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 never lift gladioli. The Byzantinus come back every year but the others are less reliable.

My T&M perennials have arrived. Again, lots of substitutions. Am a bit despite the £10 voucher bribe which, I feel, isn't really the point.

Well so far today we have ...

Cut the enormous mixed pyracantha/ivy hedge (10ft plus)
Pulled up 2 courgette plants, 8 dwarf bean plants and 1 squash (the last had climbed all the way up into the hedge, and as I pulled it down a gourd flew at me! Just the one though)
Cut down the tansy
Cut the fruited stems of thornless blackberry
Chopped the asparagus
Flymo'd the lot so it could be composted.
Mowed the rest of the lawn
Strimmed the edges
Deadheaded achillea, alchemilla, sisyrhynchiums
Hacked down to the ground a hypericum which had been a bit diseased. It may not come back but it was fairly shabby
Took a few branches off Cornus 'midwinter fire' so that when the leaves fall and I get the bright branches it is a nice shape
Pruned the outward shooting branches of another pyracantha on the rockery so it hugs the fence.

Lots more on my list but DH has just been struck down with gastric badness (DS and I have already had it and don't want it back!) so I can only do toddler-friendly tasks now. I have lots of hollow stems that I want to make into a bug hotel, so we might get on with that.

The RHS Garden magazine came through the door today too - love the article about autumn colour.

Spent three hours hard graft in garden. Only got as far as asparagus bed and veg plot but looks sooo much better. Hitting the pots and long bed tomorrow plus bulbs to get in. If I can move ... I hurt

You have all been busy.

I have not really, although we have been picking a few more apples than we originally thought we would get. Just had them juiced and we have 171 bottles Shame I am low carbing...

After a week of wild storms everything here is very soggy and a bit battered so not too good for gardening.

DD and I wandered about in the sun and picked yet another bunch of sweet peas (20th Oct is definitely a record for me!) and a lovely bunch of roses and DD has pressed some autumn leaves. Very pleased to rediscover the red oak we planted a few years ago right in the bottom corner of the garden behind the shed. Its now turning a glorious colour,is about 6ft tall and has finally emerged from the nettles butterfly habitat.

Want to start on pots etc and have a stash of bulbs to go in but the petunias and cosmos that survived slug-geddon are still flowering like mad and it seems a shame to rip them out.

Been visiting itu all day and for most of the past week. surprised to find that gardening has happened.

humphrey can I be your friend and share a glass of the delishus? Have you labelled neatly with year and type of apple? I can see the bottles in my minds eye.

Today I bought more tulip bulbs and now I seem to be bidding for a lot of pots on Ebay. Will I never learn?

we have never done labels, I keep meaning to. It is a mix of apples, whatever we could scrounge up from the poor crop. We have no Bramleys at all this year.

go on, buy more pots Maud.

(Couldn't you get Black Bat Night into your Halloween name? Or have you done that one already?)

ooh, could I have some juice, Humphrey? I love proper apple juice.

I'll know tomorrow whether I've got the pots. I just missed out on some very nice Charles Rennie Mackintosh earrings - I reckon the winning bidder used one of those last-minute bid zapper things.

This is my lasts year's Halloween name. I've just been contributing to the is Maud too dull thread.

::Goes off to name change::

Whooooooo-hoooooooo!!!! I have started doing my new garden over. Do not ask me how much I just spent at the garden centre, just gloat along with me.

I have to go to a hen-do tonight and I am so unimpressed. Because I have to start getting ready shortly, which means I can't start ripping out all the useless crap in the garden, and begin to dig my beauties in. Grrrrrrrrr.

I hate those zapper ebay things.

ooh, have fun Jacksmania

DH found two toads in the pots he was filling today. They were lovely.

::twirls::

::slurps delicious juice::

Hiya Jacksmania. One of the questions a lady never asks, I think, is how much her friend just spent at the garden centre/on a gardening website/at the plant auction.

lovely name

Thank you. It would be better with some punctuation or some ands but rules is rules, it seems!

Triumphs and Disasters here in the garden today... got lots done like sanding the lawn, and constructing a leaf-catching contraption over the pond, but discovered I have rotted lots of my bulbs by storing them in an airtight tin. AARGH!! Including 3 Allium Schubertii I bought at vast expense at the Hampton Ct RHS show.

I have some beautiful flowers out at the moment. I can't remember the variety, but I planted Dahlia seeds in late July also from HC show, and they are out and gorgeous. Wine coloured petals and yellow middles, fine fingery leaves, about 12-15 inches tall overall. My dwarf acer on the rockery (almost the only survivor of our predecessors' planting) has gone its most vivid red, and the cyclamen under it that has spent the autumn so far spreading like a mat is now starting to put out little pinky white flowers.

I have also erected my metre-square plastic covered frame over two of the three canvas grow beds at the northmost end of the garden (i.e. gets sun all but a couple of weeks either side of the solstice). More than half of my garden is now in shade and won't see direct light until March. Not yet sure what I'm going to plant in the protected beds yet. But I think I will do early peas and beans again, just waiting for a couple of things to finish in the spot I have in mind (also as far up the north as I can get them!) and then I shall do it.

Not got as much done today as planned but did get the bulbs in, 100 snakes head fritillary around the trees where I planted the bluebells last year. This year DH is already under strict instructions to not mow that area after last year's disaster. Hoping that the mown bluebells will come up again this year and try again! Also put around another 60 allium bulbs in the long bed. Just because they were free and, well, you can never have enough alliums. Still got the pots to do and lots of cutting back and weeding. Maybe next weekend...

Did you overwinter peas last year Lex? I remember yours cropping very early. I'm going to try it this year and overwinter the broad beans again because they worked really well last year. My veg plot is looking quite full with all the winter and spring veg planted out but I have a bed spare for peas and beans. Also I'm very pleased that I can see my paths again now I've stripped out all the pumpkins & squashes that were roaming everywhere, which obviously appeals to my sense of order and neatness.

I couldn't psych myself up to go in the garden, because by the time we finished lunch it was alreday getting dark. Hopefully tomorrow will be a nicer day and I'll plant my tulips.

I've been outbid on the pots and have persuaded myself I don't need them.

Holy crap. I got so much done today. I am one gigantic body ache.
Got everything ripped out that I didn't want. I have this mahoooosive pile of stuff that needs to be loaded into DH's truck and go to the compost pile at MIL's. Mostly nasty spiny shrubs and ugly evergreen crap.
Got half the hole dug for my dogwood tree. We have clay-based soil here so it's such a slog. I'll do more tomorrow.
Got the lily bulbs planted in the front, the Annabelle hydrangea pruned, my rhubarb planted in its massive planter against the west-facing fall. Pruned the honeysuckle and tied it up better on the thingy over the garden gate that you train viney things on (obvs have lost the power of coherent speech, too). Got all the plants in pots placed where they're going to be dug in.
I am cooked.

What a great day :o

Very nice apple juice Thanks.
Pruned climbing and rambling roses a la Monty. Put in bulbs. Am going to get more.
Need advice on large flowered plants which a nearly blind person can see to plant now for spring/summer. Need massive brightly coloured blooms. Or white against a dark leaved background.
South and east facing gardens. Lovely soil.
Have ordered tree peony, large magnolia, more tulips. Need a suitable climbing rose and a suitable large flowered clematis which will trail into a tree.

I was letting my mind drift in the bath yesterday (came in from outside after quite a while of the afternoon drizzle, needed a nice soak) and sort of went through my garden in my head. I came to the realisation that this point in the year is sort of a watershed; most things which are going to flower/fruit have done so and are tailing off, anything which dies back for winter will be well on the way if not completely disappeared, and on the other hand it's just the start of the planting season for perennials, overwintered veg and so on.

So I decided I would think of it positively, as Gardening New Year - and using the handy marker of the clocks going back as the actual date. Anybody up for a virtual hootenanny this Saturday evening?!

Bertha, yes, those were planted October and the only thing that went wrong was I didn't support them well enough. Will not make that mistake again!

Maud, tried to send this as a pm but not sure it worked: Sorry you didn't get the pots you wanted on Ebay...
I have more big pots than I need, and I would quite like to shed what I am unlikely to use next year. I have tidied them but could un-stack them for the purposes of a photo, if you were interested? Would be two or three knee-height ones, and a few more 8 inch (ish, diameter) ones. Don't think we could swop these at [mainline] station though! Let me know if interested. Mates Rates for prices ;-)

Hello everyone! Hope you're all well.

I've just had a great delivery of masses of tulip bulbs (bright red, orange and pink). Can't wait to see them next Spring as I definitely get S.A.D and know the Spring colour will be great;plus I've never grown them before.

Have had a fan trained Cherry and Apple tree arrive. Can't wait to get them in the ground (someone is going to do it for me as beyond me physically. The same gardener is going to come and spread manure on all the beds for me. Hurrah)

I'm also waiting for lots of roses to be delivered; I've gone for David Austen's English roses as I think they're stunning.

I'm loving my new garden, I'm just impatient to see it all in bloom next summer. I wish I had endless funds for it. There is a nice woodland area at the end of the garden and I'm going to try some forest gardening on a small scale. There is a native cherry there already, so will put in lots of wild garlic, snowdrops and bluebells, lily of the valley (possibly blackberries but not sure if they'll take over and then I won't be able to manage them), and some oyster and shitakemushroom plugs in all the treestumps everywhere so I can harvest them in the years to come. I would LOVE to put in a few hazel/cobnut trees, the idea being I can harvest the nuts and then every 8 years coppice them, but think that's a bit ambitious/expensive this year, plus it's quite a shady area already so not sure how well they'd do there. Plus I wouldn't be able to do the coppicing myself so don't want it to cost lots long term having someone come and chop them down for me. But it's a nice dream and maybe next year I can think more seriously about it. I love the idea of having a fire pit/log burner in the garden or house and having my own supply of wood for it, plus coppicing is so good for wildlife, it seems.

Still have three more bags of tulip bulbs to go, and am awaiting VAST rose order to make a hedge.

Anyone know owt about rotovators or turfcutters?

Have also been, erm tidying tearing out masses of bramble and have the thorns to prove it. Every year it grows back. Still three borders to go, but have made a real ding in it this year.

Think a rule about no noisy radio in gardens would be civil.

Phacelia - if you can bear it leave your woodland bit for a year and see what comes up naturally. This is what we did with our wood bit and we get heaps of bluebells, woodland anenomes, foxgloves, ferns and lots of great stuff that I have no idea what it is. All we do is pull up any nettles that appear and keep a vague check on the brambles. If nothing interesting comes up then go mad next year! May also help to spread the cost of putting stuff in this year.