He who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose

[Blackpuddingbertha]

New thread for the potting shed crowd using Rhubarb's rose suggestion and Squeaky's quote for the new title.

Spring is underway with promises of summer in our gardens big and small.

Elderberry wine for all

Pear tree looks beautiful

tiny small bullets pears are great for stew (there is a german recipe somewhere with green beans, belly pork and pears) or for pickling.

Well I have managed to get caught up with my pruning but two of my roses are really struggling as I planted them in the completely wrong spot. They were bare rooted roses that turned up mid week in December so got quickly put in to a gap by torchlight after work. I think they only survived as I used rootgrow.

Randomly I have just found a lady bird! Only the second I have seen in this gardendashes off to make popcorn

Lovely pear blossom, Poggle. Our pears are just erupting too. Quite delightful.

I have just been weeding the mud patch formerly known as the lawn and half-filled a waste sack with weeds. That still leaves the moss and the celandines, which I dare not dig up in case that spreads the bulbils more widely. I am cursing my mother. When I started this garden she used to turn up regularly with boxes of (mostly welcome) plants but I can remember her handing over the celandines saying "most people think of these as weeds but I think they are so pretty". I was too much of a novice then to know any better.

I have also hacked back the fuchsia magellanica, which was set to take over the garden, and thrown out the pots of blind bulbs.

I signed up for a garden waste collection service and they've just rung to say their lorry can't get through our village so they can't provide us with a service. Very annoying. The local authority don't collect garden waste; I compost what I can, we chop up branches for fire wood and kindling, and burn the excess on garden bonfires, but I still have huge bags full of weeds that need dealing with. Too many to take to the tip in the car. It's a real pain.

Oh, that is a pain.

Until about three years ago, our borough collected green waste once a month as part of the usual service. Then they started charging for it, but I am happy to pay rather than have the faff of loading it all into the car and driving it to the dump (which always seems to be closed when you get there because they are changing the skips). This year, the service has gone from fortnightly to weekly, so it feels like reasonable value for money. Also new this year (as far as I can tell) is that we can buy back our composted waste as soil improver.

I only have one compost bin which is permanently full and, anyway, never gets hot enough to deal with weed seeds.

Hi! I'm a newbie gardening fan, keep reading your thread so thought I would say hello! Very jealous of all the vegetable growing- although not so jealous of the thought of digging an allotment over.

I have started with plants in the last year, I'm not a big fan of digging, and we live in a clay-soil area, so sticking to pots at the minute. Made the very rookie mistake of not labelling anything as I go, so have been getting some fab surprises this week when things have popped out! I love being able to check every day and seeing a few new shoots and leaves of a pot I thought wasn't alive any more.

What a beautiful pear tree. I popped in to remind everyone of this, on tonight:

British Gardens In Time: Great Dixter 9pm, BBC4

Rhubarb sympathies about the nap situation. I remember that time well... and the waste situation. Have you come across hotbins:

www.hotbincomposting.com

Maybe you could compost a few more of your weeds with one of these?

Our council provides green waste bins and they only cost about £30 a year -marvellous idea but I wish they would sell the compost on. I could do with soil improver, and my (ordinary, not hotbin) compost bins don't provide that much.

Hi break

Ooh thanks I'll watch that Bearleigh

We have to pay here for green bags to take waste they're expensive though I do prefer that to driving to the tip. Dh prefers the tip method but to be proper thrifty says he has other stuff to go then spends months sorting through his junk treasures meanwhile the weeds are browning on the drive.

I have one border of celandines must be the wet winter never had any last year. I am bracing myself for digging them out but keep putting it off.

The pear tree is making me smile - wish I knew how old and what species it produces really big pears that sadly don't last very long.

well the weekend proved productive as far as allotment sorting goes; 4 out of 5 beds cleared and dug, 9 raspberry canes have gone in (with the help of my son and nursery class bear) and ive sown cosmos, cornflowers, larkspur, stocks and some nigella in one of my beds- im going to stick two wigwams of sweet peas in that bed to.
There were a few primulas in one of the lottie beds so ive dug them up and put them in next to the hellebores at home.

Ooh. Great Dixter on the telly. Back to back with the Great British Sewing Bee, marvellous.

Welcome BreakOut

Maud, if I took out all the weeds from my lawn we'd have nothing left! I take out the spiky thistley ones as they hurt your feet and the DDs complain, anything else is welcome if it will grow...

Great Dixter looks lovely, must try and go some time. In my head my border looks like that, so do my patio pots.

Quite. In my mind, my borders are based on the Great Dixter cram it all in artlessly approach. To other people they may just look messy. I am trying not to have pots in Dixterish quantities, but they are just too tempting.

I was just noticing the lychnis coronaria and remembered that I have one sitting on the patio, waiting to be planted.

I'm with bertha , as long as it's not spikey and green (ish) it can stay in the lawn.
have some teeny pretty tiny violets in there as well. and loads of daisies.
pure lawn is just booooooooooring imo

Hi Breakout!

Quiet day on the gardening front! My lupin, morning glory and aubretia seedlings are starting to pop up though!
When would it be safe to plant out seedlings? We have sunflowers at school, they are 2-3 inches high now. We get holidays on Friday. Should we plant them out before the holidays, I wonder, or wait til they get stronger....hmmmm! Any opinions!

I would wait till they get stronger. Sunflowers can be eaten up overnight by the evil slug.

I like the idea of being able buy back your garden waste as compost. My local council has a fortnightly collection of garden waste, a big wheelie bin, so good value. Seeing as going to the tip costs an arm and a leg, it's just as well. By common consent, logs left on the nature strip are free for firewood.

My lawn is utterly dead. We were sold a pup last year, with grass that could not hack drought. Kentucky blue grass. NDN's bog standard grass which gets nothing more than an occasional mow has remained green all year. A significant issue was dog pee - the dog is outside when we're at work, so has to pee somewhere. I don't crave a lawn, it's just something to finish off part of the garden. Most of it is beds. We're going to plant as much of the old lawn to native low shrubs, and some fruit trees.

A good thing has been the advent of rain, 15 hours solid now, the first of any consequence since Valentine's Day, and it'll continue for the next week. If there are any gaps in the deluge, I'll nip out and plant the replacement flowering gum - corymbia ficifolia Wild Sunset.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pursuing perfection, but things like dandelions can't be allowed to stay or they will take over the world lawn. Once the fence has been done, I will grub up this lawn and replace it, but I don't want to lay new turf on old weed seeds and roots. At least, no more than I have to.

As always, echt, your garden sounds exotic and stunning.

Well done on the seedlings, Castlelough. I still haven't sown anything.

Dixter was looking lovely wasn't it? I am thinking of visiting Polesden Lacey tomorrow to distract myself from the fact that the cat is being operated on (but not, I do hope, with loppers, as in the bizarre dream I had the night after my cloud pruning session).

I don't tolerate dandelions either, Maud. But I reserve my real lawn rage for plantains. For some reason they really wind me up. I went out and squirted a load at the weekend.

Oxalis is my bugbear. It is the dandelion of Melbourne; when you pull out the plant, which has a long, skinny taproot, it leaves behind tiny bulbs to pop up, er… right now, actually, so removing them actually spreads them further.

How come there isn't an emoticon for mild irritation?

The soil is so damp here it has been easy to pull up weeds. Maud that 4 in one stuff did wonders on my lawn: I sprinkled it over the 'grass' a week ago and lo and behold this week the moss and weeds are looking pale and the grass has taken over and is thriving and I actually have a green grassy sward! It cant be walked on as that compacts the soil and kills the grass immediately which is what has happened round the compost heap where there is a bare patch of soil with cyclamen spreading.
I forgot to say I have a rotary drier thingy which I take out when there are no clothes on it. Years ago the Japanese vice ambassadors wife (she of the single red peony planted under the conifer) gave us her tumble drier for a fiver when she left for another posting because she felt sorry for me with the washing always outside!
The programme on Great DIxter was very satisfying to watch- lots of detail which I sometimes miss on gardeners world. Thanks for the reminder, I would have missed it otherwise!

I went looking for horticultural grit when planting bulbs in the autumn and found it in a neglected corner of the garden centre in small bags- it wasnt popular. I used it to plant the bulbs: seems to have worked as they didnt rot in all the damp weather and are flowering.

When I went on my propagation course at Wisley (well worth doing!) they used particularly pretty grit that was a soft terracotta colour and looked great sprinkled on the top of pots. I have only been able to find far less attractive stuff in our garden centre, but it does the job in improving drainage.

Looking forward to the GD programme, and thanks for the reminder re Lychnis Coronaria. I love that and always forget about it. According to RHS it likes shade which a jolly good thing.

Something has eaten the flowers of one of my crown imperial fritillaries. I wonder if it is the same thing that eats the flowers on my pansies. Does anyone know what may be the culprit(s)?