It will not always be summer; build barns. The potting shed goes on...

[echt]

Please ignore my first, illiterate thread. I'll try again.

I hope this quotation from Hesiod captures the moment of movement from high summer to the splendours of harvest and the planing for the new year.

:o

I made it to the piet oudolph inspired ngs garden

twas good. will write about it later. think the main choice for gardeners is roses or grasses.

in the autumn grasses and asters win, but in june roses are better.

Thanks Sea Rabbit I'll track down a Vranja and have another go.

Funny I've never actually eaten raw quince - All the recipes say to cook them, with sugar so I suspect they are very sour but I will try, and report back.

The trees are small with large pale green rather floppy leaves and beautiful pale pink large floppy blossoms. They like a lot of sun and a lot of water. The fruit taste beautiful -quite distinctive with a rough-ish texture, like some pears - they are a relative of the pear, and also cook to a fabulous deep rosy pink when cooked for a long time. Tonight I cooked the roasted quinces from the second recipe in this link and they did look like the picture, and tasted wonderful:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/29/nigel-slater-recipes-quince

That is a wonderful recipe!

Those quinces do look lovely. FP Knoll Gardens is close to me. I have been once but years ago, can't believe I still haven't been back. Did suggest to friend having teenager issues that we could maybe go to have a bit of a break from things so hopefully will get therein not distant future.

A fair few of my dahlias have bent at the stem where they have large heads so I cut some plus some other bits still out there and have a lovely autumnal jug of flowers.

Clearance where our new drive will be is slowly happening. A deluge this morning didn't help but one bough came down and joined the first in the back defining the border under the laurel . There's a fair bit of topsoil to move so am going to extend the border a bit

Lovely quinces, recipe sounds delicious!

Snap sugar I have jugs and vases full of Dahlias etc because of my inadequate staking. I'm currently trying to source steel rods to make some supports like the ones Monty made.

I still have bulbs left to do, but I've somehow run out of energy. Hopefully it will be good weather this weekend and I can finally finish. Sweet peas and amni visagne that I sowed are up - pleased about that.

That's great some things have germinated. I was thinking about doing some of Monty's steel ones but haven't got beyond thinking stage - same stage I'm at on bulb planting..

Just watched GW & realised I have to get the manure off my rhubarb crown - I mulched it a bit too generously.

Has anyone else watched the programme following an oak tree for a year? It's still on BBC iPlayer, and I do recommend it. I learned so much about trees - I did only a year of biology at school. There is a mix of a fair bit of scientific measuring including taking an oak sapling's roots and showing just how far they spread, and stories of what oak is used for. A very good presenter too.

Sowing sweet peas and ammi visnaga today, more cuttings, spreading last years leaf mould about to make room for this years, planting bulbs, moving pots and hopefully going to Wisley to see nerines!

Have received tall log store. Propose to use this to shelter garden tools in winter.Trying to decide what cuprinol colour to paint it before assembling. Not pink. Suggestions welcome

Reading sloane ranger diary from the seventies and finding the gardening stuff very amusing.

Got 6 nice munstead lavender plants for £2.00 and box of yellow pansies for 50p on death row but perfectly good to grow!

Good bargain FP and sounds like a lovely day. I tried a couple of greens Cuprinol shades on the shed then got fed up and went for cream which looked better. But I guess it depends on what surrounded by.

I went to spend some of my birthday vouchers and came home with Anenome Dancing swan to go in a new bed being created under the laurel. I replanted the bulbs I dug up from new drive site (no idea what they are). Hacked off a bit of my poor Geranium rozanne again plus a bit of that black grass. Found a fern offshoot as well plus moved some forget me not seedlings plus a couple of primroses.

Was looking for Astrantia seeds. I did find one small seed head which I've planted and in doing so accidentally pulled a bit of my not very mature Astrantia plant so moved that and hope it survives. Also got round to planting out my Hydrangea limelight. Moved the Agapanthus, Cannas and Pelegoniums inside.

My shade bed hasn't worked, it just looks messy, I remember FP saying similar earlier this year.

Anyone got any white sedums or alstroemerias?

Just reading GW magazine and was very surprised to read that Carol Klein is 70, thought she was a fair bit younger.

Carol Klein doesn't seem 70, I agree. I'd love more about the botanical side of gardening.

After failing to pull a wheeled suitcase through thickly-lying 'oak' leaves on our road on the way back from the station, and inspired by GW I picked up a load of those leaves for leaf mould. 6 big black bags full - it was easy as they were lying so thickly! I usually pick up leaves just outside our house which are sycamore, but these were different- a bit like an oak in shape but thicker, shiny, light chestnut and quite large, and they smelled fabulous. I have no idea what tree they come from. The leaves are very attractive. I suspect it'll be easier to identify them next year when they are green, but if anyone has any ideas now I'd love to hear.

I felt a little eccentric, raking up leaves when it obviously wasn't to clear up outside my house (it was by woods that are next to the railway, and opposite any houses). Mad leaf woman...

lol
hope it makes nice leaf mould

Carol Klein being 70 is quite amazing, she really doesn't look or act it, though lately she does look as though she has had cosmetic surgery an she still has terrible teeth. I loved the programmes abot plant combinations she did and also when she demonstrates plants for free and when she did the small garden for the young couple and the wonderful programmes about single types of plants: tulips and roses and so forth. The botany inserts in GW recently for me was all a bit basic as far as I am concerned and so a bit boring, I was thinking the other day, comparing to David Attenborough who is so talented the way he has progrsmmes about the animal world which always seem new and detailed and don't just reiterate the o level syllabus.

I have mixed feelings about people over 65 working: I do think the young need their chance, but then David Attenboroigh and Bruce Forsyth and I suppose Carol Klein come in and break the mould and challenge one's preconceptions. I feel a bit sorry for Rachel de Thame who turns up on screen with unironed shirts looking dowdy and as if she has spent all night up with the children. Oh dear I'm sounding a bit negative bit I prefer Sarah Raven and, Helen Yemm and, oddly , the two young ladies on 'love your garden' on ITV who do all the work for`alan Titchmarsh, And I do like the energy generated by James Wong.

I had a lovely stroll round Wisley, looking at the long borders, the salvias asters and cosmos are still in flower, and their astrantias! The roses still in flower. It was fun tasting a few of the apples and observing the trained fruit trees. Their Gunnera is looking wonderful.

I've clearly cut my autumn fruiting raspberries too low.

Sowed seeds in my own garden. Planted more bulbs,

Wondering how to create a small eco roof

I'm sadly ignorant about silver birches, beyond admiring the mass planting of them in the winter walk at Anglesey Abbey. They are beautiful, though.

Sllver birches are lovely and that picture of Angelsey Abbey very beautiful. I always think of entwives or Lucy and the dryads awaking a Narnian forest. I also think of a place which rhubarb visited with 4 silver birches and a firepit. One of the neighbours has 4 silver birches in his front garden and he says he keeps them silver by washing the trunks down with fairy liquid.

We had apple crumble today with the apples from Wisley. Yum. The smell of apple, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, two lovely young people for children, a cold and sunny autumn afternoon in the garden with cyclamen and asters and fuschias and geranium Johnson's blue. It makes me so happy. Afterwards I went round to mum's with some left over crumble and felt very happy she liked it too. My garden being small and shady and my pruning skills hopeless, we don't have the harvest which those in the country have, so it is nice to have been able to have the advantage of Wisley's harvest.

It's lovely to get such pleasure from such things, funny.

I was tidying up in the garden on Sunday when I spotted what I feared was liverwort by the cyclamen- the I realised it was actually lots of little cyclamen seedlings. The parent plants have some shocking pink flowers ready to pop up, too.

Hi all, i'm about six pages behind so need to do some catching up.

Funny I've just painted two of my parents' sheds the Wilko Seagrass shade at £6 for a massive (bright green) tub. It's part of the bog standard fencecare range (the other five or six colours are the usual browns and forest green). This surprised me as it definitely belongs amongst the garden shades/ colours ranges.

I'll admit it needed two coats, the first one didn't look great as it dried (although it went on with ease, it's quite thin so you can slap it on quickly). The second coat went on beautifully. It's potentially a tiny bit turquoisey for some tastes (the reviews do state this) but a couple of weeks on it's weathered a bit and looks like the Cuprinol alternative.

Just thought I'd mention it as it saved us a few pennies.

I've added a post to the Cheap by Nature thread detailing some bee/ butterfly hotels I found today for £2.99.

That looks like a lovely colour, haveyouseenherlately and it is nice to know how it weathers.

I spent a happy gardening day tidying up my pots, moving plants which I will nurture to shelter, moving forgetmenot seedlings, taking more cuttings, pottering about in the gentle Autumn drizzle smelling of damp oak leaves, and talking to the robin who sang beautifully back at length.

Nice colour!

I was on holiday, gardening today, & noticed that nestling next to a dahlia, which is still flowering, was an auricula in flower.

I need to have a garden tidy day funny but I'm lacking motivation today. It's sunny too so even more frustrating. Might try and do a couple of jobs asap and see if it inspires me to do more! Love your chirruping robin!

My dahlias have put on a second burst of flowers searabbit . The auricula sounds gorgeous.

Re. the paint I forgot to add that I needed to work the blue pigment in slightly as the paint dried (during the final coat) as it was beginning to settle at the surface . It only took thirty seconds' buffing with my paintbrush and probably made all the difference .
Also - I painted during a dry week at the beginning of the month. I noticed some of the reviewers painted during damp weather and complained the paint didn't dry properly

Very interesting article on how to plant trees, based on science, including dig a square hole, and add sugar not compost:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/01/how-to-plant-trees

Almost all my beautiful quinces turned out to have bitter pit, caused apparently by insufficient water earlier in the year. I've now got DH teed up to water the tree in future years. I still have enough to make some chutney, but it's still a disappointment.

Oh dear. What is 'bitter pit'. It would be no use me asking anyone else to water plants in dry periods as everyone else usually disappears to the nearest beach on such occasions.

James Wong does write interesting stuff. I think I will plant mum's new trees in square holes. I have ordered her 2 more apple trees: Arthur Turner and Charles Ross, and an edible cherry 'Summer Sun'. I wavered over a quince and a damson tree then decided to go for fruit one could eat straight off the tree iyswim.

Next year, if there is any room in mum's garden, I will get her a quince a damson and a fig tree.

I'm not totally sure about putting sugar in with plants. I don't want them to get diabetic or develop the plant equivalent of a sweet tooth. Though James Wong is scornful of compost and bonemeal, it seems to me they are good sources of the plant equivalent of protein aka nitrogen. Also compost helps improve the structure of the soil, but sugar surely would not.

Lovely day today, pruning the very overgrown tangly dogwood out front into a tree shape with layers, as at Wisley, so that it will give layers of flowers in the spring. I know humphrey has lots of dogwood too.

Anyway, now the variegated leaves have fallen, the red stems of the dogwood are showing, and light has been created, having raised the canopy of the plant, so underneath, at the fringe, I will plant white cyclamen, snowdrops, and I am hovering over J Parkers extensive daffodil collection, as these will flower before the cornus leaves appear in spring.

Wrong time to prune dogwood, I know, but there you go.

Trees might be all right with a little sugar as a treat - just not too much, and certainly no high fructose corn syrup...

Bitter pit is when you get little speckles on apples' skin and inside - a few of the manky Bramleys from one of our apple trees had it last year. And the flesh is bitter too, apparently. I tried one of the good quinces raw - sour and tannic, and not especially tasty. It's amazing how the flesh is transformed by cooking - using yet more sugar though!

Yet another happy morning in the Autumn mist sorting out pots and plants.Went over to mum's house and her gardener turned up so I got him to plant some roses and lavender and he cut back the gone over heleniums in one of the beds to reveal an azalea, a camellia, some hellebores, some foxgloves, a rose, a geranium, some peonies and delphiniums so that was a result!