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

After that the family watched family on University Challenge, which had a question on nettles in Shakespeare.

I tell you, my lord fool, out of this Nettle, danger, we pluck
this flower, safety.

--- 1st Henry IV, act ii, sc. 3 (8).

So then of course we googled Shakespeare on nettles and came across a pretty Elizabethan ballad on myrtle

"And I will make thee beds of Roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered o'er with leaves of Myrtle."

I normally just browse on here - busier at my allotment than garden :)
Bitter Pit is normally a sign of calcium deficiency - exacerbated by dry spells .

Just catching up. Still not getting anytime to do any gardening although I did get to rake up leaves in the front garden last weekend. Have so much that needs doing that it's feeling rather insurmountable. Must get bulbs in, they are sprouting in their bags.

Where's the frost? Disturbingly warm. Just as well mind as I have yet to frost proof the gunnera.

Any advice about gardening in wet conditions ? I'm eager to be out ,have ground to dig and clear and asters and wallflowers ( almost given away at Columbia Rd market ) to put in .

But I have very poor grass which includes the 100 ' pathway which I'm anxious not to trample and I fear clearing ground will be too claggy an effort .

I'm in SE London so quite heavy soil ,pure yellow clay in the bits I've not yet improved . And my energy is not what it was ,ongoing health issues .

Good to hear from you Bertha. Very frustrating not to be able to garden.

Thanks bookbook- I am on chalk, partly, & believe it's because the tree can't take up the calcium when there's not enough water.

Funny may be able to help you ginger as she's on clay as I discovered when I dug enthusiastically in her garden as I would at home, and met clay very soon.

erm yes, tis true, ginger clay hits the spade very soon, especially, alas, when there has been rain. Then the soil gets specially sticky and it is no use using a circular bulb planter which will get clogged up with clay in a trice.

I have no advice except
1)use horticultural grit if you really must plant bulbs in this weather
2)mulch with compost and leaf mould and refrain from planting till the spring

Regarding Columbia Rd Market and Wallflowers

Many many moons ago I worked in the sick childrens hospital in Hackney (now converted to luxury flats haha) and in those days it was a very busy place full of very sick chlldren with meningitis and epiglottitis and measles and SSPE and spina bifida and all sorts of diseases which are now preventable and to help treat these sick children were a group of very keen junior docs who all except me went on to become professors of paediatrics and were the type who turned up at 7.30 a.m for teaching before commencing the work of the day and who benefited from a statutory apple on the side of the doctors on call bed, which had been gained after union action from a previous junior doc who developed scurvy due to lack of access to fresh fruit due to long working hours without being able to go out of the hospital.

Anyway one day, the registrar developed man flu and so was allowed some hours off sick (while the very juniors covered) and went out of the hospital and came back with 100 wallflowers in bunches of 10 wrapped with rubber bands and newspaper which he had got for 25p from Columbia road and when asked by us very junior people what they were, explained that they were plants which flowered in spring and he was going to plant them in his garden in his Queen Anne House in Oxfordshire.

I still remember us all staring at these plants in his hand in awe of a) living things intended to grow into flower somewhere and b) a life outside a hospital

He went on to become a professor and advise the dept of health on very serious matters and I blame him for my interest in gardening.

I reallse, gingeroots that the above does not help you with your wallflower planting question.

Over the years I have learned there is no substitute for planting wallflowers in the autumn in the ground where they are to flower in the spring because they have quite longish roots. You could plant them in a deep pot with tulips but it isnt the same.

Thus, when it stops raining you will need to psyche up for a muddy job and get out last years leaf mould and some soil conditioner (aka peat free compost) and dig over the clay a bit and plant the wallflowers.

searabbit did a brilliant job with the leaf mould /compost thing and the salvia she planted is flowering very happily. But it was a sunny day.

Thanks funny ,ah times past ...

No bulb planting for me ,but I'll get the wallflowers in as soon as I can .

Could you plant into pots/troughs this year? Must be a nightmare in clay and wet.

Thanks for that insight funny. Loving the Statutory Apple. And the gardening doctor.

I love wallflowers but forgot to sow any and I prefer single to mixed colours so will get by with masses of tulips alone in 2016. For me, the colours of mixed wallflowers are too autumnal, yet the oranges and browns, in masses of single colours, planted with tulips, look gorgeous. I have seed for tall shocking pink ones, which I adore. But they are brassicas so I need to give the ground a rest anyway.

Monty on the subject of wallflowers
www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2476726/Monty-Don-wild-wallflowers-And-nows-right-time-plant-.html

Love the gardening Doctor story funny

I planted wallflowers in pots last year, they didn't make much of a display and were left all sunmer. I planted them into the ground a few weeks ago they appear to be thriving.

I still have all my bulbs to do. If the weather doesn't improve in the next few weeks I'm going to have to get wet!

Hello everyone. I've still got lots of bulbs to plant, too. I'm hoping the mild weather will trick them into not realising how late they're being planted.

I love the statutory apple and gardening doctor too!

I have no words of wisdom on the clay front, sorry. Love the wallflower story FP !

The local garden centre was selling off bunches of wallflowers for £1 so I got a bunch of peach ones and have recently put them in. I might have placed yet another Sarah Raven order yesterday for some bits and pieces including sweet William plugs to go into the cutting bed for next year.

Tulip bulbs still in their packets but figure it's still pretty mild.

Ah. Gardening on clay, a topic dear to my heart. Based on my now long experience, I would suggest

Minimise digging, as you risk bringing up the clay substrate - put mulch (compost, composted bark, whatever) on top of the soil and let the worms do the work
Never bother with a bulb planter, as it won't cope
Most bulbs quickly perish in clay soil, but narcissus and chionodoxa seem to fare better than others
Bulbs planted in black plastic pots can be put in the bare spaces in beds and, if they're tucked behind other plants, the pots become almost invisible

Thanks Maud ,that sounds good advice .I'm interested to learn about the substrate - that'll be the lumps of pure yellow clay I've unearthed in places !

On the advice of a neighbour I've added mushroom compost - I think it's "spent" mushroom compost to improve the texture in the beds I've worked on .Is that recommended ?

I wasn't actually asking about bulbs ,I've mainly avoided as for some reason I feel they won't come up ! I was asking ( inarticulately ) about messing about digging and weed clearing while the soil is so wet . I just wondered if it was a bad idea and might somehow make the soil worse ? I know it's not a good idea to traipse over wet grass and thought it might be the same .

But I've not been out there anyway ,I think the soil will just be too heavy and sticky .Though I will have to soon as I have some plants to put in - dwarf asters and wallflowers .

TBH my garden needs major work - the far end must have housed greenhouses on some kind of rubble hardstanding as it's all glass and bits ( I'm thinking raised beds at some point ) ,there's a whole stretch running along oneside where I keep unearthing black thick crumbling lumps of some kind of prehistoric tarmac ,and it's got wilderness on 2 sides with loads of encroaching ivy ,sycamore trees on 3 . It's very hard work!

But it is still heaven to be out there ,I'm very lucky .

Yes, spent mushroom compost is good stuff too. I'd avoid working very wet clay soil as it will just become a sticky mess, but it might be good simply to tug out any accessible weeds.

PS. Your garden sounds huge and full of potential!

I am very relieved it is no longer the thing to dig over clay soil. It is said this increases the carbon footprint for reasons which I don't quite understand. Spreading over 4 ins or so of compost/manure/leaf mould twice a year and when planting is so much easier.
That said, it would be nice to grow plants such as lavender and wallflowers which like very well drained gritty soil.
Although roses love clay soil.

Yes, when I started the garden I said I wasn't going to grow roses because I thought they were old hat and high maintenance to boot, but we bought one on a whim and it thrived and now, as you know, I have lots (and no lavender because it always succumbs).

I learnt the hard way about digging, as DH double-dug the borders when we started, which brought ssome vast lumps of clay to the surface as the top soil was quite shallow at the time.

Has mulching made a difference Maud & Funny?

I think so. I'm a bit stingy with the mulch (largely because I'm not strong enough to carry enough sacks to achieve four inches of it) but I've done it for so many years that it's added considerably to the depth of the soil and has benefitted the plants a great deal.

I've only really been mulching for 3 years and the soil is better for the plants with more shallow roots but the clay is there not far down so plants have to be chosen accordingly.
Lemon balm helped as its roots helped break up the clay. There may be more plants like that which help the soil

That's interesting about lemon balm. Potatoes are supposed to be good for breaking up soil too aren't they?

I am in two minds about digging up my dahlias and planting my tulips. I am itching to do both, so it's done. Do dahlias really have to have been frosted a bit?! And is it so mild the tulips might get tulip fire?! Decisions, decisions.