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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

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

999 replies

Lexilicious · 16/07/2012 18:25

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 Gin, 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...

OP posts:
MaudTheGardenTheBlackBatNight · 28/10/2012 21:46

I had some lovely black petunias and white lofos in Art Nouveau lady's head this year, but the petunias soon got shredded by slugs.

I think the key is to avoid the ultra-gaudy striped petunias. I like a bit of kitsch and whimsy but they really are too much.

HumphreyCobbler · 28/10/2012 21:55

aDverse????
I am very tired.

HumphreyCobbler · 28/10/2012 21:56

Yes, solid colour are best. I had window boxes once with those white/blue ones. It looked lovely as it was all one colour.

We are thinking hard about slug proof plants for next year.

MooncupGoddess · 28/10/2012 22:09

Stripy plants are just wrong.

The top of my pergola has collapsed, owing to a combination of rot and the weight of the vine, which I had failed to prune as my father keeps warning me that pruning vines is Very Tricky. I have now had to prune it anyway to avoid it bringing down the neighbour's fence - does anyone have any experience of vines?

I have also bought a lot of very cheap winter pansies from the 'on verge of death' shelf at B&Q. It cheers me up to see something flowering in winter, and I have learnt that the neighbouring cats see bare soil as generous latrine provision.

HumphreyCobbler · 28/10/2012 22:12

I suppose I should have said those white ones with a hint of blue

sorry to hear about the pergola collapse

echt · 29/10/2012 07:27

Oooh, I love the 'verge of death shelf'; it's called 'the sad plants unit' at Bunnings in my bit of Melbourne. I've picked up two lovely day lilies and a tatty fern which I've turned into two tatty ferns. Smile

MaudTheGardenTheBlackBatNight · 29/10/2012 08:38

I frequent the verge of death shelf too.

I have never properly pruned my vibe because I had always heard how Very Tricky it is, but this month's GW magazine has a guide to pruning which makes it sound Actually Quite Straightforward. I'll be giving it a go in the next week or so, when I also do the roses.

MaudTheGardenTheBlackBatNight · 29/10/2012 08:40

Or even pruned my vine. Pruning one's vibe sounds like losing one's mojo.

Phacelia · 29/10/2012 08:47

Definitely also looking at plants slugs hate. It is soul destroying watching things being chomped. No hostas for me, no siree.

Good luck with all pruning - it feels daunting doesn't it? I keep reading that it's almost impossible to get wrong though.

MaudTheGardenTheBlackBatNight · 29/10/2012 09:11

I have finally given up on hostas, even on pots. I have about 10 at the moment, but plan to get rid of them next spring. I reckon once I've split them I'll have about 50 plants to take to the gardening society's annual plant sale.

And that will give me a couple of square metres for new planting. Whoopee!

MooncupGoddess · 29/10/2012 13:14

Ah, that is good to know, Maud - I will buy GW magazine and take a look.

My lobelias have survived the slug onslaught, as have the saxifrages/aubretia and crocosmia. But anything with tasty green leaves near the ground has suffered horribly.

funnyperson · 31/10/2012 03:00

Does any one know if one is supposed to prune Clematis now? For example Polish Spirit/Abundance?

echt · 31/10/2012 06:52

When does it flower? That determines the pruning. Polish Spirit blooms late, so late winter/very early spring prune.

AndIfATenTonTruck · 02/11/2012 12:33

I have increased my tomato crop!I put the hard green ones in a bowl in a dark cool drawer, and half of them have gone red. Hurrah. Only took a month or so...!!!

ps it is me, twoshedslicious, new permanent nc.

Blackpuddingbertha · 05/11/2012 19:45

Dug up first of my parsnip crop today. Soup made ready for tomorrow. Smile

echt · 06/11/2012 03:44

Tangentially gardening-related is birds and nesting. We put up two boxes to attract rosellas, but one was instantly colonised by the noisy miner, a native so aggressive and invasive that you can get a licence to trap and humanely kill them on farms. We keep removing the nest material to discourage them, and though it goes against the grain, eggs too.

A better thing is the discovery of a blackbird's nest on the top shelf of our shed, accessed by the birds through the open eaves. They've nested right on top of pair of secateurs I'd wanted to take in for sharpening, so they'll have to wait. Today I went in to get some lawn clippings for the compost heap, and there was the female on her nest, eyeing me, but unmoving, though I later saw one blue egg. While blackbirds are not native, neither are they a pest.

The rest of the garden is spring tidy-up, some it with an eye to our first house guests since we moved here; most of it cleaning windows so they SEE the garden. Lots of rain though, which is good, as we should have mulched 2-3 weeks ago. In fact it's thundering now. Smile

Melbourne Cup today: a public holiday for a 3-minute race, and you know what? I still can't find a form sheet which tells me which horses are grey, and which wear sheepskin nosebands; the only horses I ever lay a bet on.

Jacksmania · 07/11/2012 00:26

Hi all. I completely wrecked myself yesterday planting one dogwood, three camellias, two peonies, two lilacs and a huge lavender bush.
Our soil is clay as soon as you get about one foot down, so there was lots of tilling involved, lots of mixing of perlite and compost and oh my dear lord was that clay ever heavy to shift. I'm half done. Thank goodness the weather is cooperating and doing my watering for me, and if all goes well, it will be sunny tomorrow, and I have the day off, so as soon as I've dropped DS off at preschool I can do the rest: three roses, one more lilac, two clematis, and four hydrangeas. Then I think I'll be well and truly wrecked. I'm so sore today.

But I have a garden and it's such bliss :o

echt · 07/11/2012 19:26

Wow, Jack that's what I call hard yakka. It makes me almost glad to garden on sand (and watch the water and nutrients slide away before my very eyes).:o

Your garden sounds lovely.

Jacksmania · 08/11/2012 06:24

Competent done!!!! I got it all planted today. The lawn is disgraceful from me stomping all over it in my wellies but it needed help prior to that, am going to overseed it when it next looks like rain (next week , apparently).
Oh, I'm so sore. And it looks so neat and tidy, not all nasty and overgrown. Now everything can stretch out its roots in the next few warm days, and then it can all go to sleep.
I still have my bulb planters to do, but I can do them in December. It's looking like a mild winter so I'm not worried about that.

My garden makes me so happy.

Jacksmania · 08/11/2012 06:25

Errrr that should say "completely done". I certainly hope I was competent, too.

AndIfATenTonTruck · 08/11/2012 18:38

Aw, Jacks... "My garden makes me so happy." - nice reference to thread 1! (conscious?)

I haven't been out there for ages. I gaze adoringly through my back windows though...

Jacksmania · 08/11/2012 20:29

Yup, reference to thread 1 - I didn't post on it much because we only had a flower bed at the time but I read the thread title and it just completely made me :) :) :) :) with happiness.

HumphreyCobbler · 10/11/2012 20:34

Smile from me too Jacksmania. It is just the best feeling. Well done for getting it all finished.

I wanted a garden for ten years before I got one. It was worth waiting for. I remember feeling nervous when I first started planting stuff in case it wasn't as much fun as I hoped it would be, only to find it was better.

Jacksmania · 10/11/2012 22:22

I love my garden (and loved my flower bed) in all stages.
Sleeping in the winter, waking up with first tender green bits in spring, in full flower, blazing with last bits of colour in autumn and going to sleep again. :)
I only have the bare bones in right now, going to add ground cover and tall plants for interest in spring, but even just looking at the bare bones makes me happy :)

Blackpuddingbertha · 11/11/2012 09:29

Smile for Jacks and anyone else appreciating their garden.

I finally managed to get my tulip bulbs in yesterday. I've planted them in the zinc troughs that sit on the back of the pew outside the conservatory again as they looked great there last year.

Also harvested the oca yesterday. They're amazing! They sit in the soil and sort of glow. Taste good too. Definitely grow more next year.

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