The gardening thread

[Fairweather]

I want something like this but it’s too dear/huge delivery cost.

Any ideas for a long handled substitute?

They are so useful especially if a bit cross. You just twat the earth till you feel better.

Verdemax 6121 140 cm Hoe with FSC Ash Handle and 2 Prong Cultivator : Amazon.co.uk: Garden & Outdoors

Great prices on your favourite Gardening brands, and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

I’ve got one of these which is shit hot.

Roughneck 5lb Mattock 36" - Screwfix

Order online at Screwfix.com. High density fibreglass handle, horizontal and vertical chisels and blades for chopping, cutting and grubbing-out ground. FREE next day delivery available, free collection in 1 minute.

www.screwfix.com

 

[TopCat]

I’ve got one of these which is shit hot.

Roughneck 5lb Mattock 36" - Screwfix

Order online at Screwfix.com. High density fibreglass handle, horizontal and vertical chisels and blades for chopping, cutting and grubbing-out ground. FREE next day delivery available, free collection in 1 minute.

www.screwfix.com

Many thanks but I have a mattock and an azeda but need a lighter, longer earth twatting implement with a fork one side and a blade on the other.

 

[smmudge]

Wow well done TopCat looks loads better and a nice place to relax now

We have quite a lot of leatherjackets coming out our lawn. Was thinking I'd need to do something to control the population but haven't noticed any patches in the lawn this year, in fact it's perfectly healthy. I read that only a few species of leatherjackets will eat your grass so maybe not these ones? Happy for them to stay if my grass stays green.

 

[gentlegreen]

I was hoping for a slow, steady brugmansia opening over an Indian summer, but the sudden heat has made all three plants decide to go for it in a big way ...

 

[TopCat]

Lidl have got bags of bulbs in now. Usual good value.
Also big rubber plants in stock today. Really good quality and fifteen quid inc a big ceramic pot.

 

[gentlegreen]

My minimalist back garden / fox playground.
My neighbour on the left wants to get started on his fence fairly soon and I'm going to put my fence on the right on the same order - so I've been doing some clearing - it is useful as motivation.
With most of the good stuff in the front garden, it's more of a fox playground than anything else...

 

[iona]

Now that's just taking hybridisation too far

 

[Leafster]

Now that's just taking hybridisation too far

I think I'd title that picture "A future you"

 

[iona]

I think I'd title that picture "A future you"

Fucking hell

 

[heinous seamus]

My broccoli is in flower and the bees are going daft for it.



The cucumbers are still going like big guns. Some lovely autumn raspberries have started to appear too.

 

[gentlegreen]

Since I've yet to see my neighbour in the garden enjoying it, I think I'm going to drag my third brug through to the front or it will be wasted...

 

[gentlegreen]

All three brugs now out the front and I think my back still works

 

[oryx]

Forgot to look at the courgettes for a few days and accidentally grew a marrow!

 

[Ron Merlin]

 

[oryx]

this one isn't quite two feet long. Have to start thinking how to cook it.

Apart from this unexpected monster, all the other courgettes have been pretty weeny.

(I was compelled to google Billy Cotton. He played for Brentford and is Fearne Cotton's great-great uncle).

 

[two sheds]

this one isn't quite two feet long. Have to start thinking how to cook it.

Apart from this unexpected monster, all the other courgettes have been pretty weeny.

(I was compelled to google Billy Cotton. He played for Brentford and is Fearne Cotton's great-great uncle).

Don't know Billy Cotton???

Wakey WaKAY






I know

 

[oryx]

Don't know Billy Cotton???

Wakey WaKAY






I know

I've heard of 'I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts' (as per the record label) but not Billy Cotton!

 

[gentlegreen]

Not bad - considering I didn't expect to have anything resembling a front garden this year ...
A combination of unexpected winter survivals, self-sowing, and a few new additions...

 

[clicker]

Not bad - considering I didn't expect to have anything resembling a front garden this year ...
A combination of unexpected winter survivals, self-sowing, and a few new additions...

View attachment 287802

That looks really lovely. Your neighbours are lucky.

 

[gentlegreen]

I finally got a whiff of my brugs last night through my upstairs bedroom window.
It worked much better when they were in the back garden and the prevailing westerly breeze wafted the aroma into the downstairs back room where I used to live and sleep - on at least one occasion I knew when the very first bloom had just opened.

Difficult to define the perfume - perhaps because it's a blend - the yellow ones are more at the citrus end of the spectrum - the pink ones more complex ... perhaps vaguely tropical caramel pudding ...
My sinuses have conveniently drained a little overnight.

 

[gentlegreen]

I will definitely be growing begonias again.
I chatted to my neighbour who has loads of them and her doubles aren't fragrant. One of mine is quite citrussy, the other more complex and both in the same spectrum as the brugmansias. Pre-emptive (or otherwise) dead-heading appears to be unnecessary ...

 

[TopCat]

I planted 150 bulbs in new beds. Just as a sort of outer ring in the beds.. All Lidl stuff (now in).
I managed to break my Azeda handle digging the beds. I was surprised by this. The handle is like a long pick axe.

Anyway I got a new longer handle and a fork attachment. The shaft fits both tools.

I glyphosated all the shite in the garden and went and done the kerbs and that nearby.

The lawn is growing really well. More grass seed down, raked in this time and loads of nitrogen fertiliser.

Planted herbs as well.

Good day.

 

[campanula]

I went to a rare plant sale today. My only plant shopping all year (apart from a few hardy geraniums in the summer). I had a bloody lovely time. Not sure whether to list all my purchases (for further gloating) but I doubt any of the plants I bought would be found in my local garden centre, so I am excusing myself (despite having no clue where any of them will be planted...yet).

I also collected a shitload of seeds from a spectacularly cheerful tagetes (I think it was the 3foot tall 'Cinnabar' from Gt.Dixter nursery)...which I am going to offer up as bribery to deflect from my nervous waffling during my coming 'talk' (preparation so far consists of half a page of 'notes'.). Very nervous about this but I have a strategy.

 

[iona]

Yes list please campanula! Hope your talk goes (went?) well.

 

[Callie]

Oops. I accidentallied a half price lemon now I just have to not kill it!

 

[iona]

Not sure I collected enough calendula seed today

 

[campanula]

O, you made me do it, iona. Anyways:
2 thalictrum delavayii 'Splendide' - a purple flowered one and the while one. I love, love the meadow rues and the 'Splendide' cultivars are the the best.
Daphne tangutica retusa - micropropagation has really made some tricky plants much more affordable. It was £20 for a good sized plant in a 15litre pot. When I first got my 'Jacqueline Postill' (d.bholua,)it cost £65. but they were also on sale for £20.
miscanthus 'Little Zebra' (for next years redone gravel garden.
sphaeralcea incana 'Childerley'. Soft peach colour, with felty, glaucous leaves . With the thalictrums, my favourites from the haul. I love the mallow family. I have a few other coral/orange-y plants needing a home, so am thinking of a 'hot garden'
ribes speciosum - aka California fuchsia for the downfacing, scarlet, tubular blooms on a gooseberry-like wall shrub.
2 species pelargoniums - p.deerwood lavendar lad and p.ardens. These are a dainty counterpoint to my enormous scented leaf geranium
deutzia chunii - a dainty shrub with white, bell shaped flowers (like half a dozen other dainty shrubs with white bell shaped flowers I already have).
salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. This was actually a freebie from a nursery owning friend
variegated dwarf agapanthus
santolina 'Lemon Fizz (also destined for the overhauled gravel garden).

Yep, I think I did OK at my talk.

 

[TopCat]

O, you made me do it, iona. Anyways:
2 thalictrum delavayii 'Splendide' - a purple flowered one and the while one. I love, love the meadow rues and the 'Splendide' cultivars are the the best.
Daphne tangutica retusa - micropropagation has really made some tricky plants much more affordable. It was £20 for a good sized plant in a 15litre pot. When I first got my 'Jacqueline Postill' (d.bholua,)it cost £65. but they were also on sale for £20.
miscanthus 'Little Zebra' (for next years redone gravel garden.
sphaeralcea incana 'Childerley'. Soft peach colour, with felty, glaucous leaves . With the thalictrums, my favourites from the haul. I love the mallow family. I have a few other coral/orange-y plants needing a home, so am thinking of a 'hot garden'
ribes speciosum - aka California fuchsia for the downfacing, scarlet, tubular blooms on a gooseberry-like wall shrub.
2 species pelargoniums - p.deerwood lavendar lad and p.ardens. These are a dainty counterpoint to my enormous scented leaf geranium
deutzia chunii - a dainty shrub with white, bell shaped flowers (like half a dozen other dainty shrubs with white bell shaped flowers I already have).
salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. This was actually a freebie from a nursery owning friend
variegated dwarf agapanthus
santolina 'Lemon Fizz (also destined for the overhauled gravel garden).

Yep, I think I did OK at my talk.

So cut to the chase you. The talk! Xx

 

[campanula]

It wasn't too horrifying. There was only a dozen or so women in attendance and another 8 or so on Zoom. I sounded quite normal (to my ears). It was quite a jolly evening (because I smoked a neat orange sherbert splif on the way to the meeting house...which tends to make me quite chatty and loquatious). I didn't have to fiddle with microphones, cameras, screens or such, I had pages of notes but forgot my specs so I couldn't read them. but, as it happened, I didn't feel like I had to talk knowledgeably and professionally...just enthusiastically. Anyone can look up all the information they need so I pretty much dispensed with a lot of lists and facts and stuff and mostly just got exciteable about free seeds, our relationships with wildlife, swallowtails, favourite geraniums, growing our own food, a really big puff for Ivy (and ivy bees, just for the controversy), how to live with weeds, (they become 'wild flowers') The time whizzed by (we had no time to look at my seed scope and I had to miss out whole lumps of stuff such as a section on moon gardening and moths. I think they liked me.

 

[TopCat]

Awoke to find frenzied squirrels digging up my newly planted bulbs and throwing them about, half eaten.

I’m getting fed up with the bastards who feed them and the fucking rodents themselves.

I have replanted over 100 bulbs and have set up cd’s on strings to try and deter them.

I have also got the air rifle out.