's day can be summed up. I stuck up a bean wigwam and stuck some bean seeds in the ground, planted a Kalmia plus some peas that are flowering against pea sticks I got last year and hadn't used.

Think slugs ate all my cornflower and calendula seedlings but I am much too lazy to go out and hunt them down. Need ladybirds for the aphids on my rose (first one of the year out today ). One sorted out loads and I shall be definitely relocating them onto the roses when I find them.

But, Wynken, remember that my chickens are called Wynken, Blynken and Nod. You have chicken namesakes.

The new chicken my brother gave me hopped onto my lap today. It is very friendly.

Sorry I didn't explain properly about the pigs Grockle, I thought you were just querying the fact I fed the slugs to them. It is our third year rearing pigs for meat. Rather worryingly, DS has named these ones. Not a good idea, but they are exceptionally cute half wild boar.

Oh, I want an allotment with pigs. Sorry about Boris though!

had an anxiety dream about having no salad in the ground, so just got up and planted spinach, lettuce and rocket very quickly before the rain started.

Thanks Maud and Lexi!

quiche = clique in MN land

Had a productive morning and am now back in bed! It was sunny when I got up, so dashed off to the allotment and tidied up the strawberries, and brought back some over grown mint, then came home, and made 3 hanging baskets with the runners that I pulled up! I'm hoping they take. Weeded out the small veg patch that we used last year for the raspberry canes I got! It's looking duller now, but I've got a few bits to do in the conservatory potting area!! That's if I don't spend all afternoon in bed!

Overnight I have been treated to two cat offerings. One on a bed (awaiting veg planting) and the other STINKING and SQUIDGY one on the lawn. I retched many times when cleaning it up. We seem to very rarely swear on the gardening thread, so excuse me here, but fuck off you feline fuckers!!!! I don't like cats. Can you tell?

Grockle, I have a smallish garden, no greenhouse, no chickens or pigs, but I do have TWO sheds and waterbutts. (A source of many jokes... yes we are at risk of developing those in-jokes that make MN Quiches annoyingly impenetrable to those who innocently walk in a little later than everyone else.)

No gardening for me today. Yesterday's weeding was very strenuous and I have ebay sales to manage today (yawn). DH is in his shed and won't accept help. It's also far too wet for me to dream of taking a cup of tea down there.

Its been wet here today, but I've been pottering in my pottingshed with some assistance from Cat#5 (sorry Lexi)

I've potted on my tomatoes and some salad leaves. Yesterday I planted out some peas and my potatoes are starting to show.
I alos did loads of weeding yesterday, althugh you wouldn't think so from the state of the garden!

5???

5 is quite a low number for me (had 9 at one point)

I am in training for when I am elderly-mad-cat-woman who lives in the spooky house in the middle of nowhere

Lexi - I am with you on the cat front. They stink. When my Mum's cat goes in the litter tray, her whole house stinks [gags] Cats and Slugs are just the bane of my gardening life at the minute.

Potted on tomatoes and planted out onions and beans today at allotment. Also made my lavender oval hedge (oval front garden with large ornamental bird bath in middle, lavender hedge around it leaving a gravel running track / path round the outside then borders around that IYSWIM)

Feeling very chuffed. Nice to be outside in the sunshine for a change. Had to dodge many bees though as I was right on their flight path and they are making hay while the sun shines. (We have six hives at the allotment)

Roll on more good weather...

Cat next door but one (well we only ever see one cat in the area) keeps pooing in our beds & digging up my strawberries. I replant at least 2 a day. Lost loads of plants to it :(

Ugh, I hate cats pooing in my garden. I am surrounded by cats. I need a dog to keep them away.

Too wet to do much here this weekend but I did buy some rhubarb to plant in the week and some campanula. I want lots of blue flowers in my garden.

I like cats in the abstract but hate the poo. Similarly, the fox cubs that come in from next door are adorable until they knock over all the things in pots that are marking the places where they are to be planted in the beds.

I'd forgotten about your chickens Humphrey, am happy now !

I was a out to confess to having 4 cats, down from 5 a couple of months ago but seeing how much hassle they cause people in gardens (mine are too lazy to wander further than my herb bed so hopefully not too unpopular with the neighbours), I'm going to hide behind Pantry. If anyone wants to borrow a dog I have one you can borrow but she's very fond of cats and might entice them into the garden.

Had a good parenting moment earlier. DS (8) has decided he wants a bit of allotment so he came up with me, planted peas in his bit and then helped me with stones for the path. He's told me he intends to be involved with the allotment for as long as he can (whatever that means !). Finally one of them will go up there with me, result. Although there's still half to be dug over, I have taken out loads of thistle, dandelions and dock. The rest is mostly couch which I'll just have to keep at.

High point today - went to garden centre and looked through their 'pot deposit' for small 'potting on' plastic pots and someone had put loads of terracotta pots in there of which I took all and staggered back to the car with them. I left all the hanging baskets they'd put in there though as unfortunately I didn't need any of those.

Low point - DH mowed the moss lawn today. I gave him explicit (very, very explicit) instructions not to mow the patch where I planted the bluebells. He mowed all the bluebells. I swore at him. Don't do that often but was very cross .

I also traumatised the chickens today by hanging up some cabbage leaves for them. They cowered down the end of the pen for two hours until I took pity and removed the fearsome cabbage.

rhihaf - how do you work your honest table? I'm thinking of doing one at the end of my lane for spare eggs, plants & veg. How's yours set up?

Sneaks back in, hiding from all the cat-haters. Luckily we live in the middle of nowhere, so I know my cats aren't sullying anyones garden.

Bertha - I feel your pain. In the past DH has strimmed down sweetpeas and sunflowers.
He now knows the might of my wrath asks before he strims anything!

I'm so glad that none of my neighbours have cats! We've had an occasional badger raid and I'm sure the local fox does a regular circuit of the chicken pen but no random animal poo problems!

But I do have a table where I sell plants out the front of the house and surplus veg when we have any. I did have an honesty pot for the money but it got pinched twice (although no money taken - I used to put pebbles in the bottom to stop it blowing away) so now I ask people to put money through the letter box. It seems to work pretty well and people know its there now so stop to have a look.

I'd have to put a table quite some way from our house unfortunately chix so I couldn't do the letterbox thing. Was thinking of a lockable tin money box screwed to the table. I've been looking for one of those wooden cart things so I can wheel the whole thing up and down the lane easily but even second-hand ones are incredibly expensive!

I sell eggs from my front door - I just stick a sign up saying £1 per box & to knock. Seems to work. Never sold surplus veg though. I'd do the letter box thing but I live in an urban area. I'd love a cart. Moneybox screwed to the table woud work though, wouldn't it?

I think if you screwed it down the money tin thing would be fine. Mine was just a marg tub with a slot cut in the lid so easily nickable ( and I left it out all the time). Checking and removing any takings whenever you pass helps too. I use an old plastic garden table and leave it out all the time and I leave the plants out all the time, but produce I bring in at night.
I only charge in multiples of 50p too to save faffing with change. Most of my wee plants are 50p a pot.

I think it would work. Although the table would be 100m or so from the house it would be opposite a business which is open all day so there would be people around to put off anyone who might want to steal my hard earned £2.50! I visit farms a lot for work and have been eyeing up old disused carts rotting in the corner of barns (they all have one somewhere) trying to find the brazen cheek to ask a client if I could give one a good home.