We can’t grow literally anything!

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

Past failures (most in the last 12 months)

Hydrangeas
Fuchsia
Carrots
Hanging baskets
Grass

Latest failures
Sunflowers and wild flower seed bomb.

Literally nothing grows! I’ve tried to keep alive plants and bushes I’ve bought as well as started with seeds. Nowt.

Weed on the other hand.....

Are some people just unable to have lovely gardens?

Are you watering them enough?

Well who knows! I think it’s enough but obviously not? I’m not sure how much to water things. I’ll remember (or dd will) most days. Then sometimes I read you can overwater things.

You can overwater things and they eventually suffer, but underwatering can kill a plant in a couple of hours.

Yeah it’s probably that then! I also think we have crap soil so I try to do thing in pots.

Youtube is your gardening friend.

It has taken me from being unable to keep anything alive to growing prolifically. Herbs, chillies, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, flowers. A bit of a science - I needed to see the tutorials to fix my mistakes re water, shade, sun, fertiliser etc.

Ps all my stuff is in pots as we dont have a garden.

Any tips about what I could buy?

• In a pot
• north facing garden but hot down the end (white wall seems to make it fry down there)
• can take a little neglect
• looks very colourful

What is your soil like? Do you see lots of worms when you dig it? Can you post some pictures of what is there now so we can try to diagnose. What actually happens to the plants - dried up, wilted, yellowed leaves, etc.

Ah, are you reusing the compost? Tip it all out onto a plastic sheet in the sunshine and you will probably find all kinds of creepy crawlies in it. If you do then discard all the used compost, wash the pots in hot soapy water and use fresh compost.

Try square foot gardening. There's a really helpful FB Page. Basically you build raised beds on top of what's already there and fill with a special mixture. That's what I'll do next time. Meanwhile I'm struggling with aphids, leaf miners, sawfly and pretty much every other blooming thing. I feel your pain.

I have a fresh bag of compost to use.

Well my hydrangeas for example, lasted all summer and then flowered the following year too. Then last year nothing, just sticks in a pot!

So worms and creepy crawlies are a bad sign?

I couldn’t even dig a flower bed, the ground is just too hard.

North facing garden! That’s your primary problem. Probably a new build home. They never orient newer homes correctly.
Pick things that like partial dry shade and only need a few hours of sun a day. Like geraniums.

Is your soil clay?

Did you prune the hydrangeas?

Not a new build. But we live on a main road so not sure how else we could have been orientated.

I will have a look at geraniums thanks!

Worms are good. Other creepy crawlies can be good or bad depending on what they are.

I did prune and I dead headed when I watered it.

I’ve no idea if it’s clay or not, how can you tell?

Holly hocks might take up against your wall. They like warmth and drier soils and can cope with low quality soil. If you plant this year, they will not flower until next year though. Then they flower for two years and then die.

did you leave the plants in thd pots you bought them in?

hydrengeas need a big pot (30l or more) and lots of water.
in pots with drainage aka holes overwatering is almost impossible but plants in pots need a lot of watering. at the monent I need to water daily.

I’ve no idea if it’s clay or not, how can you tell?

If you dug down 30cm or so, you would know if it was clay. It's very thick, very solid, can have bands of different colour sediment running through it, and it's quite cold. Water tends to sit on it in pockets as it can't permeate very well. In the summer it cracks very deeply when it gets dry.

No I bought it in a plastic pot and transferred it to a larger ceramic pot, no holes though.

I kill plants in pots. They're safer in the ground I find 😆

Different hydrangeas require different pruning. Here is RHS guide.
www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=516

You can also have a climber like Passion flower or some climbing roses on a north facing wall
www.rhs.org.uk/plants/popular/roses/climbing/shady-walls

(The north facing wall would be your house wall, and the garden wall would be south facing if your garden is north facing.)

transferred it to a larger ceramic pot, no holes though.

That will kill a plant too. You need drainage holes. Just the cheap plain terra cotta ones actually grow better than fancy glazed ones.