Potting shed summer party

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Following on from the Blooming into Flaming June thread and all others before it.

The potting shed is open for summer. Elderflower wine aplenty and room for all. Monty will be along later...

this looks nice

theedibleflowershop.co.uk/shop/edible-flower-shop-collections-2/savoury-cooking-collection/

A very belated happy birthday to Rhubarb. I'm taking the DC's to London for a couple of days and doing Covent Garden and showing them places the Harry Potter films were shot. Any suggestions of places we could wonder by with some nice greenery and flowers for me to look at please ?

wynken hyde park rose garden, dito regents park.

Thanks Mousy

The Garden Museum.

British Museum is always fab and has been doing garden/landscape features outside it the last few times I've been.

Kew!

Chelsea Physic Garden

Geffrye Museum - homes and gardens through the ages. I've never been but always fancied it. They advertise lots of activities for children too.

hampstead heath. keats house.
its nice just being by the river though-south bank, london eye, take a ferry to the tower and the millenium bridge, that sort of thing

Filled the gaps in the veg plot today left by broad beans and cabbages that have just finished. I put in a couple of lettuce varieties, spring onions, pak choi, loads more beetroot, kohl rabi again, and the remaining chard and perpetual spinach seedlings (which have been happily stunted by remaining in the little modules while their larger brothers and sisters went rampant and bolted in the beds.)

Pumpkins and squashes coming on nicely. The rambling plants climb up the veg plot netting so I have squashes and pumpkins suspended 6 feet high which is wonderful.

Went to cut back the cat mint today as the bits of each clump that i cut back in June are approaching flowering. However, I couldn't do it, there were sooooooo many bees still enjoying the flowers I didn't have the heart to deprive them. I think if I'd have been bee counting I would have got over 100 on the long bed easily. The air is humming.

Wynken you could try Kensington Palace: I saw the garden there in spring last year and it was lovely. I don't know if you can get into the gardens without the full Palace experience thiugh (i enjoyed that too, but chldren might not). KP garden is only small but there is more to see in general in Kensington Gardens which is itself an extension of Hyde Park. The gardens in St James's Park are lovely, too, with the bonus of the birds to see, including the pelicans.

Hello all... Sad reflection of my inability to take advantage of this fabulous summer, but this thread dropped off my Threads I'm On!! And I have nothing much to say either, but I love hearing all of what you have been doing (exhausting as it sounds!). I have just about been keeping up with GW, but my heart's not in it. On the plus side (?!?) I have hardly spent any money this year on plants or seeds. I have a seed tin full of packets going slowly out of date. I have swathes of bare earth which sadden me, and I haven't been able to take advantage of my increased water butt capacity!

However with six months of imminent maternity leave and a compliant baby (yes you will be, won't you, even if you are a right royal pain in the abdomen just now) I will hopefully be able to do some re-planning and scheduling work in. I think I need raised beds for veg, instead of the rather informal curved, stone-set edge against the lawn that I currently have. I could keep a curved side for non edibles, and make a straight/stepped side for veg. One of my problems with my veg plot is that it's difficult to put net or plastic protection over sections of it, because of its irregular shape.

However, the ornamental border does look nice - slightly unbalanced, where one end is more mature than the other, but full of mixed textures and colours. Quite cottagey and very bug friendly which was the idea all along. There are a lot of self seeded verbena bonariensis around the border but not aquilegia, which I have been careful to take seedheads off (on the basis that I will probably miss some, and that amount of self seeding will be quite enough), but my whole garden is also completely peppered with seedlings of rosebay willowherb, which I think is an occupational hazard of living on a woodland margin.

If I get a last burst of energy in the next three weeks (aaargh, and it could be five) I will take up the irises which did so well this year but were too close to the Allium Schubertii, split them, and move them down a step on the rockery. Last year I split them and put the newer sections up a level, but I don't think they have flowered. They grew well, and I hope they are putting lots of energy into their tubers now. I have let the lupins on top of my rockery go to seed so I am fascinated to see how many seedlings I get next year. I will have a huge blackberry crop about the time I expect to be getting up and about after baby arrives, so I'll have to decide between making brandy or jam... Blackberry brandy is great for making a home Kir royale... Mmmmmm.

Thank you all. Walked right by the Garden museum but no time to go in. Walked down the river and liked the place with lots of wheelbarrows planted up with veg. Also saw someone's garden tucked away with an ingenious frame a whole load of squash were grown up and then more stuff underneath. Went to Greenwich.

On the way in I saw 4 metallic green garden gnomes on a windowsill which made me smile and I loved how many people made an effort with whatever space they had, however small.

Nowt in the garden this week - too much work, and rather cold and rainy.

However, this evening I went to check on a nesting box we put up to attract lorikeets, with a view to evicting any Indian mynahs. There was a possum curled up and sleeping in it. How the fat git squeezed in is a mystery, as the diameter of the hole is about 2", and the possum was fat-tastic. I'll wait until it goes abroad then duct tape the hole.

Hi all

I have pumpkins 3 at the moment on two plants, will start culling if I get more than two per plant. It is a bit hard to see properly though due to the leaves... Would it harm the plant to trim a few leaves off?!

Not being doing much in the garden due to the hot sunny weather we have been having. Just keeping on top of the weeding and watering.
I did put 3 carpet roses in the front garden yesterday to fill gaps where i removed the ground elder and today i have weeded around the bird feeders as the dropped seed has all shooted and was looking a mess.

Hopefully i will get my greenhouse next week. Nothing big or fancy as i have just spent a fortune on replastering and decorating the lounge. The new carpet made the hall, stairs, landing and dining room carpet look very shabby so i have decided to replace those as well . Then to well and truly empty the coffers my main oven has just died so i will need to replace that as well.

I refuse to give up on my greenhouse but am going to settle for a cheap wilkos jobbie which will be fine to over winter the a few plants and grow a few bedding plants next year from seed.

We have a little greenhouse (4x6 feet I think) and it is brilliant, we have used it so much :-) got our tomatoes and bell peppers in there in growbags atm. You won't regret it!

hello all,
well progress is slowly being made, the front garden is no longer a ex-council house uniform of square lawn with 6 inch wide borders round the edge and a tree in the middle. DP bless him dug me huge wide swaths of border which bar a few herbs (that I need to move) are completely empty so ive started shopping ive got various bits and bobs from an open garden we went to a few weeks ago - yellow tree peony, rosa glauca, astrantia, scabious, achillia, sedum, foxgloves and a few more. ive just got to get on and make headway with deciding where things will go and get them in!! I keep changing my mind though.

I also bought an hydrangea and a dwarf buddleja yesterday along with lots of different succulents (to use planted in things for the wedding tables) that have got hundreds of babies on them so will be spending most of the weekend splitting and potting.

and my second task is building a large coldframe in the back garden so its ready for when I need it.

Lovely to hear what everyone's been up to. Echt I'm at your possum even if he wasn't quite the wildlife you had in mind.

I have done nothing in the garden for the past couple of weeks as the demands of two small children have kept me on my knees, both figuratively and literally. Life is feeling a little like wading through treacle at the moment. But, I'm hoping to get a few hours in the garden this weekend as it is DH's turn to give me a break spend quality time with his offspring.

I really enjoyed GW tonight. Loved Simon King's garden. How marvellous to have a stream running through it! It also encouraged me to stop tying myself in knots over-researching how to make the perfect meadow, and to just let the grass grow long in the orchard and get on with it. Encouraging owls would be especially wonderful; I've found a few pellets and heard them at night on a couple of occasions, so they are around.

the 'blue tree' got a spa treatment today. I cut it down to about 3meters (from about 5). tomorrow I will try to get some horse manure to put at it's base.
the tomato glut has started, the first from the 'beef steak' ones have been eaten for dinner. lots more to come!
how do I know when the chilies are ripe? have a green variety, nice size and colour, but no idea if I can just pick them?

Hello there! Do have some elderberry cordial with fresh mint leaves and ice and here are some yummy scones with damson jam and cream...
I haven't seen GW yet as I arrived back late from a week well acquainted with owls and motorway verge meadow plants due to traffic jams. The cow parsley is nearly over and the long grass is turning golden and old man's beard is beginning to do its thing. There are lots of flowers in the verges this year.
We are going to Stonehenge tomorrow to look at meteor showers and eat toasted marshmallows and generally soak up the ongoing midsummer ambience. It is lovely how the open air theatre companies are all guaranteed sun this year, and I wish the DD were younger so I could go and watch silly but charming plays like 'Sherlock' done by the Pantaloon company or 'the Mikado' in summer gardens or Illyria or the Mnack theatre, all of which we loved at that age. This really is one of the best summers ever.

agree it's a fabulous summer.
not too hot, not too cold, a few showers. my plants (apart from the honeysuckle, sob) are thriving.

Echt did you make that up about the possum and the lorikeet and the mynah? it all sounds so ...well other side of the world and magical, and makes me think I must must must go to Australia.

echt I love reading about your side of the world.
have not yet made it there, but would love to visit and see for myself (even though some of the wildlife gives me the creeps).
curled up possums are soo cute, though, had some around when I lived in the us.

Whispers The wilkos green house is 6 x 4 Polycarbon.
Cheap and cheerful but should last a few years and be a nice home for my geraniums over the winter.

Yes, the possums are cute, but are also the reason I've never seen climbing roses in Melbourne.

A good thing today was having breakfast and hearing the sound of chainsaws which means only one thing; a tree is coming down. I belted out, drove around and saw some professional tree chaps taking down some old gum trees and shredding them on the spot. I begged a load of the mulch, which was duly dumped on my drive three hours later. Six cubic metres of native mulch for free, private tree fellers are happy to give it away as they'd only have to pay to get rid of it.

Win win.

Now I have to move it, so the afternoon was spent wheelbarrowing mulch to the back garden. Just the right time as it's been raining lots, and the year's on the turn. Spring will arrive on September 1st, a bowl of lovely Aldi hyacinths are in bloom, their gorgeous scent competing with the Vicks vapour smell of the eucy mulch.:o

That's very handy, Echt. I can smell your mulch in my head now after that description!

Just looked up those Wilkos greenhouses. That's seriously good value. I think one of those could be a temporary solution for me too.

Ours is polycarbon too, it's a couple of years old though so not sure where we got it. It has definitely helped with the gardening, particularly growing things from seed