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The gardening thread

I ordered a lot of seeds for a customer's huge border, (6m x 40m) which had been overtaken by thuggish plants but is now looking very sparse (after a couple of years of savage culling). I was planning to do a direct sowing of annuals and fast growing perennials...but had a crisis of confidence and have sowed hundreds of pots as well. My greenhouse is already stuffed and I have barely started pricking out...although I now have 50+ dahlias (Bishop's Children), 120 zinnias, 40 tagetes already potted up and at least another 400 or so cosmos, nicotiana, asters, coleus, phlox, limnanthes, zinnias, tithonia, primula, adenophoras, platycodon, gaillardia, salvia, pinks, agastache (plus all the vegetables and longer-term perennials and trees), to prick out and pot on. This is the most out of control I have been for ages (4000zinnias, for example)...and I am beginning to get a bit flustered.
 
I'm a bit miffed atm.
I seem to be having a bad rabbit year, the first for some time ... I've lost loads of seedlings and my aquilegia are being destroyed [but not eaten, just chopped off which is even more annoying].

This afternoon's job is going to be putting up some protective fencing
 
To add to the fun, my local Tesco has 20 litre bags of yet another Westlands variation for £3.50, so I'll be off up the road in a bit to buy 80 litres - worth it for me so I don't have to travel miles for it ...
 
I've opened up a second grow shelf and have sown 3 kinds of squash and a stripy Italian courgette.
Also two kinds of kale, lettuce, spinach, pak choi, mixed mustard, land cress ...

I need to get a move on and decide where I'm going to plant the Pentland Javelin spuds and where the three kinds of pea will go - and plant the runner beans.

This week I need to get my pergola sorted so I can get the timber off the area where the squashes will go ... but in the first instance I need to sow my row of giant sunflowers which will act as a screen as well as being something to grow French beans on ...

And I will have to twist some more string so I can cover every fence panel with climbers ...

twoshelfcloseup.jpg
 
What does the team think ?

I reckon my East-facing front wall should work well for sweet peas and maybe also some morning glory ...
Access for repeated tweaking will be an issue ...
I was going to put screws in the wall at various points, run a strong horizontal white cord for the horizontal, fan down from there, and actually plant the plants in the ground - ahead of the concrete that has the containers on it ... and the initial run will not be obscuring the other plants ...

I just spotted this :-

:hmm:


1.67 x 10 metres - might do my beans too ...

And white cord - 550 pound test ...


I think I will net to the top of the downstairs window and run more above if things want to climb higher ...

wallfancroppedsmall.jpg
 
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A key challenge is going to be not just cramming the plants in the space, but also getting the colours to work ...

At the moment I am coveting some pink pelargoniums up the road ... :hmm:
EDIT:- I of course bought some and noticed they have composted horse manure .....

potagecolours.jpg
 
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gentlegreen said:
How did they work for you ?

I'm going nuts with ipomoeas this year and have my first one of these popping ...
Click to expand...
Yet to find out this year, but last year i had just the one plant and it was my favourite thing all Summer, you turn your back on a bud and when you come back into the room it's opened into its full trumpety glory, just for the one night. An absolutely magic plant.
This year being greedy i started several, but half seem to have perished already, from being out in the cold.
 
bimble said:
Yet to find out this year, but last year i had just the one plant and it was my favourite thing all Summer, you turn your back on a bud and when you come back into the room it's opened into its full trumpety glory, just for the one night. An absolutely magic plant.
This year being greedy i started several, but half seem to have perished already, from being out in the cold.
Click to expand...
was it nice and smelly ?
Those seeds are rock hard - I've been sanding them, soaking and resanding .. I only have one popping up so far and am soaking my last 3 seeds just in case - it'd be cool to have them front and back for the fragrance.
I also have pearly gates - which I ordered by mistake and is the daytime equivalent, but should compliment the moonflowers ...and a blue one - grandpa Ott.

If only we could have MGs instead of bindweed :)

My best success was a load of generic "tricolor" that popped up when I planted fishing hemp seed in my parents' garden :D
 
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This one is the happiest so far and it’s being kept indoors. They grow really fast.
2079FB46-F1FD-40AF-A9A2-10E74D88FEB8.jpeg
Am quite proud of this, don’t know if it’ll show on the photo but I built a climbing frame for it, bamboo joined with copper plumbing bits, so it might cling all around the frames of the kitchen window . The other side of the climbing frame there’s a cobaea scandens and they’ll probably meet above the sink in about 2 weeks :)
 
Oh well another £20 gone - but I have a stash of Amazon gift credit ...
Who knows I may get more uses out of it.

I reckon I'm going to use cheaper stuff for all the fence in the back garden - they have it up the road - annoyingly it's green - but I'll see ... it'll all be covered by plants anyway - and much less faff than making string fans on 10 fence panels...

EDIT:- I will use string since I have clean runs of fence it will just need small nails or screws.
 
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bimble said:
My First Rose is looking well. 20 buds on it I just counted! Extremely happy about this, it was a dubious looking little stump when it arrived and I felt like I’m not ready for roses, as if they were only for Proper gardeners.
View attachment 273605
Click to expand...
Erm . So this rose. I really need a stern and sensible talking to about it please. The issue is it’s doing too magnificently ebulliently well?
It’s now got one stem / branch that’s up to the upstairs windows, so as tall as 3 of me , and I’m sure I need to start pruning it very soon but am scared to, and can I wait til this summers blooms are over?
45B999BE-998E-456B-A8F6-A69E7BEDE9F1.jpeg
Not many buds yet maybe it’s put all its effort into getting Huge? What should I do?
 
"Nip" out the very small & soft tip of that tall branch, which should stop the upwards progress & repeat as required. Although try not to take out any flower buds.

I do hope it is tied into something secure ...

The rambler / climber by my front door is kept in check by some tip pruning after it has flowered, although I had to give it a stern talking to this spring [it had broken free from the support system].
I must remember to take a picture of it, to show the overall shape etc.
 
"heavy rain" - not nearly enough, but I'll take it.

1652254567560.png


Time to start getting the veggies planted :)

First get the back fence all strung up.
I'm planning to plant the hops I potted up down the end to hopefully cover the neighbour's shed ...
I have nasturtiums busting to get planted and hopefully canary creeper and thunbergia and sweet peas for the shadier side ...
I think I may send one nasturtium up each post and fill in with whatever else grows ...

Then runner beans, peas and Pentland Javelin spuds ...


View attachment Wansview-2022-05-11-08-13-04.mp4
 
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Based on last year I'm deffo going to mesh up to the upstairs window ... the grass is in a bigger tub this year as are the Joe Pye and the trachelospermum - and that one wants to climb ... that takes it to about 3 metres - and I suppose I'll take it right across the porch so the salad experiment won't be quite so stark.

I could do with covering the whole house to be fair, but my vertigo is a limitation ... I suppose if I did it, I would climb onto the centre valley roof and drop mesh down - and fix the displaced tile while there ... :hmm:

meshreasonsmaller.jpg
 
two sheds said:
that's going to look lovely :)

Eta looks lovely now, mind
Click to expand...
Thanks:)
That was last August and largely accidental ...

I'm hoping for some amaranthuses to sprout, but I don't want a ginormous plant right in the middle this year - even though I have six ricinuses fattening up in the back garden (I sowed some old seeds as well as the new and they sprouted) - as I a lot of the things I'm raising would be obscured ...

If things go to plan there will be a cascade of nasturtiums coming over the porch complimenting the spiders, fuchsias and begonias ... so that side should be more dramatic too ... this year's begonias are doubles too ... and hopefully everything will be reliably watered this year ...
 
Aw, cowslips. These are on my colonising list for the wood this year after a successful year of spreading seed in my local cemetery. There are a couple of local cowslip meadows (they do well in grass). I am trying oxslips too...but they have been elusive as primulas really do much better with fresh seed...so best if collected sometime in late June/July) Oxslips, once abundant, have vanished to just a couple of tiny habitats in Bedforshire...but a special trip to Hailey Wood is in order to gather up some oxslip seeds.I never feel guilty collecting seed from wildflowers and spreading it around. Digging up plants - absolutely not, but seed or slips are OK.
 
20220512_182303.jpg20220512_175836.jpg

Check out me teasels😍

Never grown these before. Nania started a load off in trays and planted them around the garden late on last year because the birds love them. They're a biannual so this year they're going full triffids.
They're amazing plants. They have these fantastic reservoir pools at the base of their leaves that look like mini pond's.

I had a bit of a moan about her sticking them in my bog garden but now I have to admit they look fantastic in amongst the bog plants.

Anyone else grown them?
 
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