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The gardening thread

OK, a question to debate.

I potted out some Cos lettuce recently [to keep 'em out of the rabbitt's reach] and put the results in a range of locations.
Some are growing faster than I expected [which is good] and are keeping up with the Lollo Rosso.

Do I, or do I not, need to tie them to blanch the hearts as they grow ?
Sorry, I don't know the exact variety, but I don't think that they are "little gems" ...
 
I just made a failure alarm for my NFT tank return.
Two half 2 litre bottles one inside the other.
The top one has small holes to allow some flow, plus an overflow pipe fitted snugly in the cap.

:thumbs:

All I need to do now is find the reel of wire I need to connect it to a relay and lamp / buzzer in the house...
I deffo need to plug the mains supply in the house somewhere I won't accidentally unplug it ...

nftfailurealarm.png

failurealarm.jpg
 
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StoneRoad said:
OK, a question to debate.

I potted out some Cos lettuce recently [to keep 'em out of the rabbitt's reach] and put the results in a range of locations.
Some are growing faster than I expected [which is good] and are keeping up with the Lollo Rosso.

Do I, or do I not, need to tie them to blanch the hearts as they grow ?
Sorry, I don't know the exact variety, but I don't think that they are "little gems" ...
Click to expand...
I'd never thought of little gems as cos, but apparently they are ..
For my hydro salad for cheapness I sowed mixed lettuce and have grown-on a selection - some of which are clearly cos....

In my case I'm growing all my lettuce and other leafy greens as cut and come again - harvesting the outer leaves, so there won't be so much finesse for now ... and in fact I thought today I need to try various chicory-type things like radicchio and endive - where blanching is often a big deal ..

One thing I did learn today from a commercial grower is that if you're growing hydro, you can choose to run on pure water for the last day or two before picking to increase the sweetness - also something I can't do in my current system.
 
bimble said:
What is this please?
View attachment 326592
I grew it but I didn’t label it, and just noticed to my delight that it exists.. Quite likely one of your seeds campanula ?
Click to expand...
This?
www.plant-world-seeds.com

VERBASCUM ATROVIOLACEUM SEEDS (Purple Mullein) - Plant World Seeds

VERBASCUM ATROVIOLACEUM SEEDS (Purple Mullein) - Plant World Seeds. This compact and adaptable species has wonderful, deep purple flower spikes above a rosette of dark green foliage. Plants bloom throughout the summer months and do best on well-draining, sandy-rocky soils that are not overly...
www.plant-world-seeds.com www.plant-world-seeds.com
 
Johnny Vodka said:
I've never actually eaten a gojiberry, and I believe the birds are fond of them - so we'll see!
Click to expand...
They always seemed to have "chillis" in guinea pig food - I wonder if they were goji berries ... :hmm:

EDIT:- apparently guinea pigs can't synthesize vitamin C, so it's quite likely there was some sort of tomato relative in there - but these were definitely chilli-shaped ... funny how I remember this from 50 years ago...
 
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I did grow venus's looking glass (legousia speculum-veneris) which looked to be a possibility...but 3 or 4 years ago.. I also grow verbascum phoeniceum, so also entirely possible. I rushed out to check the verbascum but there are just a couple of remaining florets. Does yours flower in a spike, bimble? Or in a loose spray of single flowers?

I bought 3 heleniums from poundland...to make up for the mysterious failure of gaillardia (for the late summer daisy bed) I will try to remember to send you seeds of a rather good larkspur, bimble - another plant not beloved by deer.
 
Monarda is a bit of a diva, tbf, Calamity1971 . Needs the elusive 'moist but well drained' soil...so I am fairly staggered that it does at all well in arid east anglia. Certainly better than phlox (which is my most exasperating plant). It is a remnant from my (failed) prairie craze (when I had a load of US, native plant friends). I was kind of obsessed with grasses and tall prairie plants such as silphium, eupatoriums, vernonia, cow-pen daisy, eryngiums, coreopteris, rudbeckias and the like - all massive perennials which totally did not like the sandy, stony soil on my allotment, no matter how much compost and mulch I supplied. Most of them either carked or looked so woeful I had to relocate them to the compost. However, there are a handful of plants which have taken absolutely years to get going - they do not like the dryness and seem to take 4 or so years just stumbling along, but making a deep and tenacious root system so that in year 4 or 5, they have either adapted or have reached deeper moisture levels...I dunno. Monarda, along with strobilanthes, zantedeschia, asters and even a clump of phlox, seem to come into their own, against all the odds, only once they have reached a level of maturity. Course, there are plenty of fallen flowers along the way.
 
campanula said:
Monarda is a bit of a diva, tbf, Calamity1971 . Needs the elusive 'moist but well drained' soil...so I am fairly staggered that it does at all well in arid east anglia. Certainly better than phlox (which is my most exasperating plant). It is a remnant from my (failed) prairie craze (when I had a load of US, native plant friends). I was kind of obsessed with grasses and tall prairie plants such as silphium, eupatoriums, vernonia, cow-pen daisy, eryngiums, coreopteris, rudbeckias and the like - all massive perennials which totally did not like the sandy, stony soil on my allotment, no matter how much compost and mulch I supplied. Most of them either carked or looked so woeful I had to relocate them to the compost. However, there are a handful of plants which have taken absolutely years to get going - they do not like the dryness and seem to take 4 or so years just stumbling along, but making a deep and tenacious root system so that in year 4 or 5, they have either adapted or have reached deeper moisture levels...I dunno. Monarda, along with strobilanthes, zantedeschia, asters and even a clump of phlox, seem to come into their own, against all the odds, only once they have reached a level of maturity. Course, there are plenty of fallen flowers along the way.
Click to expand...
I might try in a very large pot ( trying to get rid of pots because of, you know, weevils) but I love monarda, so decent compost and plenty of drainage. I have the same with lavender, I kill it just by looking at it! I saw a lavender hedge the other day and felt very inadequate.
 
Why did I choose today to uproot my salad and entrust it to my NFT ?
It was pleasantly warm this morning, but as soon as I started populating the unit, the sun started blasting away :p
So I have not only my mini pump delivering 90 litres an hour, but also the big one in tandem ... it's like Niagara falls out there :eek:

Everything is droopy and huddled at the nursery end with the flow restrictor in to keep the level up - plus airstones ... and I quickly deployed some grubby bubble insulation as some sort of shade over the lot
Whatever happens I will be sowing another load of salad later on -

Worst case I have no shortage of kale seedlings and the ones I planted in the unit will survive anyway ...
 
Calamity1971 said:
I might try in a very large pot ( trying to get rid of pots because of, you know, weevils) but I love monarda, so decent compost and plenty of drainage. I have the same with lavender, I kill it just by looking at it! I saw a lavender hedge the other day and felt very inadequate.
Click to expand...
I wonder if I will ever receive my lavender ... or the fuchsia thalias I ordered at the same time - and Parkers are also taking the piss - loads of offers while there's no sign of the things I ordered from them ...

Now that I've slimmed-down my porch hydroponic plans, I will need something that won't look too silly growing up the back of it ...
So no flowers only visible from above ...

plantforback.jpg
 
Calamity1971 said:
I have the same with lavender, I kill it just by looking at it! I saw a lavender hedge the other day and felt very inadequate.
Click to expand...
Lavenders are dickheads. I do the same, yet the lavender hedge in one of my work gardens is getting by fine despite being planted at the bottom of a slope of heavy clay and having grass growing all through it :mad:

I've given up on buying plants and this year I'm trying to raise a load of tiny volunteers I weeded out of my mum's driveway in the hope that they'll get used to me and my lavender-killing ways before they've grown enough to know any different.
 
iona said:
Lavenders are dickheads. I do the same, yet the lavender hedge in one of my work gardens is getting by fine despite being planted at the bottom of a slope of heavy clay and having grass growing all through it :mad:

I've given up on buying plants and this year I'm trying to raise a load of tiny volunteers I weeded out of my mum's driveway in the hope that they'll get used to me and my lavender-killing ways before they've grown enough to know any different.
Click to expand...
The lavenders are dickheads got me :D
 
I thought my lavender was doing okay until I walked past a churchyard today which had huge rusted iron planters flanking the entrance, that had the most amazing displays of lavender. Bastards. I bet the gardener has called in some divine intervention. Cheats.
 
Today was stressful. One of my Hydro mentors is in Florida and he inserts the teeniest seedlings straight into his system. I chose the wrong day to release my stream-raised progeny into the ocean ... I somehow forgot the sun would be out at some point. :facepalm:
After cranking up the throughput to maybe 15 reservoir changes an hour, letting the liquid level get high, and even bonus airstones - plus shading and misting, I suspect I have more than enough to be going on with once they pick themselves up, but I've sown another complete batch of salad just in case. Most of the planting positions have more than one plant ...

As an experiment I planted some purslane in it as I can't get it to do much planted in pots ... and there will be amaranth later for a novelty - which I'm growing to put in containers as focus plants but there are going to be so many available I may "punctuate" my potager with it too ...

It looks a bit gruesome, but the plants will almost certainly sort themselves out - giving me lettuce, pak choi, kale Swiss chard and spinach ... and I stuck some purslane in it to see if I can get it to perform - plus red amaranth later if I choose ... and I did what I should have done before and sowed another batch of seeds ... and I may make myself a bigger bubble cloner so the plants are properly up to size - with roots that don't need to be teased apart ...

And I will choose a dull day to do it next time ...

nftcarnage.jpg

 
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I've killed every nationality of lavender. Lots and lots of times. I don't even like the smell. But every year I still buy one of the little shits, just so they don't win. This year I got it from the 'half dead' shelf in Homebase. My reasoning being, it only now has to put in half the effort to either live or die. It'd have to be bone idle to die now.
 
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