The gardening thread

[gentlegreen]

I honestly can't recall seeing hollyhocks irl before. They should work well alongside my foxgloves in a wild patch.

Yes - sort of the follow-on in "spire" territory..
They do usually succumb to rust fairly quickly.

The malvaceae are sadly lacking in my garden.
Cycling past a patch of common mallows on the way to work used to brighten my day
I'm deffo going for hibiscus in the future.
I once grew okra but never actually ate any (they suffered in my greenhouse anyway)

The mallow family includes cacao, cola and durian among others

 

[gentlegreen]

Are, no way would that two metre squared tent fit on my patio so I will have to make a covered bench - perhaps with a pull-out awning ....

 

[gentlegreen]

I have my Dutch hydro nutes nudge nudge wink wink.
I actually had to order from there because the ones from the local growshop don't work in my system for some reason..

 

[gentlegreen]

Eaarlier I spotted some hollyhocks planted in no appreciable soil ...
I wonder if the resident knew they would do so well ...

 

[contadino]

They do usually succumb to rust fairly quickly.

Yeah, rust is a nightmare on hollyhocks. Last year I threw the towel in and switched to Malva Sylvestris Zebrina and they're so much more successful.

For spires, check out Veronicas too. I have a white one that gets to 1.5m high. Later than foxgloves, but in flower before they're gone.

 

[clicker]

This Penstemon 'snow storm' , is about 2 ft high, really healthy and partially satisfies my spire needs.


And my Malva 'moschata Alba' is so far rust free and a really bright white. I've given up on hollyhocks I think, the buggers always get rusty, healthiest ones I've seen are self sown in obscure places.

 

[gentlegreen]

I ordered lobelia cardinalis on impulse - hoping for spires ... ended up with six teeny plugs so they will probably be more like bedding plants this year ...

My amaranthuses don't count as spires, but they are certainly growing quickly - only 3 weeks under a very moderate amount of light.. I will need to get some of the bigger ones out in the sunshine when it reappears ..

 

[iona]

Huge hollyhocks everywhere in the Netherlands. I must introduce these to my garden.View attachment 329466

Can I interest you in some of the enormous bag of seeds I've been trying to palm off onto people and chucking about on waste ground and poking into pavement cracks for the last year?

 

[gentlegreen]

Along with my new nutes came my PH testing kit.
Seems I was running at 6.8 when it needed to be 5.5 to 6 ...

I've cleaned up a plastic tub to mix my nutes in - so hopefully tomorrow I will settle on a formula for nutes and PH-correcting phosphoric acid and actually get growing ...

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Can I interest you in some of the enormous bag of seeds I've been trying to palm off onto people and chucking about on waste ground and poking into pavement cracks for the last year?

Ha! Maybe. Are they easy to grow from seed? Would I just throw them on the ground now for flowering next year?

 

[iona]

Ha! Maybe. Are they easy to grow from seed? Would I just throw them on the ground now for flowering next year?

You can be nice and sow them carefully in pots but just flinging seeds about the place works too ime. The patch my seed is from has kept itself going for years by self-seeding without any input from people.

 

[TopCat]

I'm weighing up the idea of ordering one of these :-
2 x 2 metres - so big enough to sleep in ...
£60 so I can enjoy my garden more for the last 2 years (hopefully) that I'm here ...
And I can give it to my family even if I don't take it with me - so not a proverbial "shepherd's hut" ...

View attachment 329450

I have had nine gazebos.

 

[gentlegreen]

I have had nine gazebos.

But not simultaneously ?

two sheds

 

[friedaweed]

Teasel update.



7 foot tall some of them. Definitely staying on the 'welcome triffids' list.

 

[friedaweed]

I'm looking forward to the late display of my Ginger Lilly (Hedychium Gardnerianum) this year. Last year we only had two shoots. This year its really settled in.





This is last year's bloom.

 

[friedaweed]

Anyone got any ideas for a trailing plant to grow over the wall of my bog garden?

 

[gentlegreen]

Anyone got any ideas for a trailing plant to grow over the wall of my bog garden?

View attachment 329584

with its feet damp ?

 

[friedaweed]

Fab time of year for flowers

 

[friedaweed]

with its feet damp ?

Not too damp. The bog is about 3 ft deep with a perforated pond liner under it. I keep the top reasonably moist but not waterlogged. I just drown it periodically. The liguria and the bog irises have fairly deep roots. So they do fine. I've got colocasia happily living in the top so more moist than wet feet.

 

[TopCat]

But not simultaneously ?

two sheds

They kept taking off in Autumn storms, the echoes of people saying "you should take that down you know!" in my ears. The wreckage would lay in my garden often into the New Year along with the detritus of the last party.

I kept buying more and weighing them down more. To no use. With Dumbell weights attached they took off with the wind still. Smashing neighbours fences, a conservatory one time, it was all tears and reparations.

I now have a big brolly.

 

[gentlegreen]

They kept taking off in Autumn storms, the echoes of people saying "you should take that down you know!" in my ears. The wreckage would lay in my garden often into the New Year along with the detritus of the last party.

I kept buying more and weighing them down more. To no use. With Dumbell weights attached they took off with the wind still. Smashing neighbours fences, a conservatory one time, it was all tears and reparations.

I now have a big brolly.

Yes a brolly would make sense.
I have a non-waterproof parasol with no pole ..
I will definitely want every kind of transition from the indoors to the out in my new place - plus CCTV and autonomous drones and a feck off big screen and a projector ..

 

[The39thStep]

View attachment 329594View attachment 329595
View attachment 329590
Fab time of year for flowers

There’s always something fascinating about other people’s laundry on the line

 

[friedaweed]

There’s always something fascinating about other people’s laundry on the line

The shot before that had the Mrs bent over

 

[Sasaferrato]

Taken in the back garden about fifteen minutes ago.

 

[contadino]

Photos from this morning....

Hemerocalis "Primal Scream"



New David Austin rose - Gertrude Jeckyl - only planted a few months back. Will climb.

Those malva I mentioned yesterday

Perennial toadflax 'Peachy'

Two types of scabious

Until yesterday, these Red Campion were gonna be for the chop. They've kinda taken over this bed this year. We had words - "You gotta put on a show or snip-snip..."

The catenanche...

 

[gentlegreen]

Are those mauve delphiniums at the top ?

 

[contadino]

Are those mauve delphiniums at the top ?

Yeah. Don't know the name but they're a double with dark stems. 6ft this year I think due to the muck I laid on them before Xmas.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I have a wildflower meadow at my allotment, Johnny Vodka . I have not found this to be anything like easy or quick...despite the many, many seed merchants, keen to sell us packets of 'wildflowers', implying a simple spring broadcasting and we will have sustainable colour with environmentally benign plants. The claims of seed merchants, along with the usual sponsored media tosh are variable - ranging from bullshit to outragous bullshit...and as for quality of seeds! The term 'wildflower' is used in quite a cavalier manner, with quite a number of these mixes containing hardy annuals and tender annuals (such as cosmos, coreopsis, Californian poppies...which have very different requirements to UK native and naturalised wildflowers. Some mixes have grass seed, some are just flowers. A popular mix, often labelled "cornfield mix' contains 4 or 5 annual plants - poppies, cornflowers, ox-eye daisies, corn marigold. Guaranteed flowers from a spring sowing, this is probably the easiest mix. (although preparation is really very crucial). Has to be cleared and resown every year (or it will turn into a poppy-field). A classic hay meadow will be soil and climate specific...and usually takes at least 2-3 seasons to become established.

I could ramble on about my meadow...but it would be a long post. Now in its 4th (or 5th year), it has been a fraught experiment, with an endless list of unforeseen difficulties, hopeful, (but wrong) decisions, moments of transient beauty, and more frustrations (and delights) than all the rest of my plot together.

I think I can see a light at the end of this - possibly next year, when I might have achieved some sort of actual, sustainable, flowery 'meadow'...although it is quite a long way from my initial 'plan'

I found the main issue was always fending off grass. I sowed a number of wildflower seeds over the years so I was pleased to see when I went for my last check in the plot after winding down my allotment and it had gone a bit fallow was that the wildflowers I had sown under the plum tree had gone crazy. Some lovely big foxgloves and last year loads of cornflower's

 

[gentlegreen]

I had a decent go at the peas and carrots - all propped up with forsythia twigs in the traditional way and in honour of the great man (or his great great great great grandson "nice to see you", etc).

The "Oregon Sugar Pod" on the left is supposed to get moderately tall, the "Hurst Greenshaft" and and "Kelvedon Wonder" less so - and since a self-sown lettuce had appeared, and I had a tray of lettuces on the go indoors, I thought I would plant out a couple of rows of what looks like "Salad Bowl" (it came from a mix.) .. nothing if not traditional this bed - and behind me here is a bed of "Pentland Javelin" potatoes and then 5 metres of "Scarlet Emperor"
Carrots are autumn King", "Nantes no. 5" and "Amsterdam Early Market"

I've never grown peas before and only once have I grown carrots - and thinning is painful - not just from my OCD point of view - having to make life or death decisions and fretting that my activities were being smelt by randy carrot flies ...
I am also 30 years older and have a twinge of sciatica and a dodgy knee to remind me - this is part of my enthusiasm for NFT hydroponics raised off the ground ...

I found some viable beetroot seed so I may sow a row or two between the carrots and kale ...

EDIT:- no - Swiss chard - I just potted up a tray of those and I will see if I can fit the rest in around the garden as it's pretty :

 

[gentlegreen]

It's quite noisy here ...

I set up my new big bubbler tank to free up the small one for fresh salad seedlings - plus I have tomato cuttings rooting after only nine days using the same technique.
Hopefully I will get back on track with my NFT within the next few days and add the three new 2 metre channels so will need some plants to go in there soon.

But I also need the tomato air pump for the front porch watercress unit so will pot up the rooted toms ASAP