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 went here today for work. Beautiful little garden and nursery area. I ate lavender scones with lavender strawberry jam and they were to die for! Highly recommended for a pop in if anyone is ever in the area.

They also had a little veg plot with insanely massive vegetable plants in. They had marrows rather than courgettes. Must have their own weather system in the New Forest!

That looks lovely, Bertha. I like the idea of lavender scones. My lavender is just coming out and I have to say, it looks a lot better now it's flowering, so I take back what I said about my soil being completely wrong and digging it all out. It may get a reprieve.

That place looks lovely Bertha, and has reminded me that there is a lavender farm near me with tea room, where I should have gone rather than B&Q !

Thanks for inviting me on the Facebook page wynken, I've just been looking at the Sissinghurst pics which are fab as are your strawberries.

:)

What's the facebook page ?

I hacked down my blackthorn today. I had it in a hedge of native shrubs with some hollies and hawthorn, but the hollies are getting swamped a bit and the blackthorn never looked very healthy. I planted native things to attract wildlife, but aphids were not what I had in mind. I resent spending time on something that always looks rubbish so it had to go.

Anyone else finding that everything grows 6 inches overnight in this warm weather?

Lavender is so nice one can't help but try and plant it every year. Like oregano and sage and chives and rosemary and thyme. At Sissinghurst the herbs are grown in abundant clumps in a large wheel, and are very striking and also smell so much of high summer and Mediterranean food. I might do this next year in the front garden.
Deadheaded roses happily today. Pruned the growing aphid infested apple tree tips. This is apparently good for them. Watered plants. Unpacked the delivery from crocus . Inspected the Amanogawa cherry which I planted bare root, out of season, a fortnight ago and am very pleased to see it is growing shoots.

Munstead Wood is flowering magnificently: large deep maroon and a heady scent.
Took rose cuttings.

Would love to visit your garden soon with the others humph but am very conscious of your interesting condition. And your distance.

I LOVE the phrase interesting condition.

I do come up to London sometimes, I was thinking maybe we could meet up there one day? Wales IS a long way... We pass the Chelsea Physic Garden on our way to BIL's.

DH is outside planting the stone trough with sempervivum. It is in the wind tunnel outside the back door, between us and the cider shed, they should survive well.

Oh, and the other news is the the 60 acre solar farm has been refused permission. So a bad day for green energy but a good day for my view.

Eau the Facebook page is where we are sharing plant porn . PM Wynken if you're interested in joining.

Spotted the first sweet peas flowers today. Not enough to pick yet but more coming.

Yes facebook is the place for sharing garden photos: all except for me, because if I get a digital anything, the DC take it, and if I persuade them to take garden photos with their posh iphones or whatever alternative they think is technically superior, they 'forget' to upload them.

My sweet peas 'sicilian pink' are flowering too! As this is the first ever year my sweet peas have germinated, I am totally in awe. I really do have plants growing up pyramids of sticks wound with twool www.twool.co.uk/ in flower at a number of key locations. Just. Like. Monty. My garden has Arrived! Should I cut them to encourage more flowers? Should I feed them? I realise this reveals me as a gardening dilettante. Sweet peas have hitherto eluded me and caused me to despair because it always says 'easy' on the packet.

Wales is posible btw. I have friendly friends in Wales whom I can stay with.

Also this place
www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/

Sweet peas make me think of my grandpa. Happy days, I really should grow some. Tricky without a greenhouse though. All you need to do is cut them regularly to keep the flowers coming.

I like the garden museum. They do good talks. Very good cafe too.

Now I have sweet pea envy! Mine are way off flowering. I think FP the more you cut the more flowers you get. Don't know about the feeding.

I've been pondering my roses. There's a Goden Showers on the front of the house that was transplanted from the side, but I've realised I don't like it. In the Autumn it's going to move somewhere else and I want something different. Also an old climbing rose in the front and a dog rose both aren't flowering and coming out unless they redeem themselves . The dog rose can have a new home and the bed they are needs lots of stuff added to the soil then a rose that can cope with some shade and poor soil. It should look lovely, a weathered grey stone wall with a sensible amount of ivy, crying out for roses but there aren't anything.

Mme Alfred Carriere is chucking out very tall canes that I'm training but no flowers and I don't think she's going to this year (year 2) but am resigned to that. There's a lovely honeysuckle coming through from next door so when she does flower with that it should be lovely. There are also two roses bought for £2 a couple of years ago but they are somewhere with poor soil so they need moving. Poor soil is a bit of a theme here I need to work on.

On the plus side the Queen Elizabeth round front door is still flowering her socks off and the Galway Bay has just started, so has William Shakespeare. I put one called Pascali (I think ) in the back earlier this year as it was a fiver and it has gorgeous flowers. The new Zephirine Drouhin is also now in bloom and I hope in years to come will cover the base of the raised deck.

Please talk to me about Rose cuttings FP, I've only done hardwood in the winter before.

I am at your sweet peas funny I didn't get round to them this year.

The other thing that has impressed me about you all, is that you know the names of all your roses, mine are either pink, light pink, dark pink and 1 that is 8 foot tall very thin and has a single red bloom at the top.

We also inherited a climbing rose over an ugly arch constructed from scaffolding poles. We removed it some six weeks ago, hacking said rose to bits in the process. It is now in bloom but looks really odd. Would it be best to prune it right back in the Autumn?

I use this method to take rose cuttings
www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/propagating/how-to-take-rose-cuttings/285.html
My Mme Alfred Carriere has thousands of flowers and buds on:unlike many shrub roses, it flowers on the previous year's growth, so if your plant was pruned this spring, it may not flower till very late, if at all this year, and it might be good not to prune it this Autumn. One of the gardeners gave it a 'council chop' one year in November, and the following year it was rather unhappy.

I too describe roses and most other things by their colour Bumbez. There are people on here who 'know stuff' however so I try to appear knowledgable by googling a lot . I have also learnt a lot from said knowledgable people and if amongst people who know nothing I can appear quite an expert

We had spinach, chard, rocket, spring onions and a teeny courgette in our dinner. We also have a cabbage glut at the moment as my Spring cabbages are finally ready. But I'm not much fancying cabbage dinners in this weather.

Here, randomly, is a nice lavender link
www.thelavenderg.co.uk/catalogue.htm

blackpudding that is an impressive harvest!

What do you think I can sow in the vegetable trough this month? I'm thinking more salad most likely.

Thank you FP for the cuttings link, will have a go. You've just explained by Mme Alfred Carriere isn't flowering, I did wonder about the flowering on previous year's growth thing. It went in last year and didn't do much at all. So with all the new growth this year, hopefully it will flower next year.

I only know the names of my roses as a fair few are recent and still have labels on ! And I am sad enough to have spent time googling to id the yellow rose already here. Not sure about your climber but I do generally cut roses back hard if in doubt but that's shrub roses. However given my non flowering issues I think you should listen to someone who knows what they are talking about.

Just picked first courgette and trimmed of a few mildewy leaves that we're shading the cucumber next to it. For the veg trough what about some salad, spring onions, Florence fennel, carrots and beetroot ?

I know the names of my roses mostly because they are recent acquisitions, but I do take a nerdish pleasure in knowing the names of my plants and inventing silly stories about them.

I planted out the free tomato plants that I got from GW magazine and, 24 hours later, 2 have been reduced to stumps by (I presume) slugs and snails. How very vexing.

::understatement::

Funny, I shall be sowing some more kohl rabi this weekend. That would go in your veg trough.

I currently have a tomato plant growing in an old child's welly boot on my front door step. (Result of a school fair thing last weekend.) This is my only tomato plant as this year I have been strong . I feel your pain Maud.

But how do you eat kohl rabi? Does it taste nice?
maud you are good with words. I like silly stories. Tell us some.
Sorry about the slugs. I'm not growing tomatoes this year as my failure last year to produce more than 1 fruit was too depressing. I bought some for mum's garden instead, as failure at a distance is less galling.

My tomato crop is usually pathetic, Bertha, but I like to try. I have never had a plant eaten by molluscs before. Sob.

Funnyperson - They're not really stories as such. It just amuses me to have Nelly Moser (clematis) entwined around the Bishop of Llandaff (dahlia), or whatever it might be. At the moment, Darcey Bussell (rose)and Mrs Bradshaw (geum) are getting on like a house on fire.