Gardening chat

[Procrastatron]

I find some areas of Mumsnet quite stressful at the moment due to strong opinions and covid related doom and gloom. Not the gardening section though.
I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my little, slightly wild, London garden and all the lovely things that are on order with various online nurseries or stashed on the decking for planting out soon. I’m definitely novice gardener and happily so and my criteria for plants are along the lines of hard to kill, colourful and weed suppression.

Right now I’m pondering where I should plant my verbena and how well my rose will respond to the cavalier pruning I have it at the weekend.
I’d love to hear what gardening related things other people are thinking about at the mo.

My clematis apple blossom has taken off this year already, last year I planted it to grow round the back door, it was probably twelve inches and didn’t do much to be honest, this year already it’s grown about another eight Inches and flowered. It’s in a large tall pot though, so I’m hoping it’s big enough to cope.

Haha, I mulched too because Monty told me to

I would like to join the thread. I love/hate my garden. It needs a complete redesign as it has an overbearing raised bed for half the garden supported by a falling down fence which all needs to go. But that seems like far too much work for us but too expensive to pay for a company to do so it stays and I continue to buy and plant pretty things while feeling low key annoyed at the garden. DH reckons we could level it ourselves given a sunny weekend and I dunno, a skip??

I bought some Rudbeckia seeds this b/h weekend. I have tiny pots that I will be planting them into and putting on a windowsill.

I also bought an ostrich fern online which i'm ridiculously excited about. It'll grow to 1.5 metres tall!! WHY do plants take so long to be delivered when bought online though? This is a fern and I also bought a weeping rosemary to put in my herb ladder planter and ETA is 28 days!! It's not as if they will be waiting to be in flower or anything!

What did everyone mulch with? Compost, bark chippings or a mix of both??

Just compost for me

We mulched with Blooming Amazing soil improver.

Today we had two guys working on sorting out replacing steps and stepping stones in the garden. It is going to look incredible when it is done.

I also stealth planted a tiny rhododendron into a planter and got next door to hide it behind their fence until my o/h's birthday. I sowed some linum seeds, planted out more plants from the waiting area (ajuga, arabis and erigeron) and killed off a tree in a pot that grew from seed because my o/h hates it. So he better be happy!

And of course, I did a bit more lawn-digging-up.

Today I've planted chilli seeds to keep on the windowsill, I'm famous for killing off plants so I've done loads of seeds so far this year.... sunflowers, tomatoes, courgette, spring onions, radish, rudbeckia, wildflowers and now the chillies. If they all survive I'll be in trouble as I have nowhere to put them all .

I also gave the lawn a treatment with Miracle Gro evergreen lawn feed, I've not used it before but it's meant to make the lawn greener and thicker......we shall see!

@HedgeSparrows

Any tips on managing speedwell? I have so much of it and it doubles its size overnight.

Which speedwell?

WHY do plants take so long to be delivered when bought online though? some will need to be lifted from the ground, and it’s probably better to do several plants at once rather than disturb the row repeatedly every time an order comes in.

Raising plants is a batch process not a continuous one, so there is an element of waiting for them to be ready for despatch.

But some places manage to be quicker - my order from Burncoose took only a couple of days - or maybe I was just lucky

I mulch with home made compost, lawn cuttings under shrubs, an chopped up prunings in more robust areas

Interesting, thank you! I'm too used to Amazon Prime delivery expectations.

Hi everyone, sounds like everyone had a good weekend.Everything seeding well, strawberries growing well.
Dahlias are my bug bear though, I’ve planted about 5 varieties across about 10 pots or so in mini greenhouse and only one is showing shoots:-(
Anyone else got trouble /slow growing dahlias? Thought I’d see more shoots as they have been growing in greenhouse ?
Tête-à-tête getting straggly now, but because I mixed with tulips they are just starting to bloom, so don’t want to disturb them too much.

None of my Dahlias are showing yet, half are in the greenhouse and the rest outside. Going to tend my hardy cuttings next, repot and get them ready for the outside nursery area.

Phew @Beebumble2 least it’s not just mine!

My dahlias, in the greenhouse, have just put up shoots in the last couple of days. That's a lot earlier than previous years.

Susan Calman this morning was great fun - she's taken up gardening to help her find inner peace.

If you don't hate her, it's worth listening to.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09h6k15

Here come my tulips!

@MrsBertBibby those are lovely, mine haven’t bloomed yet but I think they are a late variety

Yes, the white ones are my earliest. So exciting!

Good morning wise ones.
When can I expect to see new crocosmia lucifer shoots (London)? I have nothing at the moment.
Last year I put some 2L pots in the ground and they were wonderful. I let them die back and just combed out the dead growth.
Ive heard so many stories about them being indescribable so surely I haven’t somehow killed them have I?

I have a couple of crocosmia Lucifer at the end of the garden which I put in last year
Something's just started showing, but am not 100% sure it's them yet. My bog standard crocosmia are very variable and some clumps definitely aren't really getting going yet.

Mine aren’t showing yet (Yorkshire)

Placemarking- I love a gardening thread. I've recently started compulsively buying David Austen roses and other cottage garden type plants for a rather neglected garden. Gawd only knows where its all going to go..

My crocosmia is showing-we are in the South East.

I’ve just had a proper look and I can see actually three small shoots, a couple a only 2cm.

In other news I’ve just discovered Aubrieta

Has everyone had a busy day? I found a collection of seedling Hellebores hiding in the undergrowth. I spent a happy hour potting them up for the nursery corner.
We’d had no rain for a week and none forecast , so I watered the containers. 30 mins later it was snowing!
At long last the Dahlias in the greenhouse are showing through.