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...

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Welcome Bewitched!

I've been fitting in the odd 10 minutes active gardening when I can this week. I finally managed to plant the ornamental grasses in the long bed then stood back and admired it knowing that the rabbits would probably move in as soon as I was gone. Yesterday 50% of them were reduced to stubble; can't bear the thought of checking today.

Picked one small bit of the white currant bush - 2kg of currants and I'm estimating there will be about 10kg on the bush this year. I still have a couple of kilos in the freezer from last year so I'll be giving this harvest away. I am officially the white currant fairy. They're quite sour this year though; not enough sun to sweeten them up.

The mulberry is starting to show some signs of ripening. Need to keep the sun coming.

My tub of black eyed suzy has its first flower. They are supposed to be a prolific pyramid about 1.5m high. They have reached the dizzy heights of 30cm. I'm hopeful that they'll keep going though.

[chixinthestix]

No gardening for me today as away on hols but spent the last couple of days moving things around the garden and planting out things that won't survive until we get back. I have a v kind neighbour who chicken sits and waters but I don't want to impose on her too much.

To that end DS and I dug an entirely new bed, right at the bottom of the garden in a weedy jungly area. Its now my 'cutting garden'. Ok so only 1m x 3m but sounds good! Filled it with left over echinacea, eryngiums, cosmos and one or 2 other odd bits and bobs. Not too worried about what it looks like as hidden behind the veg patch but would like to grow stuff just for cutting as I always have a vase or 2 of home grown flowers in the summer.

Also finally my sweet peas are flowering beautifully so picked every flower and bud from them and brought them with us, so they keep going. Not a single morning glory though.

Hate leaving my garden at this time of year....

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

Gosh, thanks for all the welcomes.
The fence that we 're changing measures about 10ft long by about 5 ft high, but that is on sort of higher ground floor level, our neighbour on that side has a deck on that level, and we've removed the deck that we inherited with the house to make a larger area on the lower ground floor. Although the yard faces south we have quite tall houses to the south of us so it's not very sunny, a bit hard to explain, but basically we sacrificed a tiny, higher, sunnier area for a larger, slightly more private lower level which gets less direct sun so we're trying to increase light levels.
DH business is building very modern modular houses which feature a lot of glass and steel so we can make this glass fence quite cheaply through his suppliers.
Our neighbours are very happy because they will get a lot more evening light.
I did look at sun tubes but decided that would be a bit extravagant and maybe look a bit weird and we would have to customise them as they have only ever been used indoors.
Reading this back, I realise sounds rambling and hard to visualise, sorry!

[funnyperson]

I loved the packed border with the chocolate silk tree. I think Lexi's suggestion of a cutting is a v good one. If the tree leaves are growing green instead of purple that could mean not enough light. Also I read somewhere once that if a normally purple leaved plant grows green leaves its a good idea to prune out the green growth as its too vigorous and can take away from purple growth.

My garden isn't really big enough to have a 'cutting' section.

I'm still getting my head around the potager concept, which I love. Sowed more lettuce and watered the tomatoes (which are 4 ft high!) liberally and regularly. Have been harvesting/cutting herbs to dry them and store them.

Just a few days of hot weather and the lawn is beginning to crack already. Because I try and dig organic compost and leaf mould and stuff into the flower beds, they aren't so liable to set into solid rock when it is dry, but the poor old lawn is suffering.

Does anyone know offhand if there is still a hosepipe ban?

Loved Monty's clematis.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

I think I can visualise what you mean, but it just sounds ... well ... foreign. Are you in the UK?

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

Well I didn't expect anyone to be around at this time, funnyperson, I think you and Lexi are right, a combination of too much rain, followed by too much heat, and too little light all the time.
Hahaha Maud, yes, I'm in Brighton, but I am very exotic!
Well, I'd like to be.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Ooh I love Brighton! There was something about the description of the house that made me visualise places I've seen on the French coast!

My purple sedum is growing green at the moment - I'm hoping it'll change colour as it natures.

[echt]

I have black-leaved aeonium in the back garden which flowered last year, vast yellow cones, which should be out about now - I have NO idea why most succulents seem to flower in the winter in Victoria - it defies logic. However no flowers so far, even though it's in sand and full light 365 days of the year.

A consolation is the bowl of hyacinths flowering by the front door, with their heavenly scent. The freesias have all come up, and should bloom by September. After that they're going in the borders - they do very well in sand.

The nonstop welcome winter rains mean everything is as lush as hell. A bit unhappy that the clivia I had to dig up and re-plant in order to have a tree stump ground out have had a gigantic hissy fit and are refusing to bloom.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

How old does a baby clovis have to be before it flowers, echt?

::looks despondently at indoor clivia which has never, ever flowered::

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Bloody autocorrect. Clivia, obviously.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Bloody autocorrect. Clivia, obviously.

[echt]

Ooh, can't help on this as clivia are outdoor plants in au. They're pretty tough, but not terribly keen on full sun, i.e 40 degrees. I'm betting this means plenty of filtered sun as an indoor plant. Just looked it up. Doesn't like being disturbed- the roots are gigantic, which is how they manage the dry in Australia, where they're used as underplanting as I have done).

Appears to like a crowded pot, as does its relation, the agapanthus. Actually, I don't get this asa gapanthus grows like a bugger here, in open ground, though now I come to think of it, it's always in clumps, hence the crowding. Hmm.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Hmm. I hoped I had had it long enough for it to recover from being disturbed (it was an offshoot of my dad's plant). Perhaps it needs a summer holiday outdoors.

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Hmm. I hoped I had had it long enough for it to recover from being disturbed (it was an offshoot of my dad's plant). Perhaps it needs a summer holiday outdoors.

[ethelb]

I think I have killed my tomatoes! I think I overwatered them earlier this week tried to let them dry out then forgot to tell do not to water them on Friday. Now the leaves are all curled up and floppy and the stems are breaking under the weight if the fruit. Is this the end for them

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Eek, Ethel. Have you staked the plants and removed lower side shoots? That might help counter the sagging.

[ethelb]

@come

Yep, it is a bush/determinate and i think we have actually killed it. the leaves look like they do when the plant dies back at the end of September.

I've never actually killed a plant before

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

I think I'm jinxed at the moment! BIL gave us a geranium that's apparently special and unusual, he brought it back from some Mediterranean island. It arrived on Friday and I haven't got round to planting it, it's been in my kitchen, and something is eating it at night!

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

Oh. my. god! I can't believe it, I just spotted something moving on that geranium and it was a tiny, tiny caterpillar thing exactly the same colour as the leaf! And then I found 5, yes 5 more! I've peered at it loads since I got it and saw nothing, I can't believe I missed them.

[Lexilicious]

I would be worried that the caterpillars had come in on the plant from forrin climes, and the gardens of Sussex were about to see a takeover by this new invasive geranium-decimating species... so squish 'em, then put them out for the birds to have.

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

Yes, I thought it was illegal to import plants, I don't know how they did it and they are very prim and proper.
Worry not, I have squished the blighters and put them in the bin, they were too small for a bird to find. Have also thrown the soil in the bin and run roots under the tap, I think there were eggs! Replanted in virgin soil from a fresh bag.
It will not be planted out until I'm certain contamination has gone.
Question is, should I tell very stressy, hyper BIL?

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

I was about to suggest checking the compost for imported bugs if whatever sort. It's not illegal to import plants from within the EU if they have a plant passport (usually just a number on the label). Diggibg it up from the wild is another matter. I would mention it lightly to your BIL, just in case he too has inadvertently imported some if these caterpillars . Is this geranium maderense?

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Please forgive all typos. Fat fingers and small keyboard are not a good combo.

[BewitchedBotheredandBewildered]

Ahem, what appears to have happened is, I thought DH said the geranium came from Sicily, promptly forgot the name of the island but remembered Mediterranean when reporting here.
All rubbish, it came from the Scilly Isles!
He would definitely not have dug it up, it was either a cutting or he will have bought it. I will give him a ring.
No label so don't know what it's called.

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Very excited as I've just spotted my first slow worm in very very many years. It appears to have taken up residence in my pumpkin patch living under the black weed fabric I have down. I know we have some toads and frogs in there too so it's a bit of a reptile party.

I think the last time I saw slow worms was when I was about 11. Made my day