A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

[MaudantWit]

Join us for ongoing gardening chat in the MN potting shed. Blow the cobwebs off a deckchair, help yourself to a glass of elderberry champagne and tell us about your garden.

acromegalic

That's class, that is. That is the kind of vocabulary to be found on this thread. Splendid.

These have always been very classy threads. Erudition a gogo.

So classy my pocket english dictionary hasn't got it !! What does acromegalic mean ?? My RHS Good Plant Guide hasn't got deamanthe either ! this thread is amazing!

ref. big plants i NEED them in my garden all the smaller ones get taken over by my favourite ground cover which is ivy! So a plant needs presence here like acanthus which I must get .

Glad you said that Ppeat as I had to Google it (excess of growth hormone I think).

I've always assumed that everything grows so well in Monty's garden as he 1) generally plants things in the location the plants like the best 2) spends a lot of time improving soil 3) takes care to feed at optimum times 4) waters according to the plants' needs 5) spends time properly deadheading and pruning. I am decidedly lax on all these factors hence my garden looking nothing like his and I am the only person on the planet to have a non flowering Mme Carriere- interesting bit of history above.

Can't believe I'm doing this but tomorrow I'm getting up at a ridiculous hour to take stuff to a car boot. My friend and DH came this morning to load cars in preparation. I'd just finished watching GW and Beechgrove and should have had enough time to jump on the shower when they turned up early and my pleasant start to the day came to an abrupt halt. Taking done of the chilli plants to see if they sell as am fed up with watering, they desperately need bigger pots and are a bit leggy.

On the subject of Beechgrove, they ran a trial to compare the yield of chitted v non chitted potatoes. Chitted produced a significantly better yield so well worth taking the time to do.

Anyone want any Calendula seeds?

Just arrived

edited by MNHQ to protect a poster's privacy

::waves back::

acromegalic=condition resulting from too much growth hormone

Watered plants today, sum total of gardening effort.

Are you two meeting up?

Sadly, no. We've been busy here all day.

My total gardening effort today was the impulse buy of a lavender in Lidl. I blame the subliminal influence of last night's GW!

It has been too hot to do gardening. I haven't even watered today as I have fooled convinced myself into believing that yesterday's freak storm laid down enough water for two days.

Need to catch up on GW. Currently glued to Commonwealth Games here.

We had a lot of rain yesterday. I know this because the dipping tank is full to the brim and because we had gone out and had left the skylight open, so now have a sopping carpet on the top landing.

Hello everyone. Have just been catching up with the thread. You have all been busy.

Baby Cobbler is putting a stop to any gardening I might have done by suddenly developing some speed and eating EVERYTHING that he comes into contact with. Stones, plants, snails, worms...all are grist to his mill. I can't turn my back for a second except when he is in his baby prison and he is not too keen on that! Coupled with a bad back I am only just managing to keep up with the watering which is loads anyway WHY did I think it was a good idea to have so many pots???

Garden is looking nice but rather jungle like as all the paths have been somewhat obscured by mad plants. Courgettes are going mental and I am not keeping up with them in any way at all. DH is busy at work, so the garden is seriously getting out of hand. I can't wait till I can make the dc work in it.

Hello, Humph.

My garden is looking rather wild and woolly too, as it's too hot for weeding and anything other than a little light tidying. I did manage to pick the fallen apples off the lawn today but other jobs are being postponed until it's cooler.

Half my lavender plugs from the GW offer have died before being potted on. I phoned up customer services and they said give them 2 weeks , though as DD says as they're obviously dead, giving them another 2 weeks wont make any difference. However, I will pot on the live ones.

I googled lavender fields and some in the UK are free to visit.

Too hot to do much here too. I need to plant the saffron crocus bulbs.

Does anyone know how to keep a Gloriosa Rothschildiniana flowering.

loved the roses in the 'viaduct garden' but agree that I would have liked 'blue for you' to be more blue.
I still like them, the are very healthy lookng plants and their scent is divine.

Yes, those roses were glorious. I liked the way Joe Swift detailed his change of heart about that garden, it somewhat mirrored my own as my first thought was how much I disliked the conifers, but then I realised I was judging something by the wrong standards. How amazing though, to have such a monumental object in one's garden as that viaduct!

It is hot, isn't it? We have not got the aga on and it is making processing the courgettes somewhat challenging. NOrmally we make a lot of soup base, freeze it and then add cream and parmesan after defrosting, but have not done this yet so far.

Lavender is one of my favourite plants yet we have none at all in the garden. It doesn't really suit the heavy clay, but I must put some in pots. Shame about the plugs being dead though funnyperson, I hate it when that happens.

Yes, that aqueduct made the most amazing backdrop to the garden.

Tell me more about your courgette soup recipe, Humph.

And how annoying, funnyperson, about the dead lavender. I really should have learnt by now to treat these T&M offers with extreme caution, as I think the tiny size of the plugs makes them very vulnerable.

yes, aqueduct not viaduct!

Courgette soup is v easy - just sweat off courgettes in olive oil, add stock and cook till soft, blend and then add cream and parmesan, with chopped basil to garnish. It is good for the larger courgettes that have gone a bit floury as texture doesn't matter.

also make this a lot [[http://www.mumsnet.com/food/recipe/1126-Courgette-slice]]

had a nice meal yesterday with this made with our own eggs, onion and courgette, with our first potatoes and some salad from the round veg patch, plus a few small runner beans.

Ooh, I might try that soup. And wow and at the home-grown meal!

I want to start rearing chickens to eat. I have been doing some research on how to go about it, but cannot face actually killing them myself. DH may or may not be up for it, but I also need another pen to fatten them up in and not sure where I could put that in. Really I think I would need to do at least twelve at a time to make it worth the time and energy. But home reared chicken is v appealing. You can buy a plucker for about eighty pounds, and I think that I know a few people who may be up for buying the stuff together and sharing it.

Dh went on his birthday present course at Humble by Nature today on how to build an outside oven. He has come home v keen to put one in the verandah. I really like the sound of it.

Yes, outside ovens do seem to be having a Moment. I think an oven on the verandah would be lovely, both for cooking and for warming your toes on colder days.

I see your dilemma about keeping chickens but being unable to kill them. Are there jobbing chicken neck-wringers who might do the job for you?

I loved that viaduct garden too. I thought the rock garden was magical.

It was lovely to revisit my arts and crafts garden today. The pergola was dripping with blackberries, raspberries and pink roses of different varieties. My clients have done a lot of planting in the rest of the garden as well, which is softening the hard landscaping really nicely.