What easy plant is your nemesis?

[IOMQuestions]

It used to be cosmos for me, but finally cracked it last year.

A few years ago, I planted three lavenders in different parts of the garden. One died, one is a bit meh but not dead, and the third is healthy and flowering well. The one that did best is in the part of the garden with the poorest, most sandy soil.

My new PassionFlower has major wilt
This is No3

First one grew a bit then perished
2nd one grew really well , nurtured it through the heat last summer but didn't survive its second winter .
This one , grrew well , climbing well (we put up supports and wires ) watered it . fed it .
Then the leaves just went meh ,
Other plants in the garden have rallied after the heatwave ( Lobelia and Boston Ivy ) but the PassionFlower ....

I'm keeping an eye on it for new growth but I clearly have a cursed hand . It had some flowers , big ones but no fruits . Plant 2 had tonnes of fruits .

Yes, of course! They’re a Mediterranean plant. Have you seen the coastal/hill soils in the Med?

They like a light well drained soil. Not a humus-rich loam.

I clearly have a cursed hand You’re clearly not a gardener. A gardener would say “it doesn’t do for me”. Put the blame where it belongs!

IOMQuestions

Omgoodness mine is Cosmos too! How did you crack it?

Sunflowers, peonies (they struggle along being alive but not flowering) and I lost some irises really quickly to woodlice and snails.

I also have a Gabriel Oak rose shrub in a large pot which is sadly really struggling despite having apparently ideal conditions. My other two David Austin roses are doing beautifully.

On the other hand I have several fuchsia bushes that I’ve actively tried to kill and remove, but they keep coming back.

I can’t grow delphiniums, lupins or lots of things. But weirdly l can grow blue Himalayan poppies which are meant to be really hard to grow.

@Tr1beca i did last year, beautiful tall feathery cosmos….and someone said you should have pinched them out. So this year I pinched them out dutifully and all I’ve got are runty sulking little specimens that are doing nowt.

even the ones a friend gave me, that I didn’t pinch, are sulking and hers are magnificent specimens….

Mine get too spindly and leggy.

Rosemary. Broccoli. Cauliflower.

The latter two, my friend just throws seeds down and within a few weeks is producing massive heads of broccoli and huge creamy-white caulis that are as tight as a drum.

I produce mustard yellow, withered-looking efforts that look like a diseased brain. It’s annoying.

I don't understand my passion flower. Each year grows rapidly then dies back completely over winter. Doesn't start again until July so not enough growing time to achieve anything

Sunflowers= I've seen Primary School pupils given a few seeds and they grow them in a plastic cup then plant them out to have a Tallest Sunflower Competition. They are huge

I planted 10 looroll tube containers , they all germinated ...then the snails moved in, I had one left .
It is growing in a nice sunny sheltered spt and has a flower....but on the pack it says can grow up to 3m/10 feet
Mine is barely knee height <pah>

Used to have the same problem, but strangely enough this year they
seem ok and I wonder if it’s the seed quality? Also, started them off inside and ensured they were of a good size before planting out.

Strangely though I had some unknown seedlings appear in my fig tree pot and thought I’d allow them to grow to see what they are and they’re sunflowers! Three of them.

Have no idea how they ended up in that pot which was newly planted early summer and from shop bought compost 🤔

Random sunflowers may well be from birdseed - possibly planted by squirrels?

Possibly; not sure if any neighbours feed birds but I don’t.

We have squirrels planting things , usually those she;;-on monkey nuts . No idea where they get them either , probably off someone elses birdfeeder but my garden is the place to bury them. Lawn or flower pots .
It is quite cute watching them do this

she;;-on
Shell-on

I have my DS old laptop and some keys are faded ( because his fevered little fingers tapped away at the keys for his Uni work ,and wore the letters away - obvs

Courgettes. The reason I started gardening was to have yellow courgettes as I can't find them in the shops. I've never been successful in getting them to grow beyond a few inches.

Mint.

Ours plant acorns in my pots, and more than once a nearly whole fat ball

Foxgloves. They thrive as new, die back, then die and disappear 🤷🏻‍♀️

Someone else may've already said this, but grow them in pots standing in a saucer of water, maybe propped up out of the water with pot-feet.

Keep the water in the saucer topped up.

I struggle keeping biennial foxgloves too. Granted, I don’t collect the seed and replant, but I hear of so many people saying that they are self seeding and that they pop up everywhere. They look great for the first year and then nothing.

Cucumbers, as of yesterday. I attempted some outdoor ones but they got nailed by whitefly as seedlings and then the slugs got them once planted out (despite using slug pellets). Hoping to have a greenhouse before long but don’t think I’ll bother growing them outside again.

Possibly depends on your garden. Foxgloves are woodland clearing plants, which just about describes my garden, and I have so many seedlings I just pull them up if they’re in the wrong place, I don’t bother to transplant them.

May also explain Alchemilla mollis. Our native Alchemilla species (13 of them) only grow in the north, so although A mollis is present as a garden escape across the whole country, maybe it’s more likely to reach “weed” status in the north? Anyone in the south east finding A mollis a weed?

That's a great tip. Thank you!