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...

I saw an amazing hedge of dahlias today -orange ones, very tall and blowsy interspersed with yellow pom pom ones. They have flowered outside a local church for some years and this year they have spread to form a long tall hedge and have quite out-done themselves.

I must say that Monty's Bishop of Landaff dahlias are doing well too and make a superb colour display with his canna lilies.

I had to rescue mine from the slugs and squirrels and they are currently recuperating in the front porch (which is squirrel free) and at least one looks like it might flower later on in the year. But 4/6 designed to cheer up October went to the wretched squirrels.

The rain is good for the rose cuttings.

I am curling up and reading a nice book today.

Help!!!!!! Just been out to water my hydrangea pots and they are infested with whiteflies!!!!!!

Good to see you back here, Jacksmania!

I thought whitefly was mainly an indoor/greenhouse thing, but as ever the dear old RHS has advice here. Could this be hydrangea scale (which I'd never heard of before)?

I'm off to the RHS harvest show later this morning. ::grin::

Looks perfectly innocuous to me
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-19868327

I'm with the couple who grew the thing, how is one to know? In any case what does one do to ...ahem....get any effect from this plant? Its a bit like growing aconite is like growing poison. Well yes.. but...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-19878090

In Dorset they have upmarket flower pots.

Ha! That reminds me of when I bought a tiny plant of hellebore foetidus at a fete without really knowing what it was and then spent weeks worrying that the leaves looked like cannabis.

The sarcophagus would make a lovely garden feature, though.

Just got home to find my £5 worth of strawberry and blueberry plants from a GW offer have arrived. They look really nice, shame its too wet to go out and plant them right now! But have got a lovely ground elder free bed to plant them in (hopefully). Just have to keep the chickens off them now.

How was the harvest show Maud? Did you come back laden with bounty?

Oooh. I ordered those. Perhaps mine will arrive soon, too.

The show was lovely but much smaller than I expected. I'm sure in the past it has filled both halls, but this was just in the smaller one. The displays of fruit and veg were awesome - some people clearly have not suffered catastrophic crop failures, or plant so much that even a fraction of their potential crop is more than I produced this year - but I was sorry there weren't more (or in fact any) autumn-flowering plants to see, let alone buy. There was, though, some very tasty food on offer.

I came away with some designer cheese, some chutney for DH's birthday, some broad bean seeds, some chillis and some tomato plants.

Sounds like a fab day Maud. I am rather

Went to the county record office today to do some research about the house. Found out some interesting stuff, we are on the map done in 1843 and it shows that the orchard was there then. So is pretty old and very possibly even older than that.

Wow, Humph, that's impressive.

I know I am very lucky to be able to go to the London shows (and even more so in the days when they were monthly events). It's compensation for living in a densely-populated area, comparatively far from any of the gardens.

The show sounds lovely, but I'm intrigued as to what you will do with tomato plants at this time of year. Can you keep them over winter?

My green toms have just been turned into chutney. They were so unripe that they didn't mush down very much so everyone will get lumpy chutney for xmas this year.

Humphrey are the apple trees in your orchard old ones? DH is somewhat obsessed with apple varieties and has been growing various cuttings from old trees he has come across with some success, although not knowing how to graft, they will probably grow up to be giants.

Argh. I was thinking about tomatoes while typing. I bought some strawberry plants with which to replant a hanging basket!

They are some old varieties. Will ask DH where he put the list when he stops watching Grand Designs. Sadly the trees were not in good nick when we took it on and we are losing quite a few. We have been replacing the stock from the moment we came.

Ah and there was me thinking you had some special RHS knowledge about starting next years toms early like sweet peas....

Oh I wish!

Wynken did that - started tomatoes really early. An experiment, I think. Might have been in heated soil and greenhouse conditions ... !!

I wanted to go to the show but it seems I had a lucky escape, if there were seed retail opportunities... instead I waited in for three plumbers and two handymen, of which I actually got two plumbers and a cowboy.

A propos tomatoes .... There's a tip in GW magazine, if you have plants with lots of unripe fruit. Lay the plant along the soil and cover it with a cloche and then the fruit should ripen.

but also commiserations at Lexi's two plumbers and a cowboy.

My olympic rose bushes arrived today! I am really pleased. I feel I will have a little bit of gardening history, if they survive the winter in the garden

The apple orchard sounds nice. It would be very interesting to read the list of varieties. I am impressed your dh knows what all the varieties are, Humphrey Can you tell which are the oldest trees? Are they pruned/trained in any particular way? I have been training my fruit trees into a) stepover and b) fan
Which is probably why they haven't fruited because otherwise they would just grow towards the light and flower and fruit. So I'm not sure whether to give up on the fan and just let it be.
Some amazing apple orchards in Kent btw.

We took the apples to an identification day - that is the only reason we know. We pitched up with a carrier bag full and a grid reference. The bloke was amazing and could do the majority. The rest we picked better specimens and kept in a fridge next year.

Worcester Pearmain, Autumn Pearmain, Blenheim Orange, Keswick Codlin, Tom Putt, Crimson Bramley, Newton Wonder, Edward VII, Golden Delicious (prob the remains of the original root stock), and we have planted Ashmead's Kernel, Monmouth Green and another local variety DH can't remember. Also a cox's orange pippin.

There are old cherry trees, a few pear and lots of damson too. We have also put in a Doyenne de Comice Pear, a Walnut and a Victoria Plum.

The trees were mostly on large root stock and we have tried to prune and fertilise them. We have a bee hive that we are a bit shit at looking after and we are hoping to pass them on to someone else who knows what they are doing, we are happy just to have the bees in order to pollinate. The previous owner used to keep a thousand chickens in the orchard and the manure they generated must have been very good for the trees.

One of the nicest things about the orchard is the fact that there is wild mint growing there, it is everywhere this year. Unfortunately so are the nettles this year as we have not had it grazed.

Ooh. Tell me about the stepovers, Funnyperson. Did you start with an ordinary tree and train it yourself? I fancy having a stepover or two on the allotment, because I fear the time is coming when we may have to take one of the trees out of the garden, as if it gets much bigger it will endanger the fence. Which isn't ours.

We had our other tree identified at an apple day at Brogdale. It turned out to be Jonagold - offspring of Golden Delicious - which explains why we don't much like the fruit.

We have got a couple of cherries we are attempting to fan train against the wall. The bloody slugs got them big time

Pearmain. Yum. Had some ice cold delicious Pearmain juice in Kent. Keswick Codlin sounds amazing. I have an old National trust book of Elizabethan desserts with a codlin recipe in. That person knowing the apples by the look and the grid reference is astonishing. I hope he/she passes the skill on. Here is an interesting list of apples

lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org/2009-October/027781.html

It is possible your Orchard goes back even further than the 19th century. The smell of apples and mint growing together must be enchanting on a late summer day.

Maud I ordered the trees for the stepover from a specialist nursery which I found by searching on the internet. I would have to dig to let you know which one. They are of a dwarf rootstock and came about 18 ins high. So far they haven't branched. One of the books I read said you could bend over the top but as the trees I have are so little I'm not going to do that but will train the side branches and prune the top accordingly.

I'm not sure walls are good for trees to fan out on. OK if its a south facing really sunny wall but otherwise the wall just increases the potential for damp/slugs/shade/ no?

I went to an apple day at Hughenden Manor once: had a wonderful time. They have fans in that walled garden.

www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/9942587.No_apples_at_Hughenden_Manor/?ref=rss