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.
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Rhubarb Appreciation Society
995 replies
Blackpuddingbertha · 23/03/2013 21:43
OP posts:
Blackpuddingbertha ·
30/03/2013 18:35
I love Acers. We have two in pots. Too scared to plant them in our horrid ground and they seem quite happy. The one on the front door step catches the evening sun and glows when you come down the drive. It's lovely.
I have been planting! Carrots, spring onions, leeks and broad beans outside but all under cloches. Purple climbing beans, runner beans, basil, bronze fennel, electric daisies, borage, one type of cucumber (more to follow when warmer), three squashes, one type of courgette (more again to follow of both of those), tomatillo, nigella something or other and possibly other stuff that I've forgotten. All that is either in the conservatory or upstairs in a spare bedroom on a camping table by a radiator for those that need more warmth to get going.
DH has started building the arbour and we finished prepping the area it's going on. Just need to finish the construction, get it in the right place, build the planters and cover the area with gravel. Mmmmm, quite a bit to go I think.
I'm off for a spa night with a friend to recover 
OP posts:
funnyperson ·
30/03/2013 21:14
Hello Gin thats interesting that you have a north facing garden with the far end getting sun. I suppose its the east facing wall gets sun too. Thats quite a good place to put a fruit tree.
Well your spring bulbs are good to go in the far border, and summer flowering things such as clematis, roses in the east facing border. Roses and honeysuckle might do fine in the west facing border too, if the sun reaches the top of the boundary, as will ferns, grasses and hostas and hellebores, astrantia, alchemilia mollis, ceratostigma, crocosmia, winter jasmine etc.
Like Monty said there is loads of choice out there and soon will be the best time to plant up, and in a way I think it is useful to decide what kind of garden you want: contemporary or cottage or naturalistc or tropic, structured and symmetrical or rampant and informal, bright pinks and yellows or whites and creams or burgundy and green and orangey and so on cos then you can make better choices.
Plantsforshade is a good website for plants for shady areas. RHS website has lots of good advice.
I really like the sound of the acer in a pot Bertha How did you manage to plant all that veg out? Was it already sown indoors?
Welcome cantspel 
Brioche all got eaten: I will cook some more when I get round to it.
Blackpuddingbertha ·
30/03/2013 22:03
Sorry funny - 'planting' may have been the wrong word. I have been 'sowing'. No actual plants to speak of but lots of trays and pots of hopefulness!
Humphrey - should we stop asking about the piglets? Is it like when someone is 42 weeks pregnant and everyone phones up to ask, 'have you had the baby yet?' I remember scaring a lady on Sainsbury's checkout by shouting saying, '2 weeks ago' when she asked me when the baby was due.
OP posts:
Rhubarbgarden ·
30/03/2013 23:49
I found an effective way of jump-starting labour. At 38 weeks, 6am one morning suffering from insomnia I decided I absolutely had to go out to the greenhouse and climb up on a very high stool to tie in the tomato plants to the greenhouse roof. Predictably, fell off stool, bump side down. Dd arrived shortly afterwards.
I don't recommend this method. 
WynkenBlynkenandNod ·
31/03/2013 07:29
Morning all, Happy Easter. Here's a for Gin and Leucan- would offer wine but it's a bit early.
I'm in Holland, it's started to snow again and there isn't a tulip to be seen. To be fair we're practically in Germany and it's a bit confusing to know which language to try in the nearest town as it's split in the middle. In fact everything looks decidedly dead where we're staying and the reception staff sound even more depressed than we are about the absence of spring .
funnyperson ·
31/03/2013 09:02
Happy Easter! [busmile}
Maud [bushock] that you take my advice!
It is a wonderful sunny morning here, frosty but bright. The robins, blackbirds and blue tits are flying about in pairs, digging for grubs (let them get every slug I say) and chirping their hearts out. Spring is late but it is on its way. I feel it in the air, like Mole in the Wind in the Willows. I think it will be a very warm May and I too have an urge to go out and get lots of seeds and sow them asap like Bertha. I like reading about how the arbour is coming along.
Wynken Sometimes I get serious angst about my garden but then at other times I remember going back to see a garden I once gardened, 15 years after I left it, and the change made me realise how much the garden had in fact depended on my input, and how much lovelier it had been as a result even though I didn't always think so.
Clematis here are very slow, and I have put extra mulch round them to protect the new shoots of the summer and autumn flowering ones. Hosta and rhodedendron died and the pesky squirrels chewed the tender tops of the tulips which were coming through. But the Japonica is finally blooming.
HumphA Pigscot sounds like Blandings. A pregnant pig must be exciting and nerve racking for non farming mortals. Are you choosing names or will that tempt fate? How do you look after piglets?
Welcome Leucan Please accept some and a choccy egg. Please tell us about your garden.
WynkenBlynkenandNod ·
31/03/2013 10:04
I take your advice FP, you always sound as if you know exactly what you're talking about
Bit jealous if you've all got sun and can hear bird song. It has stopped snowing now though thank goodness. I'm looking forward to tomorrow as that's the day we're off to see my Aunt and her garden with the Cherry Tree. Bet it looks smaller looking at it as an adult, will be interesting to see.
That is definitely quite a drastic way to start labour Rhubarb, take it you didn't fancy a curry !
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LeucanTheMopsis ·
31/03/2013 12:31
Thank you, all, and Happy Easter.
Don't invite me to tell you about my garden... 
Oh, ok. [bugrin]
It's about 30mx50, SE facing, bordered on two sides with hawthorn and blackthorn hedging with honeysuckle, with some random silver birches and rowans (I recently added a cherry, a quince and an apple), and a clump of silver birch near one corner. The third side is bounded by a river (yes, it floods), but with a mess of blackthorn, willow, beech and lilac between the lawn and the water.
There's an awful lot of lawn, so large scoops and curves of it are let to grow meadow'ish, with paths in between, and plenty of papavers, meconopsis and ox-eye daisies shoved in (keeping them unstrangled is more effort than it's worth, I sometimes think).
I have two smallish blobs of herbaceous borders next to the house, and one long one against one of the hedges, five large (2mx3m) veg patches, a greenhouse, and every herb you've ever thought of either lurking in the beds or in pots on the patio just outside the back door. Fruit is scattered around - gooseberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants lurking near the hedge trying to blend in, raspberries up against the house, strawberries (alpines too) sharing with the veg.
The front is a dead zone - cobbles, shade, piercing wind. But this year, the vinca in the trough has already surpassed itself.
Sorry. [bublush]
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