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

Hi all!
Nice to see the chat. I am also thinking about re-doing our patio, but that is some time away. Lucky that I have a tiny London garden, can't be that expensive, right? Don't even know where to start looking. I'd probably prefer some traditional yellow London stone paving but I don't even know what it's called?

I also have an allotment and not much time. For allotment novices -I advise that you research perennial vegetables. There are various perennial kales, leeks, and onions, apart from known perennial plants - rhubarb, sorrel, asparagus, artichokes - all do well at my allotment and don't replanting every spring; I grow lots of berry bushes, redcurrants, black currants, raspberries. Of other vegetables, I only grow pumpkins, they store well and we eat them all winter long.
One word of warning about jerusalem artichokes - apparently they have a nickname "fartichokes". They grow like crazy and are rather difficult to eat. Although delicious, we had only one meal of them this winter and then had to retreat into separate rooms for - you guessed it - unbelievable attack of farting!!! It was so bad we never harvested it again. Don't know what to do with it now.

I also grow flowers for cutting at the allotment which I don't want to have in my garden - irises, peonies, poppies, - those that are great in a vase and for a few weeks but don't hold shape or add structure to the garden for the majority of the year

And glad to see I am not the only one struggling with seedlings. Normally unkillable pumpkins and squashes and courgettes are just looking so poorly. Don't know what to do - maybe just plant them out and see what happens?

York stone is London paving I think.

Thanks!

Also, in terms of link sharing, I regularly bought from agroforestry - they have plants that are considered unusual in the UK, but are common where I come from, for instance nanking cherry (bush cherry), etc
These are all great for allotments (and gardens, but mine is to small to accommodate all the bushes I'd like to grow and eat from :))

You do adapt to fartichokes - and the indigestible starch that causes the phenomenon is really good for your gut biome (inulin - people buy it as a supplement). Just start with small portions and work up.

Scorzonera and salsify are excellent allotment plants - a little fiddly to prepare, but absolutely pest proof. Not tested them on rabbits or deer, but certainly able to hold their own against insects and molluscs.

I bought 3 fartichoke specimens in the local market a few months ago, popped into soil and have planted them in my perennial bed.

They were considerably larger than ones I had years ago in the UK so have high hopes of a good harvest this winter and will decide after then whether they are a crop worth devoting space to.

It is fantastically hot here today. I've hoofed out of the freezer all the remaining frozen tomatoes including loads of sun dried ones I froze last summer when I had gazillions of them, have heated them up and put them through the juicer to make passata and am in the process of cooking them down to get rid of most of the liquid and will then refreeze in ice cube bags for adding to meals. It was so hot last year I couldn't do any more processing like this so I ended up just bunging them into the freezer and finally got round to it.

Should keep me going until this year's start fruiting.

I ordered some cosmos from the Telegraph (Hayloft) ages and ages ago, and on the way home from my dog walk was gloomily preparing to try to contact them because the plants hadn’t arrived… got home to find them in the postbox! Yay!

For some reason I have never been able to grow them from seed, before anyone asks. These are 36 healthy young plants, 6 varieties of assorted colours.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn Thanks for the heads up about fartichokes! So, a little bit, instead of using them instead of potatoes. Also I completely failed with scorzonera and salsify. They are just so tiny, narrower than a little finger! Another failure is borage (read that young leaves could be used in salads and taste like cucumber - er, no! but beautiful edible flowers) and salad burnet (inedible in my opinion but quite decorative)

@AlisonDonut Classic Italian recipes recommend boiling tomatoes for 4 hours to make pasta sauce, it ends up being fantastically tasty

I also have Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach) in my garden and always forget to try to eat it

I've got some Asturian tree cabbage seeds to try growing, sounds bizarre but fabulous!

Grub around in the soil near a plant, then you can leave the plant growing if there arent any edible size potatoes

They’re great! My first lot lasted about 4years. Just pull off leaves when you want them. Eventually they’ll flower and then they are likely to just pack it in. They’re not the greatest cabbage in the world (a bit tough, best shredded) but they’re always there, available 365 days of the year.

I got some Daubenton Kale (perennial) from this place:

backyardlarder.co.uk/shop/

It died eventually- probably too little sun, but was very good while it lasted- subtle and delicate. I was afraid it would become a weed as it propagated itself a bit but all bits died at once after a couple of years. I must get some more.

I find Cosmos a bit temperamental and annoying because they are so easily bent when tiny, but I sort of prop them up when I pot them on, and most of them are straight enough. My favourites are Cupcakes after seeing a great drift of them at Great Dixter, and I've never found plants, just seeds:


I’m interested in others thoughts on Alan Titchmarsh’s comments about the RHS ‘pandering to rewilders’ at Chelsea. I’m all for rewilding; I live near Knepp and think what they’ve done is wonderful, and the more landowners that go down that route the better. I’m also a firm believer in wildlife gardening and no mow May; I leave the grass to grow long in my orchard and have several wild areas in my garden to encourage wildlife. As a result I have hedgehogs, grass snakes, lizards, slow worms and whole host of wonderful minibeasts residing here.

But I have some sympathy for Alan’s opinions. Last year’s beaver-chewed garden, and Dan Pearson’s recent Chatsworth garden both seemed to me to be recreations of natural environments rather than gardens. They were beautiful, and well executed, but I’m not sure that’s what I want to see at Chelsea. If I want to see Derbyshire moorland I can go to the Peak District. If I want to see logs chewed by beavers, I can go to Knepp.

At Chelsea, I want to see cutting edge garden design, and inspirational planting. New ideas. New plants. And it’s perfectly possibly for those to be great for wildlife - anyone who’s been to Chelsea will have seen all the bees and birds that flood into the newly arrived planting every year. I even saw a lizard sitting contentedly on a rock in one of the gardens once, despite the crowds just inches away.

It’s great that Chelsea is encouraging a more sustainable approach to gardening. Ditching pesticides? Yes please. Single flowers instead of doubles for bees? Brilliant. I applaud all that. But, has it gone too far? I was reading that this year’s trend is weeds. Weeds are considered weeds for a reason. I would cheerfully embrace the odd dandelion or Alkanet in my border - they are after all quite pretty - but as we all know, they don’t stay as an odd one, do they? Is a border that’s a monoculture of Alkanet (like the rewilded verge along the lane here) better for wildlife than my densely and carefully planned garden borders of plants that flower in succession through the year, providing nectar from January to December?

Now Titchmarsh has waded in with his comments, and I expect will get vilified for them. But I think it’s an interesting and important debate.

I’m interested in others thoughts on Alan Titchmarsh’s comments about the RHS ‘pandering to rewilders’ at Chelsea. 50 or 60 years ago when Alan Titchmarsh was learning his gardening, the gardening establishment was a very different place. The gardener was told how important double digging was, fruit trees had several sprays each year to “keep off” pests, soil was an inert substance to be sterilised if you were using it in a pot, mycorrhizal fungi were strange exotic things associated only with orchids.

RHS has had to do the hell of a swing to overturn all that. Maybe it’s gone too far? Maybe it has deliberately overstated in order to drive the message home? There are still many people who haven’t got the message. Look at artificial lawns, Green thumb with its chemical heavy approach, the people who complain to the Council about “relaxed mowing”, the people, including eminent gardeners, wanting to continue the use of peat.

Weeds are difficult. You cite dandelions and green alkanet. But I am-in a different part of the country from you and have never seen a monoculture of green alkanet. And in any case, it’s not a native, it was introduced into gardens so is a bit of an own goal. Dandelions get everywhere but don’t usually form a monoculture. For me, worse by far than both of those is Alchemilla mollis, and people still pay good money for that. Further, in an NNR I know well, there are very few dandelions - you can walk all day and see perhaps one or two, but Alchemilla mollis is getting a hold.

If I want to see Derbyshire moorland I can go to the Peak District. But the people the RHS are talking to probably won’t, and even if they do, we’ve wrecked much of our moorland landscapes.

At Chelsea, I want to see cutting edge garden design, and inspirational planting. New ideas. New plants. But gardening with wild plants, gardening in a way that sustains wildlife, is at the moment cutting edge.

VenusClap , interesting observations. On the whole I think that there is a balance to be found, last year’s beaver garden at Chelsea was cute, wildlife friendly, well executed, but I wonder if it was really that or trying to shock the establishment type thing , if there was a ‘hidden message’ that there is no better garden than the beatiful one created by nature type thing… in any case, I am not sure.
But I see it as healthy all the discussion an experimentation, at the end of the day if it means that the average family will incorporate in part of their garden a wild corner, have another area with lawn for the kids to kick the ball, a bit of border, veggies and a bit of patio … and Chelsea should offer inspiration to show how that could be executed with the latest trends and designs.
I have been going to Chelsea for a few years love it and I take each garden presented as I would do with a piece of art or a fashion show, is there to show us and remind us how things can be done.
I am leaving the off dandelion in my garden… but getting rid of most of them, I have a dedicated wild corner, and I have frogs and hedgehogs there, but I also have a bit of lawn to have my ds kick the ball and have bbqs , at the end of the day wildlife and us need to live in my garden.

Need to shoot off now. Interesting chat!

@MereDintofPandiculation agree with you about the wilding at places like Chelsea. I've worked in gardening for years and have been gently encouraging clients to relax their tight control over lawns and it's slowly working. My main job is in the garden of a country house, where I look after about three acres and the client is now leaving parts of the lawn uncut in summer, with paths cut through the long grass and only some areas cut short. Daisies, speedwell and buttercups are allowed to flower there and it's really beautiful. In the orchard and arboretum, the grass is long all summer and orchids are appearing, more every year. Woodpeckers forage for ants and butterflies flit amongst the stems. Last year this particular client said admiringly 'I've never seen so many grasshoppers here' and I said 'That's because you have grass'. It's good that some people are realising it doesn't have to all or nothing and that you can just relax a bit and still have a lovely garden.

Very happy to see gardening chat!

I have one small town garden which I totally fail to keep on top of, one bigger garden in a house I've been renovating painfully slowly for years, and help out on a community allotment.

I find the sylvagrow peatfree stuff best so far. I think we just have to keep experimenting, though, as peat's pretty indefensible. Hopefully the more demand for peatfree, the more types will be available.

I rather like the Melcourt peat free potting composts.

I got some different brand last year that stank when I opened the bag, and now, since I used it for house plants when the smell had worn off later in the year, I have fungus gnats, so have yellow fly traps stuck in the plants - effective but not pretty. I will sort them all out and pot into Melcourt once I've got my other plants into the garden.

This is interesting from RHS on peat free and how it's easy to overwater because the surface is dry, while below it's still damp:

www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/using-peat-free-compost-for-seeds-and-cuttings

There's a man local to where I live whose business is compost making and he makes deliveries around and about. Been buying from him for years and have been very pleased with the stuff he produces. As far as I know, it's a mix of manure, horse bedding and seaweed, all rotted down for a very long time and it's fantastic for feeding the soil before planting out and bringing on shrubs in containers. If I want to start seeds I mix in half sharp sand. Wilgrow, it's called.

I’ve been potting on my 36 cosmos plants all day in the glorious sunshine (and only SPFed my face this morning, so fully expect sunburn later on.

Rather disappointed with the state of some varieties - “Tango”, which I’ve had before (and is a slug magnet), all 6 were dead, although I did pot up the 3 that looked least dead which is to say really quite dead indeed but with a tiny promising green shoot along the stem. And another type had at least 2 unsalvageably dead ones, very unhappy, hate having to complain but might get a refund. They were “packed” on the 11th and arrived yesterday, the 19th, although weren’t completely dried out when they arrived, so I don't think they were in the post for all that time.

Anyway, I’ve about 30 altogether potted on, mostly looking healthy, they will make all the difference to my enormous garden (half to two-thirds of an acre), which takes a LOT of filling up with plants.

Not boasting about the size, tbh, it’s way too big for me, I hanker for a small enclosed space with lots of vertical potential.

That's gorgeous, Mavis, I love seeing pics of your garden. I understand about the amount of work involved, but at least I get paid for it.

I’m going to buy some tiddly orfe (much cheaper as tiddlers) for the pond tomorrow, although it’s a couple of years since I’ve been to the aquatic garden centre, better google to check it’s still in business, the nearest garden centre to me closed down when I retired, when I’d really hoped to get me a part-time job there, my dream job, next to barmaiding!

We have tadpoles, but hopefully the orfe will be too tiny to eat them.