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...

hello everyone

back from France. The veg garden is rather flattened due to heavy rain. Something has knocked over lots of the sweetcorn, it looks as if a badger has blundered their way round. Some of the courgettes have been snapped off too.

Otherwise it doesn't look too bad, the grass is like a hayfield but the herb beds are looking great for the first time this year. Have cut lots of sweet peas finally! Ate peas and courgettes for supper.

One thing my holiday made me appreciate was greenness. It was so baked in southern france. Wales looked so lush and green when I got back, it made me really happy.

Hi Humphrey, I too am back from a few days away, but too wet here to venture out and check anything over. DH says he has had one ripe tomato all week. Lush and green is the word for it, its been well watered!

Badgers always go for our sweetcorn so we haven't grown any this year. They occasionally have a bit of a stomp round the veg plot and in the winter they pulled up and chewed several leeks, then left them strewn on the path. Not seen any sign since then luckily.

I bet it was a badger then chix.

Been tidying things up today, am now heading outside to do a bit of staking and weeding. Also done a lot more penstemon cuttings as the last lot have taken. Hurrah. I think I will try to grow a few more rosemary cuttings. If I pot them up in pretty pots they will be nice to give people at Christmas.

DH has pruned the crab apples in the walk, and also the pear and willow tree so we can walk underneath without being showered with raindrops.

My new lilies are in flower and look amazing, several have grown taller than me and there not even tree lilies so god only knows what i have done to them to get them so tall but then i am only 5ft2 so maybe they are not that impressive.

On a sadder not my old cat had died and i have laid her to rest under my flowering cherry tree. She used to love sleeping under that tree so i think she will be happy for it to be her final resting place.

Sorry you lost your cat cantspel. It sounds like a good place for her - all three of my beloved cats lie in the orchard here.

Tree swing was put up today (by two very nice men with ropes and chainsaws). Much, much fun . DH got me the double one so there's room for two...

Bertha that sounds wonderful No trees big enough to hold DH and me on a swing here!

Sorry to hear about your cat cantspel, I think that under the cherry tree sounds perfect.

It finally stopped raining here at lunchtime so I spent the afternoon ridding the veg garden of slugs and weeds, there were masses of both and consigned most of them to a compost dalek. I did give a small bucketful of slugs to the hens who gamely tried to eat them, but even my intrepid birds got overslugged and gave up in the end.

I am deeply envious of that swing too, Bertha!

Well, I took the Aged Ps to a garden centre today to cheer them up ::noble:: and seem to have come away with a whole heap of bargain perneiials. I do love the August sales. In other news, my supposedly black hemerocallis turns out to be an unremarkable orange. Thank you J Parkers. My monochrome planting plan is clearly doomed. Sigh.

hello there

swing sounds divine, I want one too.

I have J Parkers fails too - my red white and blue front garden is red white and pinky purple. I should have realised that r/w/b buddleias were too good to be true - they are cerise, violet and cerise. Healthy and covered in honeybees, bumblebees and a few types of butterfly, but not what they said on the label. The acidanthera are starting to come into bloom though, and are pretty. No flowers on the crocs yet.

I failed to prevent butterflies from laying on my brassicas, so have been caterpillar hunting all afternoon since arriving back from hols. Big fat greens ones and yellow/black ones. I squished them (like monty does) and put them on the bird feeder. No interest yet. I fear the curly kale will not recover and the Romanesco broccoli will need to be de-caterpillared repeatedly if it is to survive. Enviromesh and hoop system purchase in the sales I think.

My builder watered my tomatoes :) and the boy came running to find me once he had explored to ask if he could have the courgette on the plant. Domestic bliss (aside from more than half of the house being plaster and brick dust).

Oh Lawks. I think those are the buddleias I bought from T&M. ::worries:: It is getting tiresome and I just remembered I owe T&M an email about their black plant collection that mostly wasn't.

We should all aspire to have a swing in the garden.

!!

::wonders exactly what the young gentleman is gazing at::

Ah yes, a perfect representation of me at the weekend! Although I was trying to swing with a glass of wine in hand. Must dash out and get a dress like that...

Was working today in a chain of garden centres. Absolute torture and heaven all rolled into one. A whole day in garden centres and not a penny spent. They had runner beans growing over an arch and they looked fabulous. My sweet pea arch in the veg plot looks ok but not as lush as their beany one. May steal that idea next year.

So that would be your husband ogling your thighs admiring the scenery, then, Bertha?

My sweet peas are another of this year's disasters. We have had a notice to improve on the lotty. What, realistically, can we plant now to impress the self-important busybodies committee?

Things you can sow if you get in quick could be cabbages, kale, spring onion etc. I'm going to try sowing some late carrots and mooli too as I've got so many gaps.

I think in my version of the picture DH was too busy pushing to do any ogling. If there was a lovely young man hiding in the trees then I missed him! Interestingly in the process of getting the tree men in we discovered that the wood (some of which is in our garden) is designated ancient woodland. I'm not sure what this means other than they wouldn't take any healthy branches but I like the sound of having a bit of an ancient wood.

That's the buggeration thing. Carrots are the only thing there that we would actually eat. I know rules is rules but I would have thought that the bloody buggery committee would recognise that this has been an awful year for crop failures and insisting on new planting in late August is a bit mad demanding.

goodness, have they really?

Even MONTY has had veg disasters this year. It has been a nightmare. I have grown no salad at all.

Well, the plot looks rather bare as we have dragged out the pitiful corpses of failed crops. We have been told to get more of the plot into cultivation within the next week, which means immediate planting of yukky stuff things we would not normally grow.

::genuflects at mention of Monty::

I didn't realise they were so strict

what would they say about my veg patch?

Our allotment committee is unusually self important arsey strict, Humph. They are apparently famous across the wider allotment community for it.

Hi all, hope you are enjoying the summer. I will get a monent to catch up properly (soon I hope).

Maud, Fothergills have reduced winter veg , I had to resort to buying some as have had a lot of seed failures. What about sticking in some soft fruit bushes through membrane , my friend did that and it really is keeping the weeds away in that section.

Rainbow chard is very easy to grow, looks good and useful in the winter. I'm about to stitck in some leeks. Came home to marrows again and lots of weeds at mine but on the plus side I do now have beans to pick finally.

I've got 50 Dorset Naga drying in the greenhouse, haven't been brave enough to try any yet. Have also had 4 Thai long green aubergines and three large punnets of tomatoes. DS and I made yoghurt yesterday flavoured with some strawberries from the greenhouse, was lovely.

Ah, thanks for the tip Wynken. I have ordered some kale and cabbage for my vegetable patch (currently overrun with madly over-enthusiastic strawberries and lemon balm). At least my tomatoes are turning red at last.

Ah. Tomatoes.

::weeps copiously::

Mine are. Just. Beginning. To. Flower.