Blooming into Flaming June

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Keeping the potting shed party going from the previous Rhubarb Society thread and all threads before it.

Please feel free to join in all gardeners, whether novice, professional or aspiring. Plenty of blackberry gin for all.

I want to start cutting things for the house, but the garden's in a sort of middling stage at the moment. The early geraniums and aquilegias have gone over but later stuff hasn't really got going. I don't feel I have enough roses in flower to start cutting them.

the time will come - I sacrificed an Alfred C. today, I just NEEDED one by my bed but I can't take any others from the walk as there is always another bud and I don't want to waste it.

I was thinking that I might have one of the beds in the round patch as a cutting garden next year. Sweet peas and sweet william. DH has banned me from ever growing gladioli again due to the seedlings that keep on coming back, like the terminator. I am sad about this, I used to grow cerise pink ones and green ones and they looked amazing as cut flowers.

It is slug attack central here . I thought perhaps we'd got away with it this year, but in one day they have decimated my runner beans, hostas and potatoes. I've put beer traps everywhere, I couldn't bear to pick them off (too fat & squelchy).

My hydrangea is thriving, it's turned from lime green to midnight blue (what soil makes it do that?). Violas & pansies are still going strong. Lilies have big fat buds. Plugs and seedlings are going strong, I am saving up plastic bottles to make mini cloche slug defences for when they go out.

I am really disappointed with the colour of the new pink rose in my front garden - it's just really washed out and not the deep cerise I imagined. Is there anything I can do to improve the colour? Or shall I dig it up and give it to my sister?

I am livid to see some of my neighbours bloody brambles shooting up in my new peony border. Your best tips for exterminating bramble shoots would be v much appreciated!

I'm not much of an expert but I believe there is a weed killer you can get that you put on the leaves and it infiltrates to the roots, we have lots of brambles and bindweed and have been spaying the latter. I've left the brambles for now.

Dd2 was checking out the strawberry patch and discovered to my horror next doors escaped snake! It's a corn snake and 'twas quite big.

I too was pondering whether to cut some roses for the house but decided not as there aren't enough.

A cutting bed is always a good idea, I th

... ink. I plan to commandeer part of the allotment.

Come to my

arse

Plant stall, NANN, and I'll sell you lots of new hostas. they're only slightly nibbled at the moment.

I have 28 rose bushes on my allotment, second year for all of them - not 1 in flower yet ! And it's hot and I'm in the south east.

And loads of people on the houses near the allotment have full roses in bloom.

They've barely got buds on them!

How galling for you, Laurie, but it'll be magnificent once all 28 are in flower.

Bumbez - you've reminded me we did buy something like that last year, i'll look it out. I went to see a friend with a new garden on Saturday, he was innocently training his bindweed up a trellis!

Don't tempt me Maud, I'm one click away from PM ing you for directions and getting my purse out... But I really need to STOP spending all my money on plants!!

Laurie - Does that mean you went out last year and bought 28 rose bushes? If you did that might make me feel better...

I pick the odd roses from the garden to have in the house, and appreciate up close, especially the scented ones.

When we moved into our house,4 years ago, there was a big hole in the front garden, that our new neighbour said was where there had been a rose until the day of the previous owner's move. It came back after a year and stupidly I pulled it out rather than waiting to see what it was. But then it came back again, and now I can see that it's rosa mutabalis, that opens deep yellow, then changes to deep pink, via orange. It's lovely but tiny. This time I shall nurture it, although I will have to move it as it's in my new purple/ blue bed.

I wonder if her's survived its move...

Laurie having all those roses sounds magnificent: next year should be fantastic.

28 roses! Wonderful.

Brambles are a complete pain. You just have to keep digging them out. Or spray repeatedly with glyphosate. Or both. But they keep coming back for a looong time. I've got loads here.

Yes I did buy at least 28 rose bushes over the last 18 months

I bought 4 climbers just 2 months ago and I'm staring at them hard, willing them to grow, but because they're bare root ones it's going to be about 5 years before I get anything exciting.

I appear to only be able to grow roses, strawberries and raspberries

Everything else is being a prick this year, even with nemaslug and frog friendly slug pellets I've had 9 of my 15 courgettes scoffed or fail so far.

Lord, I would be most put out to discover a snake in the garden

I have trained my dc to know that slugs are the enemy. They keep announcing this to all and sundry.

Hooray for 28 roses!

All the Paul's Scarlet we bought from the pound shop have survived being moved this year. There is even one flowering in a bucket that we just dumped behind the greenhouse and ignored.

Laurie, last year the only way anything survived in the garden was going out night after night and collecting all the bloody slugs by hand. I threw THOUSANDS into a bucket of salty water. I feel bad about this, but not bad enough not to do it.

We have found several strawberries nibbled and then abandoned by squirrels. I am really hoping that this means the Grazer spray is working. DH really needs to shoot the squirrels but he is too busy to sit there for a couple of days.

because they're bare root ones it's going to be about 5 years before I get anything exciting.

Some of mine are bought bare-rooted are good in a shorter time. I think all last year's rain may have helped, mind.

I too was sat in the garden this afternoon wondering where I could put a cutting garden. How much space would I need to grow a reasonable amount? I would need to put another raised bed in somewhere when DH is not paying attention again.

Slugs in the veg plot seem under control between the nematodes, traps and pellets. They have however all moved to the long bed and my dahlia has only got the leaf ribs left . Luckily this year's dahlias in pots are going strong.

My baby one of these from Sainsbury's is looking suspiciously like a clematis in its growing habit. A particularly vigorous clematis. It has grown 6 foot in a month! Will wait until it flowers before final judgement.

slugs seem lower in numbers here than last year hope I didn't yinx it now have quite a few snails, though.

Laurie's 28 roses make me feel better, though I'm sure I've spent just as much if not more.

Very traumatic couple of days here but as a result I have access to a gorgeous 4 acre garden complete with lake and swans to explore over the next 2 weeks then a 7 acre garden after that. Mum's had to move out of her bungalow and won't be returning but is in safe hands plus lovely garden at her respite home - definitely more like a country hotel.

She's then hopefully going to a self contained flat in the grounds of another home and will have a little patio area to put her pots. I feel a bit of plant buying for her coming on now ....

Sorry to hear that, Wynken - hope things get more stable from now on.

I have just dispatched about 30 slugs to their maker. I wonder if future generations will be appalled by our slug-murdering ways, just as we are appalled by previous generations' slaughter of otters, herons, birds of prey etc that were then perceived as pests?

Oh Wynken, I do hope things go smoothly for you and your mum during this time

All this talk of roses made me nostalgic, though I only like climbers for myself. I've never seen them in Melbourne, only standards, and I think it's because possums love roses, but won't walk over open ground unless they have to, preferring to walk along fences, trees and wires. And chow down as they go.

I'm slowly learning the climbers they won't eat.

Not much gardening-wise for me; frost for the first time since I've been here, real credit-card-on-the-windscreen kind. The 15 degrees we'll get later might tempt me out for a bit of tying-in of the bougainvillea.

Bertha IME solanums are sort of like a climber until they get a bit older, when the central stem is big enough to support them as a sort of lax shrub.

Good morning and a happy midsummer to you all! The weather here is (of course) rainy and windy. But this has been the most wonderful year for hedgerows and countryside verges. Hawthorn blossom dripping from the wayside has given way to cow parsley, eglantine, geums, daisies buttercups and poppies in profusion all growing tall and happy because of the combination on rain interspersed with sunshine.

Roses here are seriously rampant. Alfred C is glorious and needs trimming back council style in order not to take over half the garden. Lovely cream buds opening to informal flowers. Munstead Wood is flowering, deep maroon and deeply scented, so is 'Wimbledon' the green Olympic rose, which on close up has very curious tightly bunched flowers, and Gertrude is doing her stuff. New Dawn isn't in flower and hasn't many buds due to being overshadowed by the growing oak tree this year, even though branches have climbed into the oak. Generous Gardener is not in flower yet either. Dr Du Jamain is struggling and I wil move him to a pot for nurturing I think.

Monty's alliums are splendid, especially the really deep purple ones. I am really enjoying reading the Ivington diaries: I am thinking we could do a mumsnet garden book in diary form, with a more feminine and family take. What say you all?

Today I must plant out nicotiniana and a zillion other things waiting on the back patio to go into the beds, and also see what to do about the planting neat the new fence, the presence and straightness of which has opened up the vertical dimension, and the beds beneath.

wynken: keeping you company through a tough transition. lexi and humph hoping the pregnancies are still smooth. echt I meant to say congratulations and good wishes for your dd's 18th how did it go? Maud: always grateful for your company. I might go and visit that Japanese garden tomorrow. Rain permitting. Next weekend I am going to Sissinghurst.

sorry- planting next to the new fence