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The gardening thread

TopCat said:
I was just finishing the fox proofing of the chicken coop and had wood and wire to extend it when bird flu came and scuppered my chicken keeping dreams.

Lots of restrictions have come in. I’m hoping spring will sort the birds out.
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My mum keeps Chucks on her allotment. Last count when I visited she had about 23. She gets rescue hens from a place up this way. The transformation in them from arrival to a couple of months is gob-smacking. She gives the eggs away in the main but other people on her plot give her a nicker a box. She loves them more than her kids :)
 
friedaweed said:
Those youngsters hey!

When I was on my YTS Bricklaying course I turned up on site with my Dad after a couple of weeks of my day release at collage and one of the old wiry Scouse trowels said he'd let me work on a manhole.
He gave me an old trowel and showed me how to set it out and said he'd come back to check it was square once I had the first course down. Getting cocky I said "Do you want 10 mill beds and 10mill perbs on it?" to which he replied
"Take that hod son and load your dad up with brick and come back later when you've stopped talking funny"
At tea break I got the piss ripped out of me for talking all metric. I didn't see the funny side of it and had a bottom lip out all day.

The following day I came into work and there was a tool bag on the brew table and said wiry Scouse brickie said "Right Metric, grab your tools and leave your brain behind. It's time to learn".

They'd all clubbed in and got me a Spear and Jackson trowel, a Stabila level, a brickhammer and a set of line and pins and an army surplus canvas bag. I never mentioned millimetres on a building site again.
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Crazy. I started full time work forty years ago as a toolmaker apprentice specialising in aircraft parts mostly. I had really worked at getting this engineering opportunity. My first day they handed me an imperial micrometre and blathered on about increments of an inch. It was a nightmare moment, I was up close to a lathe and saw inch increments. I realised I was going to have to learn an obsolete system, unknown to me really. I managed, we had a works motorcycle team and built our own bikes, it was my dream job.

Many of the gyroscopic housings I made for aircraft are likely to still be up there, refurbished.
 
friedaweed said:
My mum keeps Chucks on her allotment. Last count when I visited she had about 23. She gets rescue hens from a place up this way. The transformation in them from arrival to a couple of months is gob-smacking. She gives the eggs away in the main but other people on her plot give her a nicker a box. She loves them more than her kids :)
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From what I am hearing, the cull and death rate of commercial poultry flocks has been so severe that the govt is pushing down onto backyard chicked keepers. The big companys have argued for years to ban backyard chooks. I haven't bothered to keep up with it, it might dismay me. I'm going to build an extension for the coop and run and hope that by the time it's finished it will just be a form or two.
 
TopCat said:
Crazy. I started full time work forty years ago as a toolmaker apprentice specialising in aircraft parts mostly. I had really worked at getting this engineering opportunity. My first day they handed me an imperial micrometre and blathered on about increments of an inch. It was a nightmare moment, I was up close to a lathe and saw inch increments. I realised I was going to have to learn an obsolete system, unknown to me really. I managed, we had a works motorcycle team and built our own bikes, it was my dream job.

Many of the gyroscopic housings I made for aircraft are likely to still be up there, refurbished.
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Said chippie who measured to mm did my conservatory. A millimetre gap can be corrected with filling type stuff. An inch gap needs something more than that :eek:
 
I spotted a snapped off daffodil in the front garden yesterday so I brought it in and put it in a used beer bottle vase and left it on the kitchen window sill. I was surprised this morning when I went in the kitchen at just how much fragrance one lonely daff can pump out.
 
Fairly certain my outdoor yucca has died of root rot; the trunks are all spongy and it smells pulpy, like rotten fruit. Shall I just dig it up and move on?

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May Kasahara said:
Fairly certain my outdoor yucca has died of root rot; the trunks are all spongy and it smells pulpy, like rotten fruit. Shall I just dig it up and move on?

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Looks fucked by the state of where you've cut the growth near the bottom. However, unless you need the space you could try one last drastic sawing the trunk off to 6" off the bottom to see if it resprouts?
 
The39thStep said:
Looks fucked by the state of where you've cut the growth near the bottom. However, unless you need the space you could try one last drastic sawing the trunk off to 6" off the bottom to see if it resprouts?
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Thanks :) I think I'll get rid, doing a bit of an overhaul anyway and not hugely wedded to nursing it back to health.

Strange though, it's been perfectly happy out there for several years. I guess our wet clay soil finally caught up with it.
 
May Kasahara said:
Thanks :) I think I'll get rid, doing a bit of an overhaul anyway and not hugely wedded to nursing it back to health.

Strange though, it's been perfectly happy out there for several years. I guess our wet clay soil finally caught up with it.
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I do believe that is a cordyline rather than a yucca. Sadly, nowhere near as hardy as yuccas...but also far less thuggish. Dig it out and regard it as an opportunity to plant something different.
I have also lost a shit ton of plants this winter (including a couple of huge pots of agapanthus, one of which had 17 flower spikes last year (grrr).
 
So is it time to start to sow? Want to do courgettes, tomatoes, chilis and beans this year. I moved into this place in July last year so missed the sowing season. Garden is in Surrey area. No idea what I am doing but I have a garden now.
 
Hello apple tree people.🤞
I have a small apple in my garden (planted by previous owners). First year I got lots of apples. Last two years, nothing. The apples formed and then went all weird, rotten etc. This year I have sprayed and used grease on the trunk as Google advised.
When I was applying the grease I noticed a number of 'scars' on both sides of the trunk. Are these serious? Is my tree doomed? If I cut them out I'd almost be cutting the tree down 😭
If anyone has any advice I'd be very grateful.
Thanks SB
 

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steveseagull said:
So is it time to start to sow? Want to do courgettes, tomatoes, chilis and beans this year. I moved into this place in July last year so missed the sowing season. Garden is in Surrey area. No idea what I am doing but I have a garden now.
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I've just sown my tomatoes and chillies indoors if that's a help. South London
 
campanula said:
I do believe that is a cordyline rather than a yucca. Sadly, nowhere near as hardy as yuccas...but also far less thuggish. Dig it out and regard it as an opportunity to plant something different.
I have also lost a shit ton of plants this winter (including a couple of huge pots of agapanthus, one of which had 17 flower spikes last year (grrr).
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My Hebes are looking a bit sad and viburnum tinus which I thought could survive the apocalypse also not too pretty 😭
 
sparkybird said:
My Hebes are looking a bit sad and viburnum tinus which I thought could survive the apocalypse also not too pretty 😭
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It is still early days and I hope some things will resprout from the roots, so I have only written off the really obvious casualties such as the agapanthus and agave (oh yeah, the brugmansia) - still hoping some of the pelargoniums and coronilla may still survive. By mid May, it should really be fairly clear what's dead and what's not.
 
I reclaimed a couple of square metres of lawn and put up an eight foot high beanpole wigwam. Sowed yellow and green climbing beans. Plus a lot of "summer flowers" seeds at the edges and base. Sowed some Sweet Williams, some dwarf sunflowers, some Lobelia, radish.
 
We had a really good session in the garden yesterday :cool:

Swept and scrubbed the patio and sorted out all the patio pots, including ditching some plants that hadn't made it through the winter.
We also lost a couple of cordylines to the harsh winter May Kasahara, which I was secretly pleased about - they weren't great specimens and I would have got rid of them a couple of years ago, but Mr B insisted on keeping them.

We also planted some shrubs and perennials that we'd bought over the winter - hebes, verbena, sedum and eryngium + a beautiful viburnum mount kilimanjaro.
Lizzieloo got me a viburnum for my 50th birthday a couple of years ago, but it didn't survive the extreme heat last summer so this one is for her :)
 
iona thanks for posting the link to the video.
I hope it survives, there was a lot. Some patches had maggots. 🤮 Google tells me that wound paint is less the norm these days as trees have managed to heal themselves for millions of years without a tin of something from Homebase 🤣
 

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newme said:
Looking into a raised bed, whats wrong with this? https://www.homedone.co.uk/outdoor-...aised-bed-150x100x40-cm-impregnated-wood.html seems large and cheap which I am immediately suspicious about. What is it I am missing?

Only looking to do herbs and a few leafy veg/heritage things. But could fit two if it works out. Is it worth getting a poly cover? We have a dog....
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You could buy the wood and make for cheaper but not by much. Give it a spray of preservatives on the outside.
 
TopCat said:
You could buy the wood and make for cheaper but not by much. Give it a spray of preservatives on the outside.
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Thats what I was thinking, seemed not worth doing it myself at that price. Can't really pickup wood either so it would need delivering and if I just order the thing then I am automatically committed instead of spending time putting it off.
 
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