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The gardening thread

moonsi til said:
I'm seeking advice about hedges please. It's for out the front of a terraced house and to be used as a screen to give the lounge some privacy. 2 years ago I bought at great expense lavender bushes that were meant to grow tall and smell good but didn't and over a year died. So how do I go about buying a non fancy hedge and planting it please?
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Does the hedge have to be evergreen and how high ?
What is the orientation of the garden and what's the soil like ?
What grows well ?
By the sounds of it, not the free-draining sunny conditions lavender likes...

The answer is probably fairly boring - privet.
Forsythia is its more attractive, much faster growing, but deciduous cousin.
I rather like the Berberis hedging they use where I work...

http://www.hedginguk.com/index.html

I personally love box, but it's now plagued with a nasty fungus.
And yew - but I'm probably already too old to grow a yew hedge in my lifetime. :(
 
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My elderberry bush has blackfly....bloody millions of them!
 
I have two tubs on my "patio" to plant up.
I currently have one which will have datura and nicotiana, and a second with sweet peas.
It's tempting to simply build a second sweet pea wigwam to form a sort of "gateway" from the house .... I'm already fighting the temptation to grow the hop over the patio to maximise its potential ...

At the moment the spare sweet peas are in a large pot with a smaller wigwam with the aim of making it moveable, or for cut flowers .... basically they had no proper home.

My other tub is currently elsewhere with a rather sad and unused bay tree in it.

If I'd started earlier, there's a white, fragrant Himalayan balsam and a white form of morning glory.

patiodilemmalowres.jpg

I'm also attempting to avoid the allure of growing an inadequate supply of salads ...

brugpositionlowres.jpg
 
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Finally got my nicotiana sylvestris seedlings to sprout - had to put a bit of polythene over them - nearly dust-like seeds just pressed into the surface of the compost.

Given I now know they're only good for a couple of years, I sowed a decent pinch.
I only need about 12 plants.

Proper triffids these - when I grew them before I got them to about 6 feet - big sticky leaves - can't say I noticed the fragrance - certainly not compared to the nicotiana affinis which I will plant liberally around the place.

I'll see if I can't do a sequence to give an idea of just how spectacular the growth is in a good year.


triffidseedlings.jpg
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ringo said:
Painted a breeze block wall & added trellis & 2 Wisteria. Not sure how they'll cope with a North facing wall in heavy clay but mrs r loves them so I'm having a go
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Such a shame my neighbour chopped down her white wisteria hedge.
I wish I had a place for one - hopefully in retirement ...
 
gentlegreen said:
Such a shame my neighbour chopped down her white wisteria hedge.
I wish I had a place for one - hopefully in retirement ...
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I had an old one in a corner in my old place, always looked lovely.

The only ones I could find this year were Wisteria Amethyst Falls. I've just found out that they're cultivated from wisteria frutescens and not the Chinese cultivar. Messes up my plan for entirely Chinese & Japanese plants in the back garden, but only on a technicality nobody will notice so not too bothered I suppose.

Not sure if they'll follow quite the traditional shape, have read they can be more compact than traditional w. but have the advantage of very long and sometimes two summer flowerings.

Mrs R wants them to grow large now, I think the patience required to wait for plants to mature might be an issue :)
I'm trying to explain that the beauty of a garden comes from the planning, the hard work and the satisfaction of seeing it slowly grow into the beautiful idyll you imagined. It's not working :D
 
ringo said:
Mrs R wants them to grow large now, I think the patience required to wait for plants to mature might be an issue :)
I'm trying to explain that the beauty of a garden comes from the planning, the hard work and the satisfaction of seeing it slowly grow into the beautiful idyll you imagined. It's not working :D
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Half a tonne of manure and you could have one of these in a couple of years. :-

gunnera.jpg

I was reminded this morning that my own "exotic" garden really isn't these days ...

My Gunnera succumbed to my overly free-draining soil and poor winter care ... but I think this was the second summer.

gunnera2.JPG

I'm almost tempted to re-house a possible hedgehog and finish the pond I started over a decade ago ... though in effect it would be more of a bog.

The gunnera corner is now a bamboo thicket.
 
With my nicotianas successfully germinating, and with rain on the way, I've just mulched around my 25p daffodils in the front garden with Aldi peat-free compost so the worms have time to incorporate it in time so I can plant in between the daffs in late May / early June without disturbing them.

The huge clump of Spanish bluebells near the front door, though it's given a surprisingly entertaining display this year - and even noticeable scent, will be getting dug up so I can pop in a datura - if they ever germinate.

My one surviving brugmansia cutting from last winter's pruning is actually making roots in the bathroom, so I may have a fall-back.

I suspect next spring there will be wallflowers in that position.
Perhaps I'll drop plants in and out of a sunken pot so I have something all year round.

bluebellslowres.jpg

The strip adjacent to the house is already cleared and improved and the neighbourhood cats are probably fertilising it on a nightly basis.
 
Anyone have experiences of rooting bamboo from cuttings? :hmm:

In my usual Junk/Recycle Fairy fashion I have acquired some cuttings from the work garden that is currently being pruned/tidied... I want it to work! :cool:
 
I'm propagating mine at the moment - but it's a wayward rhizome with roots and a shoot coming up from the base of a cut off cane.
I have no need of it, but I had to give it a try and I found a home for the last one.

I reckon I'll end up with half a dozen miscanthuses too - once again, from a rhizome.

I would imagine bamboo will need bottom heat and humidity.

Someone here says you can't take bamboo cuttings in the normal way :-

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bamboo/msg02164100538.html

The other option would presumably start with the meristem from a new shoot and laboratory conditions.
 
Today's plant haul - a slightly potbound white dianthus for my "white garden" and eight orange double French marigolds for the "hot" areas.

And some taro yams - colocasia esculenta which should make some tropical-looking leaves - there are fancier members of that family, but I sadly don't have the room for really huge tropical foliage, and I like the idea of using something from the greengrocer.
I saw a video yesterday where they were chitted in a plastic bag - and my seed cabinet is a suitably warm place.
I'm pretty sure I successfully grew one years ago - but it was a lot smaller than this.

colocasia.jpg

To continue the "tropical allotment" theme, along with this yam, I have Love Lies Bleeding which is closely related to callaloo, and a ginger - albeit an ornamental one.
 
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I got the deck lights from b and q. The pond lights I got from eBay.. I had a set before that weren't great, led ones and they died within a year. I think the ones I have now are halogen.. Will have a look and see if I can find them
 
Had a look, can't find the ones I have.. Will look in garage at weekend and check as I still have the box
 
I was rather hoping you'd found a reliable RGB colour changing LED spotlight.
Chinese LEDs are so dodgy - the transformer of my indoor lights has only lasted a few months,
 
Putting broken bits of pot in the bottom of your pots doesn't do anything, apparently.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27126160

Crocks in pots are an article of faith for gardeners. A piece of crockery in the bottom of the pot aids drainage. It allows water to run off more quickly than soil would and prevents compost from clogging up the holes at the bottom of the pot. That at least is the age-old wisdom handed down from one generation of green-fingered sages to the next. Gardeners' Question Time, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh have all endorsed the tradition.

But a study by consumer magazine Which? suggests it's a myth. Researchers planted 40 pots each with five "Million bells trailing yellow" - a flowering plant prone to root rot in saturated soils. Permutations involved plastic pot, and terracotta pot, and with either saucers or no saucers. Half got crocks, half did not. The plants were recorded for "vigour and flowering impact". The magazine found that the crocks "made no difference to how well our plants did".
 
Good to see it confirmed.
I wonder if it was partly to do with not feeling so bad if you broke an expensive terracotta pot ..
I haven't done it for years - but then I never use terracotta pots.

What currently interests me is the threshold between where you're "container gardening" and when the container is so big in proportion to the plant that it's effectively a raised bed.
 
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I always put the stones i find whilst digging in the bottom of pots.
Nowt to do with drainage - just better than chucking them over the wall onto the railway line in case there's a train coming :)
 
A mistake I used to make was being certain that cheap multi-purpose compost wasn't sufficiently free draining and needed opening up with perlite. I used to dread compost mixing time.
All I ended up doing was depriving the plants of food and water and diluted the buffering effects of the compost - so I ended up doing really crap hydroponics.
 
Today I got out for a ride in the sunshine and was reminded how much I liked the foliage of bronze fennel.
Unfortunately I've left it too late to harvest seed in the wild ... somewhat irksome to actually pay for them.

Having finally acknowledged that the bed alongside my greenhouse is never going to be 25 square feet of salad, I planted my two verbena bonarienseses in the bed itself .. my thinking is planting fennel behind them will make the screening effect even better. (hiding the brugmansia tubs, plus the serried ranks of pots of plants being prepared for display.)

The next decision will be whether to plant the brugmanias in the bed and then actually dig them up at the end of the year for winter storage.
A beast of a job for one person. I'll see how they develop. The tubs give them useful extra height ...

I had a scour round the edges of the tubs and replaced as much compost as I could - adding chicken poo pellets at the same time.
If they're pot bound, it probably just means more feeding ...
In the process I extracted several cockchafer grubs so this winter I will need to root prune and re-plant.
(hopefully this year I'll actually have enough spare shoots to root some replacements.)
 
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Moving to a new place with a big garden. Has an enormous pergola with enough room for a ten-seater table under it, but everything is fair game for playing with I reckon
 
Second batch of datura metel have just gone in after waiting 2 weeks for the last ones.
They're like rock hard tomato seeds so this time I sand-papered them and soaked for 24 hours ... I only need one or two.

I think it's going to have to be two tubs of sweet peas - one either side of the "patio" - forming a "window frame". Hopefully I'll manage to process the bamboo canes and scrap timber and stuff so I can get to appreciate them.
I hope I don't end up finding the scent too cloying. :hmm:
 
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About 3 years ago we bought a teeny tiny black tree peony from the WI plant stall in the village.
We planted it and have watched it grow (very) slowly. A bit of research told us that it could be many years before we saw flowers on it, but we've got 3 buds on it this year :cool: They look to be a lovely rich dark red, but it's a bit early to say really.
Photos to follow when the blooms are open :)
 
I saw an old Gardener's World the other day and was reminded about tomato grafting.
Since I'm now growing in the greenhouse border, I probably ought to try.
So I watched a video and it looks doable, but then I see you can buy plug plants ready-grafted.
The only tomato I like is Gardener's Delight and it could do with a bit of a boost.

Next year though.

This year I started so late I'm buying plants for 99p each.

I don't hold out much hope for pointy pepper plants, but I'm taking a late gamble on some French Heirloom seeds where the peppers are rated as good for drying.

Doux tres long des Landes
 
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My five free white lily bulbs arrived this morning - so I think I can feel confident that my fuchsia order is on course - though I'm unlikely to be home to receive it ...

Meanwhile the man from Parker's says to bury begonia corms.



I'll still get some more since nothing has happened yet.
I added quite a lot of perlite to the compost.
 
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Just back from my nearest garden centre in the vain hope of getting a few things I want - grown up things like bronze fennel ... but unfortunately no luck.
Instead I ended up with a positively dayglo magenta senecio :facepalm:

Perhaps it's a challenge to myself as it isn't really part of my colour scheme - but I have more of that to come - the plan is to have a giant fuchsia tumbling down above where that forgetmenot currently is ... I was thinking of making that my blue corner - I'm currently being tempted by a cheap agapanthus in my local cheap shop...

luminous.jpg

The poor light doesn't show why it hurts my eyes so much when up close - but it doesn't look so bad from a distance :hmm:

senettibanner.jpg
 
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