Gardeners' Chat

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

Chat. For gardeners. About gardening, but we can go off piste and chat about things like non-gardening clothes, or food or whatever, without being told off

I’m trying to figure out how to do some veggies in my garden next year. It is small and doesn’t have the space for a veggies patch.

well. It does but that would mean moving the bins and I don’t have anywhere to put them. So.

does anyone know if u can do veggie gardens In things other than raised beds. I could probably find space here and there for some pots. Maybe put up an arch if I need something to grow up? Pots?

Hello! I’m always up for planty chat.

Mavis your garden is gorgeous.

Hard landscaping is expensive, but once it’s done, it’s done. So you have to think of it as an investment, on the scale of doing a bathroom or kitchen. Paths, patios, steps etc are really important and it’s worth getting them right. You’ll never regret it.

I’m opening my garden as part of a Village Open Gardens thing for charity in less than a month. Seriously feeling The Fear.

I have the rose terraces and hot colours border mostly under control, although I need to finish the mulching. The Pergola border and the driveway border are an explosion of weeds and feral forget-me-nots though, so those need major work.

The veg beds are ok now thanks to my lovely, saintly Ukrainian former guest who came back to help me out at the weekend. She’s promised to tidy up the stumpery next weekend too, because that’s her favourite part of the garden. There’s a celandine infestation in there, plus Spanish bluebells that need digging out.

So I’m getting there. But even if I get all of this done there will still be areas of doom that will not get addressed this year because they are simply too gnarly to tackle. Hopefully the ‘done’ parts will distract.

Hello fellow gardeners!

@Paranoidandroidmarvin you can grow pretty much anything in pots, so long as they're big enough. Go for it.

Slightly tangential, but I've recently got a plant ID app for the phone and it's a complete joy on walks. You just take a pic and it does its thing (if you've got the net) and identifies it, tells you if your dog can eat it, how to look after it etc - and it's specific to the country you're in too.

Last night we found some crimson clover and were puzzling over it and another unusual flower near the pond on our estate when a chap came out from the nearby house and told us he'd had a pack of wild flower seeds stuck onto a magazine cover, and he'd thrown them all there!

I'm sure there are loads of these apps but this does seem excellent. You can get disease diagnoses, put in reminders for specific plants, how to look after them. Brilliant. After that I'm not going to name the app cos looks like advertising. It's in the app centres!

Paranoid you can grow veg anywhere that has sunshine and soil. You could grow things potager style, in amongst your flowers.

Oh excellent, a gardening chat thread!

@HazelTheGreenWitch and @MontyDonsBlueScarf I am finding the same with recent batches of peat-free compost, seedlings not progressing well and water rentention is apparently entirely binary (completely soggy or dry as a desert). We do have our own compost bin, but it doesn't produce enough for our needs and is also far from perfect.

Equipment question: Is there such a thing as long-handled shears like these edging shears, but such that the blades cut horizontally?

We have a tiny lawn which only needs a manual push-mower, but it is surrounded by raised beds and so there's a permanent edge of long grass all around where the mower can't reach. What we've been doing is crawling around the edge with a pair of secateurs, but this is very Not Fun.

@Kucinghitam this might be handy for the edges, you can turn the blades to whatever angle is needed:

I'm another one with struggling seedlings. Some have not germinated at all and many of those that have keep stalling, so everything is way behind where it should be. I'm not a novice and am using high quality compost, so am putting it down to the dull, cold weather we had and crossing my fingers that things will catch up now that the weather is warming.

@angelico53 , I love to hear the name of that app …

Glad it’s not just me on the seedling front.

Relief to hear others are struggling with seedlings. Peppers are fine, aubergines have just given up, courgettes, pumpkins and beans all good, tomatoes fine but struggling to get bigger. It's totally random and really annoying!

PictureThis on iphone!

I've just come back from DS's orthdontist appointment with two free packs of wildflower seeds (as you do!). Not sure why they were giving them out but I gladly accepted. Now to find a spot for them. I'm doing No Mow May so everywhere is rather grassy at the moment!

Now that the season for flower and garden shows is starting in the UK, is anyone going to any?
I am back from Keukenhof in Amsterdam after seeing magnificent tulips and next week to Chelsea.

@VenusClapTrap , I love the sound of your garden. My objective in a few years is to open mine, now that goal post, slides etc are out of the garden is to open it to visitors, it would be my dream.

@WednesdaysPlaits I am also doing No Mow May.
I also have a corner of my garden ‘wild’, where I let it do what it wants but I have put certain things in it and thrown seeds. It was a particularly difficult place as is very sunny and dry as is under a massive tree, nothing used to grow there and over the years I tried different plants, now I am pleased that stuff grows there.
Here are two photos from last year, this year looks a lot fuller already but the grass is no longer as the snow this year killed it, I don’t mind it as I aim to only have stuff that survives the right place.

@MavisMcMinty Welsh poppy and Iceland poppy are different species. Papaver cambricum vs P nudicaule. Google the leaves to see which you have, my money would be on Welsh. Beautiful flower! I have them running through all the shadier bits of my garden

I love gardening talk! Lovely gardens here. @Paranoidandroidmarvin if you put up an arch you could look at growing yellow and purple French beans up one side and a courgette (not bush type) up the other, or Shiraz mangetout. Beechgrove Garden usually does veg in pots so ideas on there and GW has been doing so too.

If you google veg seeds for pots you will get ideas eg. There is a runner bean called Hesta I think that is short and good in a pot. And definitely put things in the flower beds.

We are hopefully completing on a new house very soon and I am beyond excited about the garden which is well established but been a bit neglected as sadly last owner was ill. Very much looking forward to transferring my pathetic seedlings to the greenhouse there and get the apple tree out from whatever it is covered with, there are some lovely ferns under it. There’s a rose arch with a gold yellow colour rose which isn’t usually my thing but it smells amazing, think it is Maigold.

Current garden is temporary and full of pots from previous house which somehow I have to work out where I can fit them in …

Mine are doing fine in my own compost. RHS says you need to mix your own compost with garden soil, but I don’t see how they can say that, everyone’s compost is different, based on what they put in the heap, and what assemblage of bacteria and microorganisms they have built up. Anyway, I can’t add garden soil, nowhere to get it from, everywhere is covered with plants.

Anyway, have you tried Melcourt Sylvagrow? That seems to be the most recommended. It really is important to get away from peat. Peat is a better carbon sink than trees, and it holds a lot of water, so reduces flooding further downstream.

@Paranoidandroidmarvin I grow my veggies in 12inch square pots. I grow french, runner, broad beans, sugar snap peas, swiss chard, purple sprouting Cavalo Nero kale, tress cabbage, beetroot, courgettes (in bigger tubs), magentaspreen, and in the greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers. Legumes and beets do well 4 plants to a pot, courgettes and cabbage things need a pot to themselves.

And I grow lettuces in 6 or 8 inch pots

@angelico53 You have to have some caution with apps. 95% of the time they’ll be right, but they can make mistakes, so always check their suggestions.They don’t have basic botanical knowledge, they’re doing it on pure pattern recognition. We’ve seen some howlers on this board, including a large shrub being identified as a small creeping succulent.

I feel the peat free pain. I've bought a bag of sharp sand from Wickes, mixed this with last year's potting compost and some new organic compost (made from kitchen waste and leaf mould) and hoping for the best. Hardly anything grows in the shop bought bagged peat free stuff, I always need to amend it with my own. I recently read that organic compost is too rich for seedlings, they end up being flooded with nitrogen and other minerals, so that's why I mix it with sand and old compost, and also to help with drainage and make the texture finer.

This year it seems to be the cool temps more than anything that have delayed germination and prevented much growth once the shoots do show through. I have noticed a bit more of acceleration in the last week of so in the SE though, think the warmer nighttime temps help.

I've never used a plant ID app as I have the information I need in my head. There's reams of it and I get a slightly odd sensation when I look at some plants because first I'll name it to myself and then all the associated information pops up - plant origin and habitat, edible or not, good/bad associations with other plants etc. and it just keeps coming until there is a vast web of interconnected stuff.

I find coir compost terrible for being either bog or bine dry, with no middle ground. Wood fibre based ones seem better, but a lot of the big brand/available in B&Q ones aren't sufficiently rotted down and have big lumps of wood in. Anyone tried the wool-based versions?

Veg growing in pots is definitely possible. Choose big pots - small ones dry out too fast. Troughs are good for salady things, and big deep pots or buckets for things like beans and courgettes.

The various tales of landscaping quotes are making me a bit nervous. We really need to get our driveway redone but have no idea of price. It's currently very crumbly tarmac (almost gravel at this stage!) but I'd prefer something porous. Actual gravel is out because it's on quite a slope, so probably block paving or resin. Any thoughts on pros or cons of those - or other possible options - would be very welcome.

Love gardening chat the days not right without going into the garden. I have two gardens, one in SW Scotland and one in the Midlands.
Like others some of my seeds haven’t germinated, despite being in the greenhouse. The ones outside in Scotland are romping away.