Rhubarb Appreciation Society

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Going with Rhihaf's thread name suggestion, following on from the first rule of gardening club is thread.

Pull up your kneeling pads, crack open the elderberry wine and the blackberry gin and come and join us. No real experience or gardening know-how needed.

Oh and three tree peonies and some osteospermum. And then I really am done for the year.

I searched and searched for my Dutch flags and Orange dress yesterday but to no avail maud and rhubarb. I was orange in spirit though

Everything planted. Heading out for some more lavender today to finish row in front bed. We still have to get some more bits for the front though, DH wants a blue hydraenga.

We spent an hour yesterday afternoon trying to identify some of the plants we have in our garden that pre-date us - DH has definitely been bitten by the gardening bug now!

Wine berries are normally trained up and then along horizontally, a little like cultivated blackberries. But at Pashley, the woman who harvests them is apparently somewhat vertically challenged, so instead of training them along horizontally, they have wound them round and round in circular patterns. It looks wonderful.

I had your fencing man round yesterday, Cantspel. He had some trouble getting his head round the fact that he'd been recommended by someone I didn't actually know and couldn't tell him the name of. I think he thinks I'm a bit of a loon!

Alan is lovely and i will be seeing him this saturday so i will tell him it was me. I met him a few years ago as he used to train my sons football team and since then he has done several jobs for me. He is a handy bloke to know as along with fencing and garden work he can turn his hand to most things.

My wine berry has grown a lot this year, so as I too am vertically challenged and space us limited, I may try that spiral technique.

"He had some trouble getting his head round the fact that he'd been recommended by someone I didn't actually know and couldn't tell him the name of." I love the internet. My bil has a holiday house near here and he wanted a landscape gardener to email him a quote. BIL nearly dropped from shock when the guy said he didn't have email. He just couldn't get his head round this .

The first things are starting to sprout in the greenhouse - cosmos purity and some parsley. Hurrah. I am planning to move a large trough in for salad and I will get the tomato plants and cucumber in as well. Sowed some nicotiana yesterday, I am not holding my breath as I have tried these before with no success. But hey, I have a greenhouse now, so who knows?

Do lupins come true from seed? I have potted up a lot of tiny seedlings from the cottage borders today as well. Lots and lots of opium poppy seeds sprouting too, which is nice. I see Sarah Raven do opium poppy seeds in colours other than black, which is all I have been able to find before. I will get some of those.

Spiral technique for wine berries sounds lovely.

I just had some lily of the valley delivered. I ordered them so long ago i had completely forgotten about them

Gravel is coming tomorrow! I am VERY excited about this not because I love gravel, but because it means I can buy plants to go in my lovely plant/gravel garden to-be.

Nipped up to Nymans this morning as I had a tip off that their Magnolias are looking good, and I want to put one in in the autumn so need to choose which variety. Oh. My. God. What an understatement - their Magnolia collection is stunning. I was quite blown away and rather than being closer to deciding which variety I want I now find myself wanting at least half a dozen.

Close contenders are Anne Rosse, Star Wars, Michael Rosse, Butterflies, Sargentiana robusta... Anyone else got a favourite Magnolia?

Cantspel - Alan is clearly a useful person to know!

I have a day off work today and the weather is beautiful

I aired and fed the lawn (hopefully have drowned the june bug grub in the process)
planted a red currant bush (poundland)
potted all the seedlings

I had a little wander around Haskins garden centre today. It was like a little slice of heaven but the prices were eye watering.

Rhubarb i have a Magnolia tree at the bottom of the garden. It must have been planted years ago. It is in full bloom at the moment and the flowers are white with pink tinge. Looks lovely but i have no idea what type it is. (not very helpful am i)

Oooh I would love a magnolia on my front garden. There are some lovely ones near me, I particularly lust over a dark purple one, but they can get seriously large. Are they bad for house foundations? what do I care, I'd be long gone

I think a magnolia and a mahonia on opposite front corners would be rather nice - winter/spring interest. And a Daphne.

We have a Haskins close to us. Agree about prices, though they did have the cheapest Daphne I've seen and regret not getting.

I've had to look at Care Homes today which I was dreading. First wasn't nice but the second was excellent, can imagine Mum there. The lady who owns it has landscaped the gardens and the will look stunning when mature (only completed in November). Though apparently she's going to have to relinquish some of her flower beds as the residents want to plant veg.

Hello, may I poke my head around the door?

A lovely and kind MNer told me about this thread and sent me a load of seeds to get my started in a new home (thank you!). So here I am.

I have got basil and peas just coming up, and sweetpeas I had from my own seeds. I've planted chives and coriander this morning. Feeling very excited about all the lovely new shoots.

I haven't had a garden before, but have had a ridiculously big collection of pots on a balcony, and I'm sooooo enjoying having actual earth, even if it is only a tiny bit. We're renting, but someone who was here before had started training an apple tree up the wall and it is looking lovely.

Can anyone tell me - will I kill it if I prune it now? I hate to as it is in flower, but it was originally espaliered and has shot up past the height of the wall and put out a few stems in the wrong directions that are now too stiff to train back. What do you reckon?

Hello and welcome LRD! Have a glass of elderberry and pull up a rustic deckchair.

You won't kill your apple tree but it might set it back a bit. I think if I was you I would have a go though; it's got a whole season ahead of it so if you do it now it's got time to recover and put out new shoots.

Thank you! Both for the welcome and the elderberry.

I'm really enjoying catching up on this thread, and getting motivated to go to some more gardens before too long. I love pottering around them.

I've popped a pic of the poor apple tree on my profile - it looks a bit skewed. By the looks of that and the very scruffy climbers which were pretty much the only plants here when we moved in, no-one's done anything except maybe cut the grass for the past year, so it's a bit of a messy. The soil is really stony, it's clearly never been dug over very much but there are bluebells looking quite happy and the people whose garden backs onto mine have gorgeous stuff that makes me really jealous.

I am also deeply jealous of those of you who have big gardens ... especially the one with the river! Wow. That must be amazing.

Oh, hello LRD. How exciting that you have a garden! How big is it?

Good luck with the seedlings - let me know if you make the basil and coriander work, mine bolt every time.

Hello LRD, welcome

Just had a look at your apple tree pic and your lovely little garden, wonderful! Not that I know anything about pruning apple trees, some advice Here

The honeysuckle by the front door has suddenly sprung into life. Any suggestions as to how I train it now? It has reached the bottom of the roof (we live in a bungalow).

Cleared a very steep and muddy, damp, horrendous bank behind the house today of brambles and joy! Primroses, Lady's Mantle, foxgloves, and something else with very large shiny leaves and thick sprouting stems on it.
Hope springs eternal

Welcome, LRD.

I had my apple trees pruned yesterday, so I'm hoping they won't be killed (they're not in flower yet, though). Mind you, as the chap made rather a bad job of one tree - the ends of some branches now look damaged, with rips in the bark rather than clean cuts - I think there may need to be some remedial action. Another gardening job that hasn't gone according to plan.

And may I have another moan? My neighbour, who is a twerp not a gardener, has chosen this week - unbidden - to hack back my clematis montana, just as it was about to flower. In the course of his frenzied secateur-wielding, he has almost pulled down two bits of the fence, that was a bit rickety and is now barely vertical. Harrumph.

::swigs gin::

Will do, mooncup - they are only tiny as yet, but I'm hoping. The garden is really tiny - a little narrow strip with a patio by the kitchen door - so hopefully they'll be too much under my eye to bolt.

rhi - ooh ... I love honeysuckle. The smell of it is just amazing. Which colour is it, the yellowy kind or the pink and purple?

Thanks for the apple tree advice - and to maud.

Why did your neighbour hack your plant?! Isn't that a bit rude ... I'd always ask about something that's rooted on the other side, not for permission but to be polite at least. Stupid man.

Gosh Maud, I would feel positively MURDEROUS. Have you spoken to him about it?

Hello LRD

The perry pear is just coming out in blossom, as is the Taihaku and the cherry trees. The Damson trees are in full swing. Everything is happening at once. I pulled out all the dying daffodil flowers from the pots at the front so that the spring green tulips are not obscured by dying flowers. All the tulips in the front garden are out at once, not like last year where the side that are shaded by the horrid laurel bushes came out 10 days after all the others.

I am off to Hampton Court in Hereford on Sunday. I am really looking forward to it - I love this garden, partly because I visit reasonably often and it was the first big garden I visited after I had one of my own. I have seen it in early summer and late summer, but never this early. It is always interesting to see how they change through the seasons.

Well, quite, LRD. The clematis is on the fence between our two properties, but is planted on my side and was growing up - rather attractively I thought - into my tree. I am miffed.

Hi Humph.

He told me on Sunday what he had done, but I only really saw it today. Given that the neighbours are definitely not gardeners and spend almost no time in their garden, I just don't understand why they decided to let rip on my plants.

I need to let this go before I have a coronary.

offers