Gardening

[Jbr]

I've never really been a keen gardener. My ex's garden looks like Paradise compared to mine.

I always read "Society" in the Guardian, which is about the only good bit for me, and I was thinking about children helping in the garden.

www.guardian.co.uk/parents/story/0,3605,794031,00.html

This shows a "for" and "against" argument.

Jack did help out as his Dad's once (we share residency) but apparently, his idea of "helping" was snapping the heads off flowers...

My sister and I picked all the pretty red flowers for mummy...guess what , no beans that year!! My kids help in the garden, we have fun sowing things and pulling up dead bits. This year they have used the pots as cycle racks and squashed and broken all plants within 2 feet of any path by falling off mountain bikes. i know they will grow up with an appreciation of nature, life cycles, bugs and butterflies and hopefully a love of flowers and something we can talk about. Gosh that sounds very pc. I'm also hoping that one day they too will mow the grass and cut the hedge !!!

We have lived in our home for 2 years now, and me being totally thick and everything - well, it's just dawned on me that in fact I have sole responsibility for the garden. (As well as everything else)

The problem, apart from the lack of time & energy, is that I have never had a garden before, and know nothing, absolutely nothing about gardening. I didn't even know you shouldn't water the grass seed during the day (no wonder our new 'lawn' never amounted to much.

I have to say, I find it pretty disgusting( slugs, weeds with bright orange sap), and our garden is getting totally wild (after all, alls I've done is mowed it occasionally over the past 2 years). But I don't know what to do, how or when to do it. Someone bought me a gardening book but it really is aimed at someone more experienced and not as thick as me.

Bearing in mind, I know nothing, can anyone offer any ideas? (oh, and I don't live int he uk so I need books or web sites I suppose rather than people). thanks

Hi, monkey!

First lesson of gardening : weeds aren't weeds, they're wild flowers. Except bindweed.

Tell people that you are gardening for wildlife. (Book: Creating a Wildlife Garden by Chris Baines - just been re-isseued I believe,)

Put up nesting boxes, put ourt bird food and scraps. I don't know what you'd expect to find in your part of the world but I'm sure it's lovely!

Learn to love your weeds. Dandelions are the earliest nectar plants for bumblebees and the only ones that provide nectar for both the long and short tongued ones. We have a wild bank with blackberries in it but they can be invasive - we also have sloes for gin, elderberry for wine and chutney and wild greengage. Most native plants will have wildlife that is dependent on them.

Leave a bit of your lawn to grow wild and see what comes up. we did this and have one lawn full of cowslips and another of violets. You can mow paths through if you like.

Of course if wildlife isn't your thing this will all sound pretty awful. I'm one of those people that like looking under stones at creep-crawlies but I appreciate that you might not be! OTOH your boys will love it!

there's a Geoff Hamilton's Year in your garden ISBN 0 7472 7502 5 (he's also very much into organics) and it tells you what to do each month with separate bits on flowers, lawn and veg. And dead easy to follow. And good old Reader Digest ,along the same veins (which is probably better for a complete beginner). And remember 2 things firstly, if you kill something it can be replaced very easily, secondily gardening is very addictive , a weed is only a plant in the wrong place!!! and if you have ds why not try getting a wormery

I found it really helpful to subscribe to a fairly basic gardening magazine for a year - so that I could follow through a whole cycle in bitesize pieces. Garden answers was very good for this and I'm glad I didn't choose the BBC's Gardeners World magazine 'cos it is a bit too 'dry' for me. Also Alan Titchmarsh's TV series on basic gardening (I think it was called How To Garden)was v. good so, the accompanying book may be worth a look.

Good luck and happy gardening.

Helen, I loved Geoff Hamilton, I was so sad when he died. Agree, his books are fab.

we only live 30 mins from Geoff garden and yet I can't face going with the kids ...I just want to wallow in it. Whats the BBC gardening web site like???

helen, Barnsdale is brilliant, I loved every minute of it, do go if you can. It's esp. good if you watched 'Cottage Gardens' and 'Paradise Gardens', it's amazing to see them. In my opinion Alan Titchmarsh just isn't the same. Don't know what the BBC website is like.

Does anyone know what to do with sunflowers? Can you dry the seeds for eating or planting next year, and how do you do that? I have the most amazing sunflowers this year and would love to do something with them

Bettys it was on Gardner's World last week. Alan was collecting his sunflower seeds and putting them in an envelope for planting next year. Think he might have been storing them in the fridge. Not sure about eating them though.

Sorry Gardener's World...

Uh oh, I just sprinkled them in the garden....

Willow2 - i they don't get eaten by birds they should be OK. I had some dwarf ones (really cute, about a foot high!) in my front garden that used to self seed themselves.

if you melt some fat (lard/dripping) misx the sunflowers in, and put them in yogurt pots, and then hang them upside down from trees, the birds go crazy over them.

Monkey, I really rate Alan Titchmarsh. His last series was aimed at absolute beginners & the book also explains why you do things, rather than just telling you to do them, so you gain a much better understanding. I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the series/book, but it'll be available on Amazon I expect.

Of course, if you're not that bothered about gardening, then I'd follow the wildlife garden route that ionesmum suggested!

Incidentally, how do others manage to garden when their children are little? Ds is 13 months & walking so I really don't see how I can work in the garden without stopping every 2 seconds to pull him out of mischief. Just how worried should I be about 'dangers' in the garden? BTW, neighbourhood cats poo in our garden (which makes me SO ANGRY, but that's another thread!) Any advice welcome.

Hi, emmabee I have cat poo problems too, and also lots of worms, which dh has explained leave 'casts' so, in fact we have less poo than I thought, but I have difficulty knowing one from the other.

The book we were given was a Geoff Hamilton one, but I didn't find it suitable for me, a total no-hoper thickie beginner. I got a GH one (unfortunately, I have to order my books from Amazon, so can't brouse to see if they're any good), but althugh it'sa beautiful book, it still has lots of terms in it that I don't understand., and it still seems to assume even a little bit of knowledge. Honestly, I didn't even know that a plant got a flower that later became the fruit (although not all of course! I know that much).

I like your suggestion, Ionesmum. I wouldn't know a cornflower if it bit me on the bum, but if I don't mow than in the summer we get lots of pretty lilac flowers about a foo high all over our grass - I really can't call it a lawn - it's more clover than grass. Unfortunately, the cats like the extra coverage and we get loads more poo if I don't mow regularly.

Can you mow in winter? I was told you were only supposed yo mow when the grass was dry, but it's been wet (or at least dewy damp )all the time recently?

I'm pretty sure you don't mow in winter, but you could probably do a last trim now as it's still fairly mild (sorry - forgot you don't live in UK: where are you, as it has a bearing on any advice people may give you?).

Emmabee, re: the neighbours cat - I have just discovered an amazing product "Renardine" (available from Garden Nurseries or do a search on the Web) that gets rid of unwanted nuisances (only of the animal variety unfortunately). We have just had a new lawn laid and woke up 2 mornings in a row to discover foxes/cats had vandalised it. Since attaching Renardine-soaked rags to the fence around the garden, our lawn has not been touched.

I'll look out for that, thanks.

The Alan Titchmarsh programme was How to be a Gardener. I've just ordered the book from The Book People , where it was a bargain £6.99 instead of £18.99!!

See also my suggestion on the Bargain thread.

bookpeople.co.uk have what looks like a brilliant encyclopedia of plants at greatly reduced price - would be good xmas pressie for keen gardener

Monkey, where do you live? Gardening is a bit climate-specific - having shifted from NZ to UK found that a lot of things do differ. For example, we never got frosts in NZ! And the weeds were much harder to control. So first thing is to sort out what sort of climate and soil you have, so you know what grows and what doesn't. Very basic books which are useful are the ones by DG Hessayon - The xxx Expert eg the Lawn Expert, the Tree and Shrub Expert - numerous copies around sold in garden stores. Not inspiring gardening but quite simple, easy to follow and cheap. The RHS do a very authoritative encyclopedia of Gardening which is very comprehensive and I think fairly easy to follow, but can be expensive unless you join one of those book clubs. Also magazines are very good on back to basics stuff - eg the BBC Gardening Magazine. You won't have to read much before you are an expert!!

Thanks florenceuk. i'm in europe so the climate isn't all that different - a bit warmer in summer and a bit colder in winter but not too different I don't suppose. Maybe I've just got a block on it, the way some people just can't seem to learn even the simplest words in a foreign language. The fact that all of the products and info hear are in a foreign language doesn't help!

btw I'm sure I remember some pretty bad frosts when we were travelling round NZ and couldn't afford accomodation AND a week's car hire (back in my student days I hasten to add!)

Or maybe wee didn't get to the nice bit!

Grass grows at 6C, so you can mow in the winter if its too long, I do it when its dry (else it clogs up the mower). Don't walk on it when frozen , it breaks and kills the grass!! One famous gardener when asked when was it time to do such an such a job ... replied 'when I remember' which I though was brilliant!!! I'm sorry Monkey didn't get on with Geoff, I'm biased I think cos I used to watch him avidly when we got our first house & garden.