Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May: Alternative potting shed thread

[funnyperson]

On the grounds that potting sheds should admit those of all cultures here is an alternative potting shed thread. Probably makeshift and not as posh as the other one. Definitely subversive and open to gardeners of all capabilities.

I watched the Chelsea show coverage, every single last bit of it, including red button coverage, just because i could, feeling a bit like one of those armchair footballers!
I too liked the pinks a lot. And the couple with the polytunnel.
My favourite garden so far is Chris Beardshaw's garden, and the perfume one sounds nice.

I'm sad the Magna Carta garden got less funding than the Wellington garden and think it totally unsuitable to have black spiky objects in a school garden anyway.

I loved Harry and his garden and think Charles should have given Harry more credit than he did though it is great imo that Charles has encouraged him with the garden. Its a shame that boy lost his mother, he has done really well considering. and comes across as a really nice person. not at all like his uncle Andrew. Someone should marry him.

The doctor turned designer is nice and I do like the fact that she is encouraging gardens in hospitals and health centres, but ultimately she didn't come across as that good a gardener, and although there is a lot in these programmes about the messages and themes, the ecology and the 'theatre', for me gardening is not so highbrow.

Although they talk about the gardens going somewhere permanent afterwards, last year when I went, a lot of those gardens were split up and sold off and the people were like vultures hovering from about 3 pm. Speaking as a vulture I can quite understand why it took Dan Pearson 11 years to come back. Though the irises I bought from an artisan garden are now in bud and should be amazing!

I don't know Maud. I kept mine in the kitchen which is bright but without direct light, and fed it, as per instructions on www. I have to say mine died over winter probably because it didn't get enough warmth or light. Maybe yours will perk up over summer.

Ooooo, I didn't end up watching last night so shall watch that today, I guess that was the lady from Whetman Pinks, I have some plug plants from her in the greenhouse shortly to flower. I've also managed to propagate some new plants from material on the cut flowers I receive and have managed about 20 new baby plants so far.

Another one to add to FP's excellent list of gardening on a budget tips are seeing if your local garden centre has a pot recycling place where you can get pots or making them from newspaper, saving old yoghurt pots. Fruit punnets be recycled as seed trays or mini greenhouses. B&Q of shelf of doom worth checking out, I got decent sized clematis for £1 recently. Also keep an eye on Freecyclers as sometimes people put things there or maybe put a wanted up there.

Looking forward to getting work done so can catch up on Chelsea coverage.

I'm struggling to get up to date with the Chelsea coverage. I need to watch at least two programmes tonight.

I shall give my streptocarpus a feed and watch whether it perks up. I didn't have time to stroll in the garden before I left the house this morning and am sulking about that.

Halsall Oh dear! Some garden centres are truly terrible, aren't they? I understand that margins must be tight, necessitating the hiring of many 16 year olds who barely know a root from a flower, but sometimes I would like to speak to someone who does know a bit what they are doing. I went to Felley Priory at the weekend, and I was lucky enough to meet the head gardener. I went a big fangirlish I think. She was very kind and told me about cardiocrinums.

Ref. garden centres; when I bought the acanthus in jardi.and I asked if they had them. the young guy didn't know (my french accent was possibly to blame!! ) the older guy understood though but showed me one which had literally been eaten by something, it had 1 and half sad leaves left, I said I'd buy it at a reduced price, he pointed to a couple of tiny shoots and refused to reduce it! There were others which were better so I bought them!

BUT one of them was half totally dry so luckily I planted it in time and sank it in a bucket of water before I did. They have too many plants shoved together in there.

It's interesting because they are near the top end of the market for quality and choice but still their service is not brilliant!

I know what you're saying, shove and ppeat. My escapade was at a branch of a large UK chain - quality of service very much depends on who's serving, and the poor guy I tried to buy the greenhouse from was about 17 and still at the stage of blushing violently when a customer spoke to him.

I do appreciate that people have to learn etc etc, and customers can be vile (as I well know from the other side of the fence), but I do think it's not unreasonable to make it possible for people to buy things. You know, in a shop and all.

It did remind me of an incident in a busy local cafe one lunchtime when I was told I could have a drink but no food because the staff were all on a break and eating their lunch....

That's funny Halsall DH and I have a private joke here (where most shops close for 2 hour lunch breaks ) and our joke is that the cafes close for lunch!! I didn't reckon that does actually happen in England !!!

Halsall Totally agreed. I think it puts people off gardening longterm, too, because they buy a plant that is completely unsuitable to their conditions (because there's no-one to ask), it then struggles on for a bit before shrivelling and dying, and then they blame themselves!

I wonder if we could/should put together a 'novice' thread for people who are completely new to gardening? I don't mean somewhere for those who, like me, aren't professionals and don't have that much knowledge - but something for absolute beginners, those who don't even have the confidence to try because they feel 'they kill everything' or 'they don't know where to start'. We could call it 'There's no such thing as green fingers: the thread for complete beginners' - to counter the prevailing idea that some people are gifted at growing and some aren't. Anyone can be a gardener, once they've grasped the basics (though to be an excellent one may be a life's work).

I just think it's a crying shame that there isn't more help/support - often, people just need handholding and a bit of help realising the basic things that you need to do - things like soil preparation, for instance. I feel like it's maybe a good thing to do in ecosystems terms, too - maybe we could stop one or two people concreting over everything in sight?!

I agree very much about encouraging beginners and it's great when they come onto this thread to ask questions. I'm on the (garden) fence about creating a separate thread, as I don't sense that people are shy about starting their own threads when they want to. I've been on countless beginner looking for help and advice threads over the years.

True Maud This is one of the most useful sites for beginners (in everything) IMO. There are no critical posters on here actually. When you really need help.

Hello gardeners, I've been quiet - new job is great but busy. I've been tidying up my flower beds - weeding, mulching, getting rid of stuff I don't want and dividing hardy geraniums. My borders are still v immature but seem to be coming together, with euphorbia, foxgloves and alliums, underplayed with random geraniums being my favourite. I am still annoyed about the no show dahlias , maybe the slugs got them?

DH and I have been enjoying the Chelsea competition show. I have loads to catch up on.

Why is this the alternative thread? Have I missed something interesting? Have the allotmenteers gone off to start a gone grown spinach quiche?

I think it is nice not to have completely different threads because as a beginner one learns a lot by 'listening' aka reading what other gardeners write about.

I remember reading an antecedent of this thread for ages before I dared post, because I definitely fell in the 'kills most things' bracket, hadn't even observed the difference between light and shade, wet and dry, clay and acid, north south east and west, and would simply dig a shallowish hole for anything and wonder why it didn't survive! Compost was fictional stuff imo.

In fact I think it was humphrey posting about how happy her garden made her which made me think that to have something which made one happy would be worthwhile! I also recollect, with awe, Lexi's efforts in her tiny space, which put me to shame, and spurred me on, and mauds brilliant nomdeplume comeintothegardenmaud

I like the way Gardener's World always has something for beginners.

Oddly I've now got to the stage when not only do I recognise the plants and plant combinations in the Chelsea flower show gardens, but have some of the very same independently put together in my own little back garden.

Maybe we should put together a 'mumsnet guide to gardening for beginners' .

I think this thread does a great job at helping beginners and is very welcoming to those that know nothing. I have, over the years that I've been on this thread, gained my entire gardening education from other posters. I wouldn't have got that from a book, or indeed from spotty youths down the garden centre.

Missed the Chelsea hour today, will have to try and catch up.

Funny - I can't believe your cosmos are flowering already!

One of my pelagonium cuttings has a little flower on it. Looks very strange, little stick, couple of leaves...and a flower. Must pot them on into individual pots and see if that gives them a boost to put on more growth.

Cutting flower & 40 delphiniums (actually 80 as there are still two in each pot, will be brave soon and pull up the weakest in each).

That little cutting flower does look strange and what are you going to do with 40 Delphiniums exactly?!

Need to move the Lupins. They are right where the cat lies and he has an allergy of some kind,there is small chance it could be the lupins. Are they easy to move and can. They go in pots ?

I had my lupin in a pot for two years, it was fine but did need lots of watering. The leaves act as an umbrella so rain doesn't get to the soil very easily. Mine's finally back in a bed now and is much happier after just a few weeks. It's pretty in a pot though, just needs looking after and I was a bit too forgetful.

I have no idea what I will do with 40 delphiniums. They will go somewhere though. Grown from seed I collected, they are my babies. Do delphiniums do ok pots?

I had delphiniums in pots at my old house, where we only had a little back yard. They did wonderfully the first year but not so well the second - I think I failed to feed them well enough and generally didn't look after them that well so they probably wouldn't have survived much longer. We moved after that anyway and I bought new plants

Been a bit busy so not had chance to keep up with the thread. I missed all of the gardening challenge programme so I'm determined not to miss the Chelsea ones. I like the look of Chris Beardshaw's garden, the Islam one, and the Bauhaus one.

I'm looking forward to going on Saturday. funnyperson we must catch up over a cuppa and cake. This year I will not go berserk and reserve so many plants for the sell off that I can't carry them home and end up crying.

Halsall your garden centre story made me laugh. I once got very stern with the manager of our local one when it turned out they didn't stock any of the basic horticultural items on my shopping list. I made a rather sarcastic comment about their stocks of Marilyn Monroe posters and life size concrete statues of Alsatians, and made him wince.

Today I pricked out and potted on my nicotiana seedlings. The dcs kept trying to help. I let them stir the compost.

You're fortunate, Rhubarb, to have DC who are interested in gardening. I completely failed to interest DD in plants and gardens, although she does like photographing them. Maybe she'll come tomorrow in middle age, as I did.

You're quite right, too, about those garden centres that stock heaps of household tat but not gardening basics. The chains seem to be much worse for this - our local
independents are much better, although one stocks potting grit, for example.

Maud - I am sure that you have left a legacy for her that will come into its own later on. I used to garden with my Dad a lot when little because my Mum couldn't cope with my under-five energy levels and a tiny baby (my younger sister). He never taught me anything didactically - we just did things together. Despite this, my Mum always picked out my sister as the one with green-fingers, because she saw gardening as a kind of ladylike pursuit that involved nothing more fierce than a straw hat and pair of felcos. I grew up thinking I was absolutely hopeless in the garden and that it wasn't worth my while trying. It wasn't until I got my own place in my 20s, with a garden, that I started to try doing a thing or two (including most unladylike heavy digging, lugging of compost etc) that I remembered loads of the stuff I'd done with my father - and started to realise that there is no such thing as "innately" green-fingered: gardening is something that anyone can learn, and (like most crafts) it comes with experience. Over the last ten years, my confidence has grown and grown.

I suppose the argument I would make for a 'newbie' thread is that I think ten years ago, I would not have had the guts to post in front of a bunch of experienced gardeners for fear of making a fool of myself. I think you sometimes hear that in the tone of people writing new threads - a kind of embarrassment about not being able to identify a plant or a problem, or not knowing the technical word, and feeling a bit helpless. Whereas if there had been a kind of "Total newbie - you can do it" sort of encouragement thread, the point of which was hand-holding people through their early efforts, I would have been delighted! I love the idea of mini "newbie guides" written by individual posters. But happy to be persuaded otherwise if others disagree...

Argh. Don't know why 'to it' came out as 'tomorrow'.

Oh, and 40 delphiniums is going to be quite a show! I can't imagine that much blue! You must have tons of space. (Jealous!)

Haha at Marilyn Monroe posters and concrete Alsatians! we have an independent nursery near us, that when we first moved here seem to be on it uppers and was very sad. It always sold good plant varieties, but they were sadly neglected. It seemed to be run by two brothers and their elderly dad. However recently the son of one of the brothers seems to be involved and he obviously Has Ideas. Fortunately not of the Marilyn Monroe poster type, but of generally looking after things better. I have bought some unusual things from there recently (& I do like my obscure plants). It is a genuine nursery – you can see into their rather messy propagating greenhouses.

I bought a Drachocephalum Rupestre ( never heard of it before!) for my shady border on Sunday from there. It looks nice online, although I have to say the leaves on mine are nothing like the leaves on the pictures on the web. Let's see how it turns out...