The first rule of garden club is...!?!

[Lexilicious]

hoping Humph's Happy Osteospermumsnet chums will find this... la la la... I'm uite used to being betty no mates though...

Come on in and have a seat/kneeler/foam pad and a virtual , anyone who wants to idly chat about what they've been dreaming of planting, actually planting, buying without a care for having a place for it, propagating, harvesting, hacking and chopping...

Sorry Lexi, you've ended up having to start the new thread. Sorry Grockle and Phacelia to hear you've been Ill. There's the whole sitting and planning aspect of gardening thatI find very therapeutic too.

Have you all seen the about a rose for Aillidh ?

Here

S'ok, nobody forced me to! I came home from work early because I wasn't feeling well (sore tum, nothing important/long term) and so I am somewhat at a loose end.

linky to the rose thing - is there a thread?

Oh dear, hope you feel better. I feel a bit rough too. Cross posted link below.

hello everyone

lovely idea about the rose.

Oh dear, sorry you are not feeling well. I'm in bed with the electric blanket on. In july! I have temperature regulation problems but this is ridiculous.

No gardening for me today although I was hoping to do some at work. It seems that the incessant rain has meant that none of our veg have flowered or fruited yet so we have nothing to make into soup for a competition on Wednesday

I lost you all before when I couldn't keep up.

Had our own potatoes and peas for tea tonight!

Hello HaitchJay - mmm peas. Ours are way behind. I have hopes though.

DH has cut back all the catmint so we can walk down the rosewalk. They are already sprouting underneath so may even get another flowering. I have cut back all the geraniums so we can now walk along all the other paths. My resolution next year is to stop letting things obstruct the paths. The whole garden feels better groomed.

The cottage borders are looking rather bare, but we expected it to fall a bit at this time. We are having a good think about what to put in. Definitely more penstemens, I am planning to take lots of cuttings. The opium poppies I saved from last year are coming out wonderful colours. Have a lot of black ones too, which I like, but not as much as the other colours. I am also really pleased with the shirley poppies in the crab apple walk, even though there are loads on one side and hardly any on the other. The purple sage clumps I grew from cuttings are all in flower but the sweet peas are in stasis.

Evening all!

::passes round the gin::

Interesting piece about gardens in the Olympic Park: www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/16/olympics-gardeners-juggle-blooms-london

Thank you for starting a new thread. Yes please I would love some camomile tea even though it is so late and I brought some lemon drizzle cake if anyone is allowed (especially if they have been dancing for 5 hours).......

That's really interesting, funnyperson. There was a small piece in the RHS magazine a month or two ago.

Even my opium poppies failed this year, but my friend at the school gate has some fab ones in the front garden, so I may steal conserve a seed head or two.

I've just discovered penstemons, not sure why I hadn't before - are they poisonous or something ? I have it in my head they are so didn't put them in whilst DS was little.

Would love to have seen the Olympic park but we're visiting my brother abroad whilst they are own. Very difficult year with the weather for them to be doing it. My allotment came second at the show apparently. My friend's was first, well deserved as it looks pretty full whereas I have a load of brown earth in places with sweetcorn and courgette plants an inch high. She's been away for two weeks and I've been weeding hers so will take some of the credit !

Penstemons are lovely - I am growing some on from the teeny weeny T&M plugs - but they never survive the winter here. I must master the art of taking cuttings.

they make taking cuttings looks so easy on tv. Carol is so encouraging, but I have not always had such luck.

I really like Carol Klein, don't you? Apart from the plant knowledge she has nice clothes and fab hair.

Exactly, Humph. Carol makes it look a fiddle but I just end up with a pot full of dead twigs. I adore Carol and everything about her, especially her fabulous jackets and earrings horticultural skills.

Aah. Auto correct. Makes it look a doddle.

Offer of 24 free penstemons from gardenersworld.com, well for £4.30 p&p, in an email I got yesterday (I don't actually subscribe, only registered on the website/forum).

I need a supplier of paper bags for seed collection like Carol does. And probably a second seed tin to keep them all in.

I quenched some of my Monty-thirst yesterday by watching an episode of 'love your garden' with Alan Titchmarsh on itv-player. He has mellowed, I used to find him really annoyingly perky. It was more of a makeover show than GW is, but it did have some nice design ideas and planting advice, as well as just spending spending spending on hard landscaping .

I am resisting buying those penstemon as (I haven't checked) I assume they're mixed and I can't bear not knowing what colour they will be.

::fanatic::

Oh and Love Your Garden is ok (the more gardening programmes on telly the better) but it does still have echoes of the Ground Force go and buy yourself a new garden and have it installed in an afternoon approach.

Hi all.

Anyone else had pretty much all their plans destroyed by the rain this year?

It has literally rained every single day for 2 months and just can't even dare stand on our clay/silt soil let alone plant anything.

Ran out and cut the top off the lawn the other day so that looks very lush and green but a bit shaggy as the mower chomped through it rather then cut it clean. The borders look lush and well covered too but lots of tall weeds poking through now so hope to get to those if we have a dry day and dead head/prune the roses.

On the positive side my rhubarb has really established with the rain now it is in its in its second year and the wild strawberries are doing well - lovely perfumed little pink fruits about the size of a finger nail. They spread naturally as a cartpet under the rose bushes. Sweet peas also doing well with their feet in wel fertilised wet clay and growing tall up the hedge and just about to flower. With some sun the garden could still look a treat.

Whats the prospect for tree fruits this year? Heavy crop with all the rain or poor crop because of bad weather round pollination time?

I keep reading that apple crops will be poor but, so far, my trees are fruiting well. So many things, though, simply aren't growing. My sweet peas haven't grown at all.

Sorry, wasn't on the other thread, but surely the first rule of garden club is all the bastard bastard bastard slugs must die?

MoreBeta, I am with you on the rained-off plans and the clay soil. Grass cutting is an opportunistic activity here too.

Yes gobblers, I could have called this thread slug-fight-club, and perhaps if I had, the weather would have done that contrary thing and turn into dry, baked crust soil conditions and they would all die off anyway...

I am working at home today, trying to regenerate my energy that this bug/exhaustion took out of me... Glorious day... Will definitely find myself pottering at some point!! I can see from where I'm sitting that a clump of garlic/shallots have fallen over and need to be lifted else they will rot. I also need to stake/tie my butternut squash because I do not have enough space for it to roam around in its recumbent form. And I will slightly pointlessly fill up the latest-planted potato sacks, just in case they decide to grow and tuber-up.

Gobblersknob I was taken by your nickname.

Until a couple of years ago there was, in the Melbourne 'phone directory, a P. Knobgobbler. Don't ask how I found this out.

I SAID don't ask.:o

Getting back to gardening things, the chap putting in new sleepers for our raised beds will be finished soon, as it's sunny with a few showers for the rest of the week; astonishing for winter in Melbourne (probably for this summer too, in the UK):o I'm advertising at work for those who want to donate carpet so I can hold off the weeds while the beds and their sand gravel paths are laid.

Maud- our poppies failed too :(

Very random and unpredictable year for gardening I think.