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The gardening thread

My rose that was delivered in autumn and is in a large pot by the door is budding :)

The wisteria that I put in (third one I've tried) by the back door seems to have died though, I'd break bits off to test but I don't want to risk it :
 
wisteria are weird, there’s one on my house, must be quite old, and it does do flowers but only a very few and brief, like maybe 3 blooms for a couple of weeks last year and then it’s done. Next house along has the most amazing drapery of them in summer, is it maybe that they need to face south?
Eta google says yes, anything less than full sun and they will mope.
 
It's full sun until about 2 o'clock when the greenhouse shades it somewhat. They're just so lovely when they're out in flower - the Dutch call them Blaue Regen (blue rain) ❤
 
particularly perennials :thumbs: or self-seeding annuals

Do love geraniums and japanese anemones and phlox - I once lived somewhere that had a flower bed of phlox surrounded by geraniums. I never needed to weed it - just stunning flowers in the summer with total ground cover.
 
The seeds that have just started sprouting on my windowsill, they shouldn't be there should they, just realised its way too early. :(
 
Artaxerxes said:
Waiting for the ground to dry out a bit more so I can start planting, hopefully a week or so should do it
Click to expand...
Remember to water them then :)

What do people plant out straight into the ground? I tend to bring everything on in pots in the greenhouse but I suppose I should be broadcasting wildflower seeds (also a lot less faffing if I do that).
 
two sheds said:
Remember to water them then :)

What do people plant out straight into the ground? I tend to bring everything on in pots in the greenhouse but I suppose I should be broadcasting wildflower seeds (also a lot less faffing if I do that).
Click to expand...

I've got a big box of wildflower seeds to plant and I'm wanting to get started on beets and radishes. Should be able to do some misc greens as well
 
Yes sow sorry :)

I've just ordered some woodland wildflower seeds for some shady bits of the garden, I've got cornfield seeds too which I might mix in with some compost and insert in some of the grassy bits.

And ...

I finished cutting the fucking hedges :D. I'd left them last year so I had to take the loppers to them. Tomorrow will start putting all the hedge clippings in the bloody big hole at the bottom of the garden.
 
The chalk situation here in my new flowerbed is quite serious. I’m going to have to replace a lot of the soil with shop bought stuff aren’t i. :(
3FF70390-61A4-457F-AA49-D4EC7D523B76.jpeg
 
iona said:
What did you want to plant there bimble ?
Click to expand...
Well, flowers, mostly poppies, but some more fussy things too.
It’s not that solid all the way along, the chalk bed. Am removing all big bits and then will learn about what’s chalk tolerant .
 
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bimble said:
Well, flowers, mostly poppies, but some more fussy things too.
It’s not that solid all the way along, the chalk bed. Am removing all big bits and then will learn about what’s chalk tolerant .
Click to expand...
I'm on chalk too. I have a feeling you're in the west of the UK so you probably get more rain than we do in the Surrey Hills but you might also need to look at more drought-tolerant plants.

You won't be able to grow rhododendrons or camelias or any other ericaceous loving plants but there's still loads that will grow. You'll have to accept that if you grow hydrangeas you can't have blue ones. Poppies grow fine on chalk though :)

You will probably end up buying in compost etc. but if you haven't already, start composting yourself so you can add organic matter to the soil to help retain the moisture and also so you don't end up buying tonnes of compost.

Have a look at my photo album - Garden (Work in Progress) - if you click on this photo it should take you to the album so you can see how I tackled the chalk and what plants I've grown. I could post loads of photos but most have them are already on this thread! :D

ETA: You might need to scroll down on the page you get taken to and then there's a link to the Garden (Work in Progress) album below.

 
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Anyone got a recommendation for gardening gloves? Spent the first day at the allotment today and my furlough softened hands are already suffering.
 
Leafster your garden is amazing, its so steep! So you basically built a platform over the top of the chalk pit and raised beds on that?

eta oh i've found the more photos now !
It looks completely wonderful.
What a work though. Maybe in ten years this place will look very different too.

Does this mean all of the plants you have there looking completely happy are ok with the very chalky soil or did you replace much of the beds with soil from elsewhere?
(amazingly i have learnt so much in this one year, a whole lot of those flowers i can name by seeing, that's new, just shows if i am interested i can study:))
 
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Finally managed to make a foray into the garden, and do a tiny amount towards tidying up.

I'm just about to re-fill the incinerator and burn up a second pile of twigs, mostly picked up off the grass and the hard-standing.
 
I garden on chalk too. I rind there are many smaller alpines and wildflowers which really thrive - all the dianthus family, saxifrages, centaury, verbascum, poppies...The bright Icelandic ones love it, pasque flowers (pulsatilla- these are often available in garden centres around Easter for not very much money),geums, potentilla, some gentians, cistus and the lovely rockroses (helianthemums). In truth calcearous grassland hosts our most beautiful wildflower species, including quite a few orchis. I would be wary of digging out too much and refilling with compost. This tends to set up some tricvky differentials between amended soil and the native bedrock soil...and roots may get into bad spiralling habits as they refuse to venture further from the nice, friable compost. And there are all sorts of drainage issues. Brest to just break up the chalk with a chillington hoe or similar mattock, then plant in the crevices formed between chalk deposits. I will pm a list of other calcareous plants if you like.
Was also thinking about your seedlings. To slow down their growth and prevent etiolation, put them outside all day, bringing therm indoors at night. This will also condition them for when it is time for them to be planted outside. I do this in and out stuff for a couple of months (get some handy trays). All mine are out at the moment as I am tasking stock of my greenhouse seedlings.
 
bimble said:
Leafster your garden is amazing, its so steep! So you basically built a platform over the top of the chalk pit and raised beds on that?

eta oh i've found the more photos now !
It looks completely wonderful.
What a work though. Maybe in ten years this place will look very different too.

Does this mean all of the plants you have there looking completely happy are ok with the very chalky soil or did you replace much of the beds with soil from elsewhere?
(amazingly i have learnt so much in this one year, a whole lot of those flowers i can name by seeing, that's new, just shows if i am interested i can study:))
Click to expand...
The basic structure was there when I moved in but you can see from the earlier photos that the original walls were falling down. I had someone come in and rebuild the most decrepit walls and cut back into the chalk to attempt to level up a couple of the terraces. When I had this work done I had two grabber lorries take away the spoil (chalk, old masonry etc). They took away around 30 tonnes of spoil. Also, from the earlier photos you'll see that it was completely overgrown so I composted as much of that as I could and used that to provide top soil where the chalk had been dug out. I still needed several tonnes of top soil and additional compost/manure to bring the levels up.

At the very top I temporarily left all the chalk used as backfill on one side of the upper level and used the random paving slabs I found in the undergrowth to cover it up. This happened as I was no longer able to take the remaining chalk to the local recycling centre. Previously to that, every time I'd dug over a patch I'd filled up the boot and taken it to the recycling centre. That's where the raised beds came in as I could no longer get rid of the chalk. Over the last couple of years I've been slowly taking up those paving slabs and digging out the chalk under them. I've used my compost topped up with some bought stuff to fill that level and remove some of the raised beds. Since I couldn't take the most recent chalk I dug out to the tip I've had to find other places for it. The smaller stuff just collapses when it's left on the surface over winter. Some of the other stuff went on my parking spaces to level those up and yet more of it has been hidden behind the shed :D The flint that you often find in the chalk was given to a neighbour and he's used it to face some of his retaining walls.

There's still a lot of chalk in the ground even after I've added all the compost so the soil is still very alkaline and free draining. If I dig down I still hit solid chalk! Almost all of the plants you'll have seen are in beds of mixed compost and chalk so they should grow elsewhere in chalky ground. The exceptions are the rhododendrons in one corner. They've never been happy even with all the ericaceous soil I've added and I've finally had to accept I can't grow them here. Oh, and the large skimmia is on a bed of my chalk soil mixed with half a dozen large bags of clay from a neighbour's son when he was digging out the footings for a new extension.

As the ground dries out very quickly some of the plants have needed a lot of watering until they've got established. Particularly, the yew and beech hedging, roses, cornus, fuchsias and the corkscrew hazel but now they're fully established I more or less let them get on with it. If we have long spells of dry weather I have got a hidden hose running up one side of the garden with connectors along it that I can connect soaker hoses or a hose with a sprinkler on to keep things going.

I started work on it all in the autumn of 2014 and it's still not "finished".

I guess a garden is never really finished though.
 
I have had a couple of days in my little garden and have now pruned everything - the space is amazing. I have also found loads of plants I had forgotten I had - a Golden Chimes daylily, white rosebay willowherb (v.pleased with that), gaura, a bunch of SA monocots., some species pea (rotundifolia, Plants I hadn't got around to planting, or didn't know I had them (surorise germinations and volunteers). it is so easy to lose track of things in a tiny, overstuffed chaotic garden , when it grows away in Spring Plants/seedlings can vanish for months (years). I have hauled a lot of plants out of the greenhouse - now a bit dark to bring them back under cover so I am going to drape some fleece around.
 
Leafster said:
I started work on it all in the autumn of 2014 and it's still not "finished".

I guess a garden is never really finished though.
Click to expand...

I think this is a big part of why I have taken to it so wholeheartedly. It absolutely is creativity, making a thing with your brain and your hands, but its never ever going to be finished, it will always change day to day, with the vagaries of circumstance & seasons and over time. That's very liberating, somehow. I have fear of getting things wrong when it comes to most stuff but not in the garden, and i think that's why.
 
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