Rookie thread

[Heartofstrings]

Anyone fancy a rookie thread?

I have zero clue about gardening. Literally. Not a clue.

Want to do some stuff in the garden this year but have no clue where to start.

Anyone else fancy muddling their way through the dark with me?

@Proudboomer

Good plants for rookies to start on are dahlia and begonia. The dahlia tuber goes either into a pot or the ground with the growth eye at the top of the soil. Then just water. You might want to give them support as they start to bush up but otherwise they are happy to do their own thing and will give a good display through summer and early autumn. Keep dead heading to boost flowering. Begonias are great for shady areas in pots. Plant the tubers hollow side up cover with no more than 1cm of compost. Give them plenty of light but can be moved into semi shade once they have put on some growth. Will again flower well into the autumn. Both can be bought quite cheaply from places like Wilko. In fact Wilko do a bag of three different tubers for £3 and I always have great success with their cheap bulbs and tubers so great for a rookie who doesn’t want to risk an expensive mistake. Both can be stated off on a window sill, grow house or green house and go into the garden after the last frost has passed.

This is great advice thank you!

Loving all the tips.

Today I've sown radishes, beetroot and baby carrots, so hopefully can get them in a raised bed early May! Yay.

So better start thinking about constructing a raised bed...

What is it you do to a cherry tomato? 🤔

@LividLiving literally squeeze the seeds out into some potting compost and then treat exactly the same as you would any other seedling i.e. prick out after 4ish weeks etc. I think I’m theory the varieties you buy in the supermarket may not be brilliant for propagating. I have grown from nursery seeds for this reason and so I can control what I get e.g. wanted a bush variety this year that I could keep on bottom shelf of the mini greenhouse to try and get some earlier fruit. Last year I grew 3 tiny plants bought from garden centres when they reopened post lockdown but didn’t get any crop til September.

@LividLiving

What is it you do to a cherry tomato? 🤔

Look it up on YouTube as there's a few different very helpful videos I watched, which shows what to do step by step. I have seeds but I'm also going to try the squeezing tomatoes method and see which turns out best.

DH has built my mini greenhouse today and it's so cute! We have an old wooden storage box in the yard which we don't use so I've put it on top of that in a nice sunny spot

How is everyone doing? I'm staring to see something emerge from the seeds I started last Monday. I have some shoots from the tomato seeds (I did packet seeds and also seeds from some cherry tomatoes I had), and some sunflowers come up. Nothing from my nasturtiums yet.

I have lots more to sow today