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.

Lovely surprise today, a friend dug up some double petal snowdrops from her garden and gave them to me.
They were originally from her parents garden, so lovely to receive.

Morning, can I join. I'm a newbie gardener, interested in vegetable gardening, though to have some bulbs. I have just planted some seeds in egg boxes, tomatoes, cucumber and peppers inside and carrots and radishes outside.

Welcome, Bramble. Yes, I was planting my tomatoes a couple of days ago. Not my cucumbers- they have yet to arrive.

Beebumble I love the weird triangular shape of double snowdrops. Not good for bees of course, but I think they can be forgiven that.

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you. The tomatoes are new, the cumuber and pepper seeds are one's from Wilko with a 2023 expiry date. They weren't successful last year, but different conditions every year. I've had a read back of the previous page. We went to the garden centre for seeds yesterday. Also got a reduced gift type item of bulbs to grow in a cute cat pot. We also have some conifers I'd like to get some tree surgeons to remove but my husband just wants them topped to keep the privacy they provide.

Has anyone successfully grown daikons? We bought some seeds from the internet last year but they bolted. I can't for the life of me remember when I planted them. A Google search shows that they are good all through winter so I should have planted them a few months ago. I also read conflicting information from UK websites. First one said don't plant them between June-august as they will bolt. Another website said plant them in June. Thoughts?

Hi, am I too late to join please? I posted in this topic yesterday and have loved how kind and helpful everyone is.

I'm taking back an area in my garden that has long been neglected. I used to have chickens on it but now it's an abandoned mess. The past 2 days I have spent chopping down a huge honeysuckle and an even bigger clematis that covered the 15m long fence - the fence desperately needs repainting. And I have dug the ground over in front of it and covered it with cardboard - hoping that keeps the weeds at bay as I continue to pull the area together. I'm planning on putting a greenhouse there (provided I can source one!) and I'm going to build some raised vegetable beds.

diakons Those are a type of long rooted winter radish, right? I thought all of those had to be sown after the summer solstice, when nights are lengthening again, but not so late that they don't get chance to grow before winter. Bolting in radishy things is usually stimulated by lack of water.

Happy welcome -you can join any time. Presumably you now have a really fertil garden, with all those chicken droppings?

Can’t believe this thread is still going! Welcome new joiners!! I went out and did a proper tidy up of my little garden today. The weather was mild and it felt lovely.
Some of my crocuses are out and a couple of perennials are showing signs of life. Such a simple joy that I wouldn’t have appreciated two years ago.

Does anyone have any tips for growing a clematis Montana into a tree?

Does anyone have any tips for growing a clematis Montana into a tree? Plant it at the edge of the canopy, not close to the trunk where it'll be too dry.

Make sure the tree is big enough to take it. Once C montana gets going it's a huge brute it can easily grow to roof tops.

In our last garden we grew Clematis Montana across 6 silver birches, in spring it was spectacular. We had to have the trees pruned and thought we’d lost the clematis, but it grew again from the old stumps. Unfortunately we left before it was full back to its old self.

thank you lovely gardeners

Hi everyone , hope everyone is managing some gardening today. On and off rain here but I've been able to plot out the new bed and mark out a path for a stepping stone path. Sowed sweet peas and broad beans in the conservatory, I soaked the sweet peas last night and they looked ready to germinate this morning so hopefully they'll do better than the bunch I sowed in autumn that mostly didn't germinate. We've got what looks like 2 weeks of mild weather with night lows of 5-6degrees here so hopeful that this will be good for germinating seedlings and getting our raised bed built for the veg.
Can anyone point me to info about 'ideal' raised bed size to be as efficient as possible?
I'm planning on growing beetroot, broad beans, sorrel, lovage, dwarf french beans, potentially squash, and salad leaves in the bed. I have plastic containers too and will do runner beans in one of the large troughs.

Thanks for the daikon tip. They are the long winter raddish

This going to sound a bit soppy but I’ve had a productive weekend in the garden and I feel almost emotional about the prospect of spring, new growth and warm weather. Is this normal or is this the effect of lockdown and being relatively new to gardening?

I think we’re all feeling desperate for spring this year. We had the joy of mid morning coffee outside yesterday. It was so uplifting.
Waliking around the village and seeing pockets of spring is so joyful.

Spring flowers*

Newbie gardener here as well, we moved into our new home in early January and luckily have inherited a beautiful garden. Planning to largely maintain it this year and do a bit of container gardening on the patio until I can get more of a feel for what's where! Really loving and appreciating the space so much already and seeing the spring bulbs come up.

Yes! It is quite emotional for me too. I planted a decent sized tree today and it was so good to properly dig and have something to show for it at the end. The garden is a mess, needs returfing and I've another tree and some shrubs making their way to me still. However it is coming together. I'm optimistic that this difficult winter will end and we'll be enjoying the garden with friends in a few weeks. Bbqs, sitting round the fire, watching the plants grow and come together into a garden. Even if no big holidays, this will be good. It will be enough. Spring is coming!

I feel like this too. The past couple of days I've been really productive in the garden. I can see a huge difference already and it really has been uplifting, it feels like hope too, that better days are coming. It's like there is an anticipation in the air.
Today, I was planning on building raised vegetable beds but the weather has been so fabulous that I ended up painting 25meters of fencing - from a dark, mildew ridden green to a Cuprinol shade called Natural Stone. It has absolutely transformed the area and is just the beginning of the changes to my garden!

I'm hopefully attaching pictures! The fence was completely covered in a Montana and a honeysuckle so I had to chop all that down first. Then the bit where you can see the cardboard is the ground I dug over yesterday and dug out a tree root too. I've covered it in cardboard to hopefully prevent the weeds from growing back. I'm going to put membrane down and then build some raised veg beds to go there, then cover in gravel. And at the other end put a greenhouse!
Hope I haven't overshared and bored you all - there's no one here to share my enthusiasm. My 2 teenage kids just don't seem to be able to get excited by this kind of thing 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣

Oh I have light fences too, I love them. Your patio looks lovely!

My Ranunculus have sprouted and there's lots of signs of life in tulips and perennials waking up.

I can't wait for spring proper. It's my favourite season.

I had a lovely few hours this weekend in the garden. I don't normally start until mid-March but the nicer weather and being cooped up for so long in this lockdown meant that I just jumped at the opportunity to get out.

I've cleared a lot of dead growth from last summer, and pruned all the roses. To my delight I seem to have snowdrops, crocuses and irises already, as well as the beginnings of my tulips poking up. My garden kept me going through last year and I am hoping that this will be the beginning of some warmer weather so I can get back out there next weekend too!

I had a good few hours in the garden this weekend too. We have a patch of soil which goes rock solid once it warms up and has a rhubarb that grows like there's no tomorrow. We don't eat it so I finally took the chance to dig it out while it was wet. The crown was about the size of my torso so it took almost an hour! I've added some sand and compost in the hopes of softening the ground up. If it works, I'll hopefully be able to get some catnip in there soon. Also planted a couple of peonies in pots. Never tried growing them before but they were cheap in Sainsbury's so no big loss if they don't take.

@Happyinheels The painted fence looks great! I can't believe what a difference it's made.

I should have got outside yesterday as was nice weather but some days I find it hard to be in the garden as it’s overlooked. We planted a lovely native/coastal hedge when we moved in so once it’s grown in a few years I won’t feel like this as much. Bought lots of lovely summer bulbs from Farmer Gracy, has anyone used them before? Decided on mainly anemones in a really awkward very narrow strip just outside our front gate, along our fence...it’s just weeds and shallow old gravel at minute so today I’m going out to prepare it. I will get out!

Thanks @GuyFawkesDay and @MilduraS - I'm surprised at the difference already. Initially I'd wanted green so that the fence blended into the bushes but really it made the area dark and plants and flowers just blended into the fence.
It's a start at least!

Ranunculus are so pretty. I saw a picture in a magazine I bought the other day, of a hanging basket with trailing ivy, yellow ranunculus and some small daffodils. It was really pretty.