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...

Will do Blackpuddingbertha; I will be excited to see what comes up. So far one area is just covered in wood spurge (I think), so I just want to get that out and then roll on next year!

It's only a small area but it would be lovely to have my own carpet of English bluebells.

Thank you, Lexi, but I decided not to pursue the pots on Ebay because I really don't need to add to the number of pots in the garden. I need to resist the temptation!

It's Friiiiiiday!!!!

So autumnal outside. There is an ash tree at the bottom of my garden (well, in the woods the other side of the fence) which has shed so many leaves this week... I'm very glad I constructed my leaf catching wire thing over the pond last weekend, and put the plastic cover over the grow-beds. There is a very fat squirrel enjoying hunting for nuts.

Oak leaves beginning to fall here.

Rather a sad feeling in the air, though lots of promise for the spring.

Funnyperson! I was just thinking I hadn't seen you here for a bit.

Very windy here today. Feeling very autumnal. I'll fire up the log burner tomorrow, I think.

Leaves rapidly dropping from the trees here. It's so cold too, wish I had a log burner.

I got some snowdrops planted yesterday and a hydrangea (Annabelle). Rather hurt myself doing it, so I've learnt my lesson and am going to leave everything else for other people to do, but it was fun knowing I've done a bit myself. Can't wait to see them in flower next year.

drilled inch-diameter holes in an old dustbin today and then raked up all the leaves on the lawn. Is only a postage stamp and the leaves have only been dropping a week but I got half a bin full!

Then I popped to B&Q to get some nice pots to bring chillis inside over winter and also the bits I need for guttering the shed so I can fill my second water butt ready for the spring... but I had a bit of an accident and came away with 150 bulbs and four clearance plants (phlox*2, gooseberry and cranberry). I hope to make some money back by taking lots of cuttings from the phlox and selling at work/front gate/car boot.

having a bit of a flop on the sofa now.

Is it necessary to rake up all the leaves or is it cosmetic?
I have been digging up dandelions from the lawn and now the lawn is full of holes.
I have loads of nettles. Someone told me to use weedkiller but there are loads of bulbs underneath.

It deoends I think, Consils. Having leaves rotting into the flowerbed is probably a good thing, as it will add humus to the soil. But leaves rotting on top of grass or the crowns of plants could introduce disease and kill them.

Oh and does anyone have handy recipes for using up a mini-glut of Jerusalem Artichokes? I got just over 8lbs out of 3 pots, which seems quite good by the standards of this year's [failed] crops.

I made soup with last year's JAs. I may still have a portion or two in the freezer. It was trumptastic!

I have been leaving leaves on the beds, for the mulching/humus reason. But on the lawn they do no good (and also I am trying to control other conditions around an experiment with three bags of sand and five potato sacks of used compost - I raked them over the lawn in the hope that the worms will do the rest). I will rake up leaves whenever it looks like the amount will be worth it, and if we have another warmer stretch I may need to mow, in which case I'll mow any leaves at that point too.

Yes, word on the gardening society street is that JA soup has particularly noticeable, ahem, effects but I think it might be my best option as we're never likely to consume 8lb before they go off.

I'm planning to fill one of our garden recycling bags with leaves - last year they rotted down very quickly and made fantastic soil improver at virtually zero effort.

I haven't started digging my JA up yet Maud but I leave mine in the ground until I want them which spreads them out from now until February time. I can't soup them as that doesn't agree with me one bit! (Agree with the gardening society on that one) My favourite is roasted. They're also nice as a gratin and I like them with leeks (cooked in butter & garlic) and have been known to do a pasta dish with them too. I gave a huge sack load of left over tubers to the school allotment last year - checked their allotment the other month and I think they planted the lot! I'm interested to see what they'll do with them all; must have been about 100 plants. The school kitchen will be busy, or, every child in the school will be sent home with several pounds each!

Ah, I didn't dare leave them in their pots in case they froze - I know that's beneficial for carrots and parsnips but was worried it might be fatal for JAs.

I like the sound of gratin, though.

There are three JA recipes on bbcgoodfood website... Salad (slice or shave them thinly), soup (we've covered), and fish pie/gratin using them as mash on top. There is probably an ideal fish taste to accompany them, probably something fairly sharp to counter the smokeyness of the JA, but you could also use the regular mix of haddock, cod, salmon that seems to be sold widely for pie.

I think I'm going to make a random veg/JA soup and freeze it, but fish pie sounds gooood.

I think they will store for around three weeks if kept somewhere cool and dark Maud so that means you only have to get through around 2.5 lbs a week...

Managed to sow my broad beans this weekend and a few peas. Thought i had more peas than I did so am going to have to buy more to fill the rest of the bed. Still haven't done the pots or the long bed though. Starting to bug me now.

[hgrin]

I potted up my latest batch of T&M mini-plugs today. Unfortunately, though I dropped the whole lot on the kitchen floor beforehand, so I now don't know which variety of salvias or primroses is which. Duh.

hello all

Got the garlic in and DH planted up an old bath with muscari and alliums. Hopefully it should look pretty. We had muscari in it before but it got invaded by couch grass, so we ditched the lot and started again.

Yesterday was really cold here. Anyone else rather depressed about the early darkness? I hate it when the clocks go back.

I'm depressed by the cold more than by the dark, I think.

I remembered today that I want ti go and buy a second bath to use as a planter. I am very pleased with Bath #1, which I use as a dipping tank. Which muscari are you using?

I asked DH and he said common or garden ones They are the plant we remember best from our childhood (lots in common!) and we wanted our dc to have the experience of pulling them to pieces because all children do this.

Baths are brilliant planters. I have all my mint varieties in one by the back door.

Yes, and I love recycled containers. One day I may plant up some of my old boots and shoes.

We once had petunias planted in an abandoned toilet. We called it the bog garden.

::snort::

Much under-rated plant, the petunia. I have a wallplanter shaped like an Art Nouveau lady's head not what I would have bought, but it was a gift, so there you go and usually plant it with something loose and trailing, to look like this Alfonse Mucha-ish lady's flowing tresses. It looked quite, ahem, remarkable the year the trailing petunias turned out not to be trailing at all and her 'hair' stood up straight from her head.

I am not adverse to the odd petunia.