Gardening in hope rather than expectation....

[seeker]

I have brown fingers and a very challenging garden. Yesterday, we planted potatoes, carrots, peas, lambs lettuce, rocket and mixed salad leaves. We also put in two bean plants, two chilli plants and a clematis. Anybody else chucking things in and trusting to luck? Would you like to list your plantings and keep us in touch with what comes up? A sort of antenatal thread for vegetables!

Wow, I'm impressed! Good luck with your clematis - mine always wilt and luckily we've moved into a house with a nice mature Montana that I hope I don't kill when I try pruning it.

Hoping to get some tomatoes in tomorrow from BIL, and planted some herbs - thyme, rosemary, sage. Lots of flowers in seed trays - hope some of them germinate! And dp has removed several branches from an overgrown bay tree - have three sackfulls of leaves and branches - wonder if I could put them on eBay

I'm having a real problem this year gettng any seeds to germinate - so I haven't got anything to plant really - except fro some fine looking leek seedlings.!

great idea seeker! We moved in to this house in October last year and only in the last month have I been able to really even get out to the garden; high winds brought ALL the fences down on both sides so what with DH's efforts and next door's with fixing them it's been a no go zone.

Have now managed to plant 5 clematis in various spots, 2 bleeding hearts (bought as roots though so doubt I'll see much if anything this year) a hebe, a passion flower, and a hellebore. It was quite an empty garden!

Am totally trusting to luck, have no idea what will come up at all.

Am v jealous of your veggies though.....ours is a small garden, just don't seem to have the space

oh and I put in two tiny hydrangeas!
Will keep you posted!

sunnyside - you'll be surprised with bleeding hearts, they start looking cr*p but quickly come up, I bought those 'come in a plastic bag full of moss' type ones last year and they flowered the same year.
Oh and the trick with clematis (I read in a book and it worked for mine) is to dig a hole next to it when you plant it and put in a plant pot then water into that so the water goes straight to the roots, also important that the base of the plant stays in shade if possible.
Lecture over!
I love gardening but I'm a bit brown fingered too. I love that feeling when you go into the garden centre in spring and stand in front of the seed racks, I get so excited
I think I'm going to try a few veg this year but I only have a little patch, any suggestions for easy to grow ones?

Also plant it well down in the soil, so that if it does get wilt, you can cut it down to ground level and it might just come back again - my mil did this when hers wilted last year. Looks lovely now!

oh thanks for the tips guys! Knew this thread would be useful

Dances, meant to say that last year in our previous house, we grew courgettes....they do get fairly big but not outrageously so; and they were SO easy, and gave lots of lovely courgettes, well worth planting I'd say.

I've now put it two courgette plants, three tomato plants and two rows of shallots because dd fell in love with "the cute little baby onions" in Homebase

Who will be ther first on the thread to eat something they've grown?