The gardening thread

[Leafster]

I sowed Morning Glory Inkspots for the first time this year campanula
Only 50% germinated (I only sowed 4 seeds!) so I sowed another 4 Only two of them came up
I've had a handful of flowers on the first two but thought they be more rampant growers but they are still quite small plants. Perhaps it's still a bit early for them.

 

[Leafster]

Here's a selection of the self-seeded flowers in bloom in my garden at the moment.

I tend to leave them where they come up but have moved the odd one around if it's definitely in the wrong place.

 

[campanula]

O, it's very early days for MG yet, Leafster. Keep the faith.
Self-sown flowers are a joy, aren't they?. I love a plant which knows exactly where it wants to grow.

 

[Leafster]

O, it's very early days for MG yet, Leafster. Keep the faith.
Self-sown flowers are a joy, aren't they?. I love a plant which knows exactly where it wants to grow.

Thanks for the reassurances over the MG. I've never tried growing any of them before but since the packet says "dramatic, quick-growing plants" I expected a bit more, erm, drama and speed!

When I first planned my garden I had very set ideas about what should be where. But now, I have a far more laid back approach and let unexpected seedlings grow more or less where they like. It's definitely a much easier way to garden.

The front terrace has loads of erigeron all over it now, all of which came from a couple of seeds blown into my garden from a neighbours a couple of years ago.

A client gave me some white foxgloves when I first moved in but these are now hybridizing with the neighbours mixed foxgloves so I'm enjoying the range of colours mine are now providing.

 

[Calamity1971]

I sowed Morning Glory Inkspots for the first time this year campanula
Only 50% germinated (I only sowed 4 seeds!) so I sowed another 4 Only two of them came up
I've had a handful of flowers on the first two but thought they be more rampant growers but they are still quite small plants. Perhaps it's still a bit early for them.

I'm on my second year of mg (grandpa otts.) Last year they came into their own late August. This year's have been decimated by slugs and snails along with my sweet peas with only a couple of both hanging on in there.

 

[Leafster]

I'm on my second year of mg (grandpa otts.) Last year they came into their own late August. This year's have been decimated by slugs and snails along with my sweet peas with only a couple of both hanging on in there.

I guess I'm just being impatient with wanting them to flower NOW!

I noticed a bit of slug damage on a couple of the plants when they were in the mini-greenhouse but since I've moved them to the courtyard they seem to be OK (fingers crossed!)

 

[Calamity1971]

I guess I'm just being impatient with wanting them to flower NOW!

I noticed a bit of slug damage on a couple of the plants when they were in the mini-greenhouse but since I've moved them to the courtyard they seem to be OK (fingers crossed!)

I found them to be slow growing then suddenly went bananas. I too am an impatient gardener

 

[Leafster]

Talking of being impatient. I inherited a Yucca from my mum. It has been in the same, probably too small pot, for at least twenty years doing not very much.

This year, for the first time ever, it has a flower spike!

 

[campanula]

Mmmm, yucca (ambivalence alert). Something of a thug - be a strict disciplinarian and watch out for those horrid rooty offsets. Keep a sharp spade to hand.

For spikey lovers, global warming (possibly) has definitely meant being able to keep agaves outside all year...so I am ordering more seed next year to boost my small collection of outdoor succulents. Thinking of opuntia in the gravel garden too.

 

[Leafster]

Mmmm, yucca (ambivalence alert). Something of a thug - be a strict disciplinarian and watch out for those horrid rooty offsets. Keep a sharp spade to hand.

For spikey lovers, global warming (possibly) has definitely meant being able to keep agaves outside all year...so I am ordering more seed next year to boost my small collection of outdoor succulents. Thinking of opuntia in the gravel garden too.

I'm not too keen on the yucca either, if I'm honest. It was in my parents' garden for decades so, for sentimental reasons, I brought it here.

I keep thinking I ought to treat it better. It's still in the same pot it's always been and I do very little with it other than cut off the dead leaves. I have been considering taking up a couple of the paving stones on the terrace and planting it in the ground. I know they can get out of hand but it wouldn't be competing with anything apart from the new colony of erigeron and some sedum.

I think I'll take pity on it after it's flowered and put it in the ground.

 

[StoneRoad]

I'm not too keen on the yucca either, if I'm honest. It was in my parents' garden for decades so, for sentimental reasons, I brought it here.

I keep thinking I ought to treat it better. It's still in the same pot it's always been and I do very little with it other than cut off the dead leaves. I have been considering taking up a couple of the paving stones on the terrace and planting it in the ground. I know they can get out of hand but it wouldn't be competing with anything apart from the new colony of erigeron and some sedum.

I think I'll take pity on it after it's flowered and put it in the ground.

I would probably "just" re-pot it, tbh.
that would give it some tlc and still be mobile enough if it ever needed to be moved for shelter.

I live, and attempt to garden about 800ft up, basically on the Pennines / SW Northumberland.
We have a cordyline (at least, I think that is what it is) in a pot, as well as several roses.
They can be shoved into the greenhouse for a bit of shelter if needed.
[about a decade ago, the winter got down to minus 13 centigrade here for quite some time, and we lost several bushes and small trees - as well as masses of clay pots]

 

[two sheds]

Thanks for the reassurances over the MG. I've never tried growing any of them before but since the packet says "dramatic, quick-growing plants" I expected a bit more, erm, drama and speed!

When I first planned my garden I had very set ideas about what should be where. But now, I have a far more laid back approach and let unexpected seedlings grow more or less where they like. It's definitely a much easier way to garden.

The front terrace has loads of erigeron all over it now, all of which came from a couple of seeds blown into my garden from a neighbours a couple of years ago.

A client gave me some white foxgloves when I first moved in but these are now hybridizing with the neighbours mixed foxgloves so I'm enjoying the range of colours mine are now providing.

I've been trying to grow them for five or six years now ever since I found out what they were ("Mexican fleabane" thanks to the urbanite who told me what they were - just checked and it was andysays so thank you again andysays ). I've put them in various places in the garden but the one that's established is in the cracks of a wall with rubbish clayey soil.

Do love them - you see them all over Cornwall in peoples' hedges and walls.

 

[campanula]

Pots are a bloody pain though. I swore (as I do every year) that I am going to thin down my collection and remove more stuff to the allotment in the ground, but space, as ever, is the issue. All of my biggest pots are stuffed fir to burst and I have shedloads of smaller pots, many of which are balanced on top of bigger ones...and some are now three pots high. The garden is getting more and more over my head...while at the allotment, the nice clear paths have beciome onscured by collapsing roses, cistus, philadelphus and so on....so that I practically have to crawl underneath to get to the compost bays (which inevitably means heaps of wild oats and fat hen left in piles....
It's running away from me and we are not even past midsummer (which is usually when the collapse starts). Having a bad feeling and feeling the loss of my mini chainsaw.

You only need one live erigeron for the seeding mania to get going. Mine have colonised the length of my street, two sheds.

 

[Leafster]

I would probably "just" re-pot it, tbh.
that would give it some tlc and still be mobile enough if it ever needed to be moved for shelter.

I live, and attempt to garden about 800ft up, basically on the Pennines / SW Northumberland.
We have a cordyline (at least, I think that is what it is) in a pot, as well as several roses.
They can be shoved into the greenhouse for a bit of shelter if needed.
[about a decade ago, the winter got down to minus 13 centigrade here for quite some time, and we lost several bushes and small trees - as well as masses of clay pots]

I'm only about 500ft up here on the North Downs and it rarely gets that cold. The coldest in recent years was - 8 °C a couple of years ago. I'm sure this yucca has coped with colder before that. It's definitely been covered in snow for days and come out relatively unscathed.

I think it's just one of those plants which stubbornly refuses to die no matter how cold or neglected. I sort of admire it for surviving even if it looks tatty all the time.

 

[Leafster]

I've been trying to grow them for five or six years now ever since I found out what they were ("Mexican fleabane" thanks to the urbanite who told me what they were - just checked and it was andysays so thank you again andysays ). I've put them in various places in the garden but the one that's established is in the cracks of a wall with rubbish clayey soil.

Do love them - you see them all over Cornwall in peoples' hedges and walls.

They definitely seem to prefer squeezing through the gaps in the paving on my terrace rather than the slightly better builders rubble which passes for soil in most of my front garden.

 

[two sheds]

I find this surprising:

Cultivation Grow in fertile, well-drained soil that does not dry out in summer; best in full sun with some midday shade. Ideal for wall or paving crevices but can self-seed and become invasive in mild areas
Propagation Propagate by seed in pots in a cold frame in spring

surprised "fertile" soil. Will try the propagaging in cold frame though, mine have been in conservatory.

 

[Leafster]

I find this surprising:

Cultivation Grow in fertile, well-drained soil that does not dry out in summer; best in full sun with some midday shade. Ideal for wall or paving crevices but can self-seed and become invasive in mild areas
Propagation Propagate by seed in pots in a cold frame in spring

surprised "fertile" soil. Will try the propagating in cold frame though, mine have been in conservatory.

Me too. Mine are growing in the bedding sand between and under the paving slabs. Any nutrients that might be there can only be what the rain washes into the cracks.

 

[campanula]

I collect loads of erigeron seed ...and puff it about, all over the street (and plot and customers gardens). I have never, not once, had the slightest success in carefully pressing the tiny seeds in pots of soil and waiting....nope, it flies around, with it's little crest of fluff (cos it is an achene) and decides where and when it will find it's own home. I am more than happy to collect a bag of seeds for you, two sheds (I have an absolutely giant, 3foot by 3foot specimen, flowering all through a large salvia). You have to be quick, to catch the mini dandelion clocks before they disperse around....but if you simply throw a handful around, willy-nilly, I guarantee you will find ready colonisers

 

[two sheds]

Lovely offer ta but the one that has established is now a mass of flowers so I'm hoping it will seed in the rest of the wall I've got another six or seven plantlets that have been growing in the conservatory over winter, am distributing them around hedges see if they take too.

 

[StoneRoad]

my self-seeding champion is fried-egg plant (can't recall the proper name atm) ... it gets everywhere

 

[iona]

For spikey lovers, global warming (possibly) has definitely meant being able to keep agaves outside all year...

There's a few houses down here with agaves as big as a smallish car in their front gardens

 

[iona]

my self-seeding champion is fried-egg plant (can't recall the proper name atm) ... it gets everywhere

Poached egg plant? Limnanthes douglasii

 

[StoneRoad]

Poached egg plant? Limnanthes douglasii

yup, that's it ... fried egg nickname is local to up here

 

[han]

Red poppies, yellow poppies. Red poppies yellow poppies.

 

[heinous seamus]

Something has savaged my peas

 

[campanula]

I love love love welsh poppies (which have madly colonised the pavings in my garden). I started off with the usual yellows, then grew a deep orange variety ('Frances Perry') so hybridising has resulted in a range of sunset-y colours.
I do have to weed out hundreds of them from every pot, though.

feeling your pain, heinous seamus. Likely culprits either flea bettle or pigeons. I once made 6 attempts to grow peas in a single season - twith every known pest chipping in to smirk at my efforts. The only decent cropper was a purple mange-tout called Shiraz. Looked lovely but not really that nice to eat.

While I love birds, the sodding pigeons have (again) stripped my cherry back to naked twigs. This is the second year on the run this has happened and since I have never had a crop in cherries in a decade, I am going to remove it and put a couple of pears in place.

 

[two sheds]

it was mice that always savaged my peas, nothing else got a look in before the mice adem.

 

[bimble]

I just narrowly avoided mowing this! All on its own just the one hanging out there in the overgrown lawny bit.

Is it a bee orchid?

 

[Calamity1971]

I just narrowly avoided mowing this! All on its own just the one hanging out there in the overgrown lawny bit.View attachment 273106

Is it a bee orchid?

Certainly looks like it. My neighbour has a solitary one in her lawn.

 

[bimble]

It’s made my day, that it’s here & that I didn’t mow it.