Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

[SugarPlumTree]

Potting shed thread for those who enjoy talking about gardens and plants. Plenty of garden chairs and the wood burner lit now there is a chill in the air, please join us !

Hello echt! . Good to have you back from Japan. The Little Desert sounds wonderful.

I think about you echt when I look at my poor lemons which I'm leaving on the terrace this year. I'm fed up with them (they take up soo much space indoors) and they like a bit of frost apparently!

We're thinking about our kitchen too funny I want to put in a gas fired range ( I'd prefer an aga type with wood chip feed etc. but it would need another mortgage!!) which will entail moving an ugly 'housing' for the fridge and eye level oven so we're not having it done till after Christmas.

Hi Echt, good to have you back. What a wonderful idea to follow Spring round the world.

Still have bulbs to do here and need to clear the greenhouse. Maybe I should leave off sweet peas, I am likely to forget to water.

I have managed to do some gardening!

Did loads of clearing and mulching, put stuff in piles for DH to move to the compost heap. These will probably stay in their current position for some weeks. Then the DDs and I planted the fairy ring up with tulips, crocus and some anemones.

DH went shopping and bought leaf collecting equipment. This was supposed to make leaf collecting more efficient. He then spent 4.5 hours clearing leaves from the front garden. Just the front garden. I think I could have collected them leaf by leaf and still taken less time. Apparently some leaves have now been chopped for mulching purposes. Lovely, I say, but what about the back garden? Which is five times the size of the front garden. There's no hope is there?.

Quick question - do autumn fruiting raspberry canes get left and pruned in the summer ? I didn't stake mine and found a fantastic crop this afternoon while turning over the fruit beds. I ate them all as a reward for racking leaves for two hours before shovelling manure !

Hello all. I feel a bit of a fraud as I've been back for some weeks, but knee deep in marking that would usually have been done in the holidays.

Thinking of lemons, ours has finally sprouted... ta dah! a single tiny green lemon, about as big as peppercorn. On the other hand, the sad plant unit double graft satsuma is covered with minute satsumas, too many to count. They won't ripen until winter, June/July.

It's cactus blooming time, so here's one that lives on the drive. The kitchen window overlooks this rack of succulents, the only things that can take the relentless afternoon sun.

Didi - autumn fruiting raspberries all get cut right down when they finish fruiting. Late this year because it's mild, but mine have just been cut down and mulched

black - thank you. For some reason I thought you did this with summer ones so I'm glad I asked !! I also thought autumn ones didn't need staking and they definitely do. I have more to learn clearly

I don't stake mine exactly but I do 'corral' them with poles and string. Which amounts to the same thing really.

I read an article by someone recently who said he always cuts his autumn fruiting raspberry canes on bonfire night and puts them on the bonfire. He would have been a bit previous this year but it's a useful way of remembering when to do it, for me.

I've just noticed I have tiny chillis growing on a plant I keep forgetting to put in the compost - and talking of compost, I've never seen so many worms as when I put something in the bin today.

That's true Bearleigh there were lots of little red worms in mine too great they make good compost!

I was very pleased a couple of days ago because we had an ancient peach tree (with a type of peach that I've never had before in our 'farm' field, which died recently and I've been looking for self seedlings and finally there's a nice healthy one I'l have to put some protection around it, To stop our over zealous 'helper' from mowing it down!

Hi all

I have a ridiculous question - can I still plant things at this time of year or will they die? I mean hardy things, not tuberose or gardenias.

Thanks!

Well the weather has been warmer the usual. So if you 've got a sheltered site and you 'mulch' well after planting it should be fine. It also depends on how large and healthy the plant and its root ball is, you'll need to keep it watered (with rain water if poss. not too much though) if there's dry weather.

Good news on the peach tree ppeat.

CruCru yep absolutely fine to plant now, as long as the ground isn't frozen or waterlogged (digging under those conditions would damage the soil).

I've got plenty of things still to plant, but the garden is a quagmire. Harrumph.

Thanks Rhubarb how's the house going?

Well fortunately all the exterior work was finished before the weather changed, so now it's just a case of waiting till we have some money to spend on the interior. The kitchen is the next job, but it involves knocking out a wall and moving a doorway, plus restoration work to a former bread oven that someone has made a pig's ear of in the fairly recent past, before we even get to the actual new kitchen. It's been interesting hearing what everyone else is planning for their kitchens though. I really want reclaimed wood units but I need the look to hit the mainstream so I can buy them from a regular kitchen supplier rather than getting in an artisan joiner/creative/designer as the budget is unlikely to stretch to that sort of vanity.

Woah sorry about the lack of paragraphs there

Ah thanks. Perhaps I should leave it, it has utterly poured for the last week or so and we are on clay so there's little drainage.

Yes CruCru probably wise unless you add a lot of gritty stuff for drainage! Walking on it is really bad too when it's very wet.

Hmm yes I'm waiting for a dry spell this November to plant tulip bulbs. I'm beginning to see why Percy Thrower and his successors diary in planting perennials in Sept/Oct : its because the ground is so wet in Nov.
Anyway I got some wisps of anamanthele in the post and they have gone in the front next to miscanthus and dogwood. V trendy.
The lavender plugs were doing fine but in reallty dont like the wet and I doubt they'll survive the winter.
Echt those cacti grow indoors round here: I love seeing them outdoors in their natural habitat
Rhubarb I am so dithering on the grey for the kitchen. I am told Benchmarx supply the trade: a third of the price and nicer as ready assembled. However this clearly needs exploration.
I should dig out the bottom of the compost heap for a mulch but stupidly bought a cheap wooden job where you can't take the bottom slats out.

Hmm. I see your point re the lavender. I planted a load of it this summer along with some teucrium and calamintha nepeta. I really hope all my new drought tolerant plants don't die.

Hello all! Is it OK if I join you?

I am a quite new gardener (first garden, and only been here 4 years: spent the first year checking that other than shrubs/trees there really was only hellebore, pulmonaria and hypericum (I exaggerate, but there was an awful lot of hypericum). Spent the second year digging all the hypericum and various builders rubble out of the raised beds and starting my compost, and since then have been trying to work out what will survive in the spaces.

The garden is London and is in three parts: each pretty small but it adds up to as much as I can handle. The front garden is about 20ft square, dominated by a huge quince tree (was full grown when my neighbour moved in 30 years ago). It produces lots of quinces (mainly rotten, but still enough good ones for us and several neighbours, and lots of shade. The entire under tree area was covered in weed suppressant mat and gravel, but I've opened up a decent sized bed in it now, and after a couple of years getting some organic matter back in the soil a few things will now agree to live there.

The main back garden is about the same size: a courtyard with decent sized beds and raised beds and lots of smallish trees (bay, crab apple, pyrocanthus, large abelia, weeping pear, acer) which make it very shady. There's a rapacious clematis Montana and lots of ivy on the south fence, white wisteria and clematis armandii against the house, and mainly shade plants in various states of happiness underneath. There is a tiny shady pond, too full of leaves, but the newts and frogs don't seem to mind!

The sunniest bit is a narrow passage down the side of the rear extension, between a white south-facing wall and a pale green north facing fence, so light and warmth bounces around quite nicely in there: enough to grow tomatoes in a large container, and against the fence I've got a beautiful inherited pieris in a big tub, and I'm fan training a morello cherry against the fence, which I'm very proud of (but I am still training it, so no cherries yet).

Currently on mat leave with LittleLight who is 6 months old. Predictably I haven't managed to find a huge amount of time for gardening!

Sorry for such a long post. I love gardens and do get quite carried away. The garden in my head is gorgeous! The garden on the ground is... a work in progress :-)

LT

Welcome, LightTripper! I think you're going to like it here.

Hi LightTripper! I'm definitely a new gardener so it's nice to see another one.