Epona
Sonic: 1 Nov 2006 - 8 Jan 2022
Biodiversity and habitat monitoring/maintenance
The gardening thread
- Thread starter ringo
- Start date
Biodiversity and habitat monitoring/maintenance
Epona
Sonic: 1 Nov 2006 - 8 Jan 2022
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Maybe I'll log the marauding grey ones I get in my cooking area 
The RHS were recruiting volunteers for a more detailed long-term slug survey a while ago which would've included doing multiple counts and potentially sending in samples. The webpage was very insistent that people should definitely not under any circumstances post slugs to the RHS for any reason unless they've joined the survey and even then DO NOT SEND THEM SLUGS UNLESS SPECIFICALLY ASKED TO.
It read like whoever wrote the ad had learnt the hard way that they needed to make that very clear
BristolEcho
Well-Known Member
We had a elephant hawk moth in to visit this evening. So pretty and hairy.
Epona
Sonic: 1 Nov 2006 - 8 Jan 2022
The RHS were recruiting volunteers for a more detailed long-term slug survey a while ago which would've included doing multiple counts and potentially sending in samples. The webpage was very insistent that people should definitely not under any circumstances post slugs to the RHS for any reason unless they've joined the survey and even then DO NOT SEND THEM SLUGS UNLESS SPECIFICALLY ASKED TO.
It read like whoever wrote the ad had learnt the hard way that they needed to make that very clear
I worked for a while dealing with PHSI queries, they had a whole thing of "if you think you found a colorado beetle please do not just put it in an envelope and send it" (there was a correct method but sometimes people got a little over-enthusiastic).
I might have accidentally set a colony of ants loose on a train once due to incorrect transportation methods
They had a load of eggs with them, I like to imagine they made a new nest and are happily anting away up and down the Brighton to Eastbourne line...
TopCat
Putin fanboy
I only want know how to limit plant eating ones. Limit as in genocide.
Calamity1971
If Mr Peanut says It's okay, then it is.
My teasels bring all the bees to the yard...
Must be 9 feet now.
Don't look at the hedge
Must be 9 feet now.
Don't look at the hedge
Nematodes. Ideally in wet weather (lol), esp in spring & autumn iirc.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Being impatient Ijust bought summer planting seed potatoes. Desiree and Pentlandite Javelin. Will get them in later today. This is very grown up for me. To harvest, clear and prepare the ground and get more stuff in. For years the vegetable garden would get overwhelmed in late summer with weeds and crap.
It’s all looking good now.
Any other late planting ideas? Stuff for the coming winter?
It’s all looking good now.
Any other late planting ideas? Stuff for the coming winter?
spinach, oriental veg (pak choi, mustards, mizuna) brassicas (red cabbage looks lovely too), beetroot.radicchio, fennel. biennials (do a few clumps of wallflowers or sweet william -sow direct in the soil).
Still too hot for lettuce to germinate but try purslane, lambs lettuce, rocket. Coriander good to go now (and all parts can be eaten altho I hate the stuff). parsley. Later, you can do winter density lettuce.
If you can get small plants, leeks are worth overwintering.
Still too hot for lettuce to germinate but try purslane, lambs lettuce, rocket. Coriander good to go now (and all parts can be eaten altho I hate the stuff). parsley. Later, you can do winter density lettuce.
If you can get small plants, leeks are worth overwintering.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I've so far failed with this - I sowed mine months ago and they are resolutely refusing to branch and recently started flowering ...
To be fair, I already have it, along with lambs quarters, and both of them reseed all over the plot.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
do you mean winter purslane / claytonia ?
I have that happily self-seeding ...
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I've given the green ricinus zanzibarensis a massive tub this year and it's paying off .. one day I hope to be able to plant it in the ground 240 miles south-west of here and get it REALLY big - along with gunneras and bananas ...
I gave this year's banana a sorting out yesterday - also in a big tub - transplanted out the helichrysums that were somewhat swamping it and replaced them with fennel - and in the process realised I had neglected the watering - so I will give it a good hit of nitrogen as well as water in the hope of having it properly take off ... and wayward squash shoots are making their own contribution ...
The hefty stand of sunflowers are providing shade for my "spare" begonias - which are sadly lacking in the promised perfume ...
Given the neighbours on the left who I fell out with had buyers in and out of the house yesterday supervised by the estate agent (taking photos of my garden ), I was afraid they might have cancelled their holiday - but I see beach towels on the line, so hopefully next week I will get the chop saw out there and turn my stash of fence posts into my planned tent platform (air bed on order) - hopefully I will also get the hydroponics upgraded and some lighting organised ...
I also have my green bin from the council so will be steadily shifting the pile of crud the posts are sitting on.
View attachment Wansview-2022-07-31-11-21-21.mp4
I gave this year's banana a sorting out yesterday - also in a big tub - transplanted out the helichrysums that were somewhat swamping it and replaced them with fennel - and in the process realised I had neglected the watering - so I will give it a good hit of nitrogen as well as water in the hope of having it properly take off ... and wayward squash shoots are making their own contribution ...
The hefty stand of sunflowers are providing shade for my "spare" begonias - which are sadly lacking in the promised perfume ...
Given the neighbours on the left who I fell out with had buyers in and out of the house yesterday supervised by the estate agent (taking photos of my garden
), I was afraid they might have cancelled their holiday - but I see beach towels on the line, so hopefully next week I will get the chop saw out there and turn my stash of fence posts into my planned tent platform (air bed on order) - hopefully I will also get the hydroponics upgraded and some lighting organised ...I also have my green bin from the council so will be steadily shifting the pile of crud the posts are sitting on.
View attachment Wansview-2022-07-31-11-21-21.mp4
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Quite a sad day at the allotment. I have a couple of prolific and very lovely filberts which have grown to vasty proportions. Now shading half of the plot and while they provide a huge banquet of hazelnuts to the local squirrels and rodents, I never see a single one...apart from the trillion seedlings which appear all across the site thanks to squirrel and jay caches. Finally had to get the chainsaw out and cut one down to the ground. Loads and loads of tree arisings to deal with but almost weeping at the awful business of chopping down a perfectly healthy tree. Yep, it will coppice and the strawberry beds will enjoy the sight of daylight but really quite miserable.
No rain again and none likely for the forseeable - I have never seen the plot so dry and desperate. Transplanted the leeks and tied in the squash. This has actually been the worst year ever. I know I say this every year but really, this year has been quite stupendously challenging as we are officially in drought - East Anglia being the driest part of the UK anyway, but this year has been summat else. My meadow is totally brown and withered and many small plants have failed to thrive, even dying in a few cases. Asters, rudbeckias, dahlias, agapanthus, phlox...in fact just about all the late summer flowers have no top-growth apart from dry stems.
No rain again and none likely for the forseeable - I have never seen the plot so dry and desperate. Transplanted the leeks and tied in the squash. This has actually been the worst year ever. I know I say this every year but really, this year has been quite stupendously challenging as we are officially in drought - East Anglia being the driest part of the UK anyway, but this year has been summat else. My meadow is totally brown and withered and many small plants have failed to thrive, even dying in a few cases. Asters, rudbeckias, dahlias, agapanthus, phlox...in fact just about all the late summer flowers have no top-growth apart from dry stems.
Yeah. It's odd this year. Feels like late September rather than the end of July. A lot of my late summer plants put in a brief show and are now waning.
We had gentle rain for a good few hours last night here, but 10cm down it's bone dry still.
Lots of folk at my allotment site are feeling pretty deflated. "Too much effort for not enough return" and talk of jacking it in.
Not sure what I've done differently, but crops have done pretty well. Great potatoes, etc... I've enquired about taking on the adjacent plot.
I'm really looking of increasing rainwater catchment and capturing into a couple of IBCs for next year. And getting a double delivery of muck to help retention.
We had gentle rain for a good few hours last night here, but 10cm down it's bone dry still.
Lots of folk at my allotment site are feeling pretty deflated. "Too much effort for not enough return" and talk of jacking it in.
Not sure what I've done differently, but crops have done pretty well. Great potatoes, etc... I've enquired about taking on the adjacent plot.
I'm really looking of increasing rainwater catchment and capturing into a couple of IBCs for next year. And getting a double delivery of muck to help retention.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
My runner beans are growing in dreadfully light soil - but have plenty of leaf - just a lot of flower drop ... I doubt the drippers feeding each of my 13 squash and courgette plants are still working ... I can't get anywhere near them to check ...I've considered stuffing full mains pressure up them periodically ... I used the largest size drippers ...in a future garden I may run the irrigation pipe quite a way off the ground so I have easy access ...
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
Give Daikon radish a go - have had good results last 2 years with an Autumn sowing. Grow fast, tend to hold off pests. Go nicely chopped up in a stir fry or grated into a salad. Flavour like a slightly milder red radish.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I'm about to plant some red chard plants I raised from seed a while ago ...I hope they aren't too potbound ... I think you can still sow them ...
Yeah I'm sowing chard now. My allotment is also a depressing, overgrown mess atm but the courgettes and squash are doing well at least - this year I planted them on ridges with a big plastic bottle dug in next to each plant (tiny hole stabbed in the bottom first) and it's been really helping with watering, even when my mum who is somehow incapable of watering plants properly does most of it.
Gonna make sure it's in before I go away mid-October this year so I can be sure it gets enough cold hours.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I just realised I missed out on sowing my purple sprouting 
Not that I really have anywhere to plant it..
The kale seems to be recovering a bit from the caterpillar onslaught and I have a few more plants I'd potted up for ornamental use in the front garden...
I may still take gamble on sowing the free leek seeds I have - maybe put them in after the potatoes - though I was planning to store them in the ground ...
I think I will sow my beetroot seeds indoors and plant them out ...
What with the pea moths and the drought, I'm probably going to cut off all my pea plants to make room for salad - I'll see what's left today after I harvest them - perhaps I'll water them to make them fatten up ...
Still waiting for my runner beans to start fruiting - meanwhile I need to get the steps out and retrieve them from the overhanging bay tree and the ornamental climber net ...
My "mini spaghetti marrows" look suspiciously like mislabelled "Little Gems" - and I'm not actually sorry about that - in fact they're doing so well, I would have been happy if they'd turned out to be melons ...
Not that I really have anywhere to plant it..
The kale seems to be recovering a bit from the caterpillar onslaught and I have a few more plants I'd potted up for ornamental use in the front garden...
I may still take gamble on sowing the free leek seeds I have - maybe put them in after the potatoes - though I was planning to store them in the ground ...
I think I will sow my beetroot seeds indoors and plant them out ...
What with the pea moths and the drought, I'm probably going to cut off all my pea plants to make room for salad - I'll see what's left today after I harvest them - perhaps I'll water them to make them fatten up ...
Still waiting for my runner beans to start fruiting - meanwhile I need to get the steps out and retrieve them from the overhanging bay tree and the ornamental climber net ...
My "mini spaghetti marrows" look suspiciously like mislabelled "Little Gems" - and I'm not actually sorry about that - in fact they're doing so well, I would have been happy if they'd turned out to be melons ...
davesgcr
Reading books
Leeks - you can sometimes get young plants , or seeds. Pick them next year.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Right on cue
Mine is apparently a male "speckled bush cricket" with claspers - I think yours may be a female with an ovipositor
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A warning. Total contradiction over the course of 2 posts. But not anything that unusual for my up and down enthusiasms.
I am actually fairly energised about the allotment because I have zero expectations anyway, at least in terms of food grown. Otoh, it has been a fantastic test bed this year. It is, I admit, a bit of a mess anyway, and I am not exactly popular on the rest of the site. Always a lot of muttering, blaming me for the vast rise of fruit eating birds but mostly for my temerity in owning 2 plots and growing mostly unworthy plants such as flowers and trees. But allotments are always something of a challenge to neighbourhood civility. Unlike in a street, with privacy , walls and fences, allotmenteering is always a bit more 'in your face' and there is generally a reasonable amity but underneath, seething resentment.
But anyway, since owning my plots, I have nearly always used them to try out various plants for my customers gardens, so the plot has always been an experimental mish-mash of fads, whims and caprice. So, despite the vegetable fails (apart from potatoes, which consume most of my crop resources), I am actually looking at a rather rampant growth of drought resistant plants such as the fabulous euphorbias, achilleas, scabious, anthemis, shrubby salvias, thrilling 8 foot altheas and many healthy lavenders and santolina,Course, quite a lot of other stuff (such as my late summer beds of zinnias, tithonias and such as looking sere and drear, and the roses are looking desperate, Even the daylilies andmy beloved dieramas have suffered an attenuated flowering, but there are second and third wave escholtsias everywhere. Mostly though, this applies to the sunny areas. The shade beds have all fared dismally (hence the sad removal of trees and planned excavation of nearly all the roses apart from the once flowering ramblers and species.
All-in-all, I have swung from serious considerations of giving up at least some of the space - although for the life of me, I couldn't identify anywhere which I wasn't deeply invested in, to a renewed enthusiasm after a whole day of tree-work and brambling .Years and years ago, I installed a cultivated blackberry alongside the street hedge...which has spread the length of the entire site. As I planted it right next to the standpipe, the blackberries are freaking enormous, lush and plentiful. Who cares about a few scabby plums and ephemeral strawberries when I have multi-year supplies of blackberry jelly for my morning toast.
Also, because tiny, my homegarden is bloody gorgeous, if a bit irresponsible on the watering front. And even here, I have a whole lot of stuff which would do very well indeed once released from the confines of pots. A shitload of salvia greggiis and agapanthus...which, because of tenacious taproots, glaucous hairy leaves or underground tubers, will indeed flourish on a dry allotment (after a year of fussing though, getting them to sink deep roots in my inhospitable stony soil)Mediterranean, SA and Australian gardening here we go. I foresee leptospermums, anizoganthus and callistemon and cistus displacing all those old hybrid musk and gallica roses...and another go-round at a Californian meadow with sand verbenas, platystemon, layia and stylomecon. Lots more mallows (sidalcea, sphaeralcea , callirhoe and abutilons) and Yep, getting excited again. Gardening is always the triumph of hope over reality, especially because so much of it exists in my head for an imagined future but nonetheless, I have a plan..
I am actually fairly energised about the allotment because I have zero expectations anyway, at least in terms of food grown. Otoh, it has been a fantastic test bed this year. It is, I admit, a bit of a mess anyway, and I am not exactly popular on the rest of the site. Always a lot of muttering, blaming me for the vast rise of fruit eating birds but mostly for my temerity in owning 2 plots and growing mostly unworthy plants such as flowers and trees. But allotments are always something of a challenge to neighbourhood civility. Unlike in a street, with privacy , walls and fences, allotmenteering is always a bit more 'in your face' and there is generally a reasonable amity but underneath, seething resentment.
But anyway, since owning my plots, I have nearly always used them to try out various plants for my customers gardens, so the plot has always been an experimental mish-mash of fads, whims and caprice. So, despite the vegetable fails (apart from potatoes, which consume most of my crop resources), I am actually looking at a rather rampant growth of drought resistant plants such as the fabulous euphorbias, achilleas, scabious, anthemis, shrubby salvias, thrilling 8 foot altheas and many healthy lavenders and santolina,Course, quite a lot of other stuff (such as my late summer beds of zinnias, tithonias and such as looking sere and drear, and the roses are looking desperate, Even the daylilies andmy beloved dieramas have suffered an attenuated flowering, but there are second and third wave escholtsias everywhere. Mostly though, this applies to the sunny areas. The shade beds have all fared dismally (hence the sad removal of trees and planned excavation of nearly all the roses apart from the once flowering ramblers and species.
All-in-all, I have swung from serious considerations of giving up at least some of the space - although for the life of me, I couldn't identify anywhere which I wasn't deeply invested in, to a renewed enthusiasm after a whole day of tree-work and brambling .Years and years ago, I installed a cultivated blackberry alongside the street hedge...which has spread the length of the entire site. As I planted it right next to the standpipe, the blackberries are freaking enormous, lush and plentiful. Who cares about a few scabby plums and ephemeral strawberries when I have multi-year supplies of blackberry jelly for my morning toast.
Also, because tiny, my homegarden is bloody gorgeous, if a bit irresponsible on the watering front. And even here, I have a whole lot of stuff which would do very well indeed once released from the confines of pots. A shitload of salvia greggiis and agapanthus...which, because of tenacious taproots, glaucous hairy leaves or underground tubers, will indeed flourish on a dry allotment (after a year of fussing though, getting them to sink deep roots in my inhospitable stony soil)Mediterranean, SA and Australian gardening here we go. I foresee leptospermums, anizoganthus and callistemon and cistus displacing all those old hybrid musk and gallica roses...and another go-round at a Californian meadow with sand verbenas, platystemon, layia and stylomecon. Lots more mallows (sidalcea, sphaeralcea , callirhoe and abutilons) and Yep, getting excited again. Gardening is always the triumph of hope over reality, especially because so much of it exists in my head for an imagined future but nonetheless, I have a plan..
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