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Garden & Gardening Tips

Bernard, I use gloves and I have two pair at all times. I have a rubber pair for when things are wet. They make my hands smell dreadful until I have a shower when I have finished, and I have a nice leather pair for when everything is dry.
As for the big words, I have managed to remember a few of them since schol days and I just use others if they sound right.
 
Stitcher reading one of your threads it sounds as if you killed your toms with kindness. I did the same with my mothers day orchid didn't read the amount of water per feed and fed it to death. Went to Aldi sharpish and replaced it. Take care. Jean.
 
Have any of you got any experience with FRIOLINA PANSIES? They are a hanging variety but I have heard read about them being very disapointing, i/e dying off soon after planting.
 
Just found this foroum recent new member Just semi retired grew vegies for the fists time .Dug half my lawn up runner beens fine some nearly 18 inch long carrots parsnips and raddish,s no good plenty of leaf up to 2 foot high no root or very little root were have i gone wrong i have feed them. Dek
 
Dek, welcome to this great forum. If you browse the forums you will see that almost everything is discussed. If you want to know something just ask.
Back to gardening. I cant answer why the radishes did no good. Certain things do need different types of soil and to get it right you can buy a cheap testing kit from most garden shops. This will tell you if you need to dress it with lime or not. I have had a bad year this year although my courgettes went wild. The beans were not as good as usual and the tomatoes were non starters. After a few castrophies such as your radishes, I know what normally does well and what to leave alone. The weather and temperature will both affect the yield of almost all veggies. All I do is think to myself, 'it will be better next year'.
Trevor.
 
Trevor there is a pub in Bewdley with the most outstanding hanging baskets I have ever seen. I will take a photo for you next week when we are there. If you are ever there it is the Mug House been taken over and has gone a bit up market. Try to google it they may be on there. Bye. Jean.
 
So far this week I have removed my bean canes and turned the plot over. I have had a small fire on top of the liners and compost from four baskets that held my tomato plants. I did this because if it was blight that ruined them, one has to be careful about spreading it around. I have removed my marigolds from around the front lawn and started to replace them with pansies. I have some large clumps of day lilies which I am going to dig up and split, then re-plant smaller clumps. Then I will be able to put the pansies along the fourth side of the grass. We have had a very good year for courgettes but they will be finished soon. I will then dig and feed the plot and plant next years Broad Beans. My two hanging baskets out the front have gone past their best so I have taken them down. I know it has been said before but it will all be better next year.
 
Stitch, you have been busy in your garden. My tomatoes are ripening and look to be ok. I won't be here for most of October so I'm digging up
extra plants and moving them,etc. We have a tall cedar hedge at the bottom of the property that had to be trimmed. We hired a fellow to come and do the job as the thing had got out of hand. All done now. My neighbour brought us some tomatoes, green beans and courgettes the other day. Just wonderful. We have had the very best summer this year and
after a very cold winter, for our area,Mother nature came back with a
vengence.

The fuschias in the hanging baskets are blooming well now that the nights are cooler and we have had some rain.
 
Jennyann, one feels so much better when it has been a good year in the garden and I am glad you have done well with yours. My wife thinks I ought to slab my garden to make life easier. I would not know what to do with myself if I did that. Whenever the weather is bad and for most of the winter I sit and do my sewing. Whenever the weather is o/k I am doing things in the garden.
If you like growing unusual things I saw some grafted tomato plants last week in a garden centre near Birmingham. I asked about them as I had never seen them before. I was told that they crop better than the normal ones but taste the same. The normal tomato plant is grafted onto a different root stock and dependin on the root used, they can grow up to seven feet tall. You get them early in the season and can buy your normal favourite toms.
 
dek carr said:
Just found this foroum recent new member Just semi retired grew vegies for the fists time .Dug half my lawn up runner beens fine some nearly 18 inch long carrots parsnips and raddish,s no good plenty of leaf up to 2 foot high no root or very little root were have i gone wrong i have feed them. Dek
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What type of Radish are they Dek:)
 
We have a weed on our lawn called creeping charlie. If you know what it is any ideas how to get rid of it. It is very invasive and goes into the beds and every where it can. Nice and green but short of pulling it up which is not an opion as there is so much we need to take up the whole lawn which is big. :rolleyes: Mo
 
Hello Sakura, I just googled Creeping Charlie because I have never heard of it before. If it is the same thing there is a treatment for it without ruining your lawn. Have a look on Google.
 
Mo we have something called creeping Jenny that can take over if you let it but it has the most beautifull yellow flower. Have to keep on top of it. It grows around the pond and even survives in water. Bye. Jean.
 
Has anyone seen this article by dear late Percy Thrower:)
 
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Hi Alfie. My Camelia is in a very large pot, it is about 25 years old. In the early spring its leaves turned brown and the buds died. Because it is so big we thought we would leave it until the end of summer and buy a new plant ready for planting in September. Almost as soon as we walked away from it, as though it heard us it started to put on leaf buds and now it has the lovliest shiny leaves. It's all ready to go again.:)

I've got a Percy gardening book. The cover is tatty from all the use it's had over the years.
 
Good for you Di. You must be careful in the Garden my friends are still about. This ones a sub mine are stll asleep

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I braved the cold today and spent a couple of hours in the garden. I dead headed the dahlias, although they do look a bit sick just now. I also gave them a liquid feed to get something into the tubers to help them through the winter, and also to help them off to a decent start early next spring. Everything is doing o/k in the greenhouse and my spring greens look o/k.
 
Last nights frost put an end to my dahlias until next spring. I was busy today but tomorrow I will cut them all just above ground level, lay two thicknesses of plastic sheet over them and put a large tub or pot directly over the roots of each one.
 
My busy lizzies,lobelia and allysum were all still flowering.
The lobelia and Allysum still are despite the frost.
A few days ago I brought 3 of the busy lizzies and put them in the house in pots,they're loving it flowering beautifully.
The others I buried in a large deep pot and then topped it off with straw.
My friends Dad used to do this years ago when winters were much colder and come the Spring the shoots would show.
He then took loads of cuttings and used them as bedding plants.

Worth a try I thought,but in the garden anything is worth a try.
 
Thanks for that tip Alberta. I must say I had not heard of doing that but as you say anything is worth a try. If you do try something like that it makes you feel great when it works, and it is no hardship if it fails. I had a craze quite a few years ago of turning Fushcia cutting into standards. Wonderful sight but affter a couple of years they are too big to bring in for the winter. This caused me to buy some small plants of the most colourful varieties, most of them non-hardy. I grew them in pots and the first winter I protected them with bubble wrap and an unheated cloche. The second year it was bubble wrap only and the third year just an unheated greenhouse. Then I put them in the garden and cut them back for winter and put the twigs over the plants for protection. I now have four or five growing very well with no protection at all and they are listed as non-hardy. I may now try growing some more cuttings into standards again.
 
Today saw me make a start, I quickly tidied up the greenhouse and sorted out three large seed trays. I almost filled those with compost from a bag that has been outside all through the winter. I then re-sealed the bag and put the trays inside the greenhouse so the compost can warm up a little, and tomorrow I will put my new dahlia tubers half into the composrt and gently spray them with water until they are damp.
 
The dahlias I purchased from Morrisons were already shoving out several small shoots when I opened them today. I have laid them firmly on the surface of a 1" bed of compost in seed trays, then sprinkled more compost on top whilst gently shaking the seed tray so that the compost goes down between the tubers. Then I have gently watered them and put them in a warm spot in the greenhouse. I have also cleaned the dead foliage from the pots containing my Canna Lillies, or Zantedecshia's and added a bit of fresh compost. I am hoping they are alright after my winter calamity with the greenhouse heater. I will be sewing seeds into trays or pots over the next few weeks and I always plant the Runner Beans into root trainers a week after Easter.
 
Hi sticher
have you got any tips on the red hot pokers i bought some today from wilkos any think i should know or are they straight forward
i do like the red pokers when they spread plenty
but i also like the dhalias i grew aot last year i had a good crop i dhall be doing mine soon
best wishes stitch astonian
 
I planted my dhalias outside yesterday the packet (3 tubers from the £1) shop in St Ives said plant outside Feb-May, blooms june sept was this wrong???
paul
 
Astonian, being a perennial the reda hot pokers should be alright. They need regular watering in the growing season and do like rich sandy soil. Feed them well and they will always produce a good show. When they have finished flowering you should cut off the dead flower stems.
 
Paul, if the ground freezes you will lose them, if they are showing new growth and we have a late frost, that will knock them back by weeks. What you need to do is keep enough large buckets or pots to hand so if a frost is forcast, you can put a pot over them for the night. Another thing is that they will grow very bushy, this is another reason to start them off in shallow compost, when the sprouting tips or shoots are about half an inch long the tubers should be cut into several pieces with a strong sharp knife. If two shoots are coming from one tuber you can cut it in two keeping a piece of tuber with each shoot. Could you buy another one and try that out for yourself??? I have in the past turned my twelve plants into forty eight plants and given thirty six away. I was not in the greatest of health last autumn and I left mine in the ground and lost them all, some were thirty years old. More correctly they were what I had been cutting up and growing for thirty odd years. If you want to leave them in the ground, let a frost hit them and that day cut them off about six inches above soil level. Cover with a couple of layers of plasic or polythene and a bucket with a brick on top to prevent it from blowing away.
Good luck.
 
It's that time of year again folks, garden preparation is what I mean. I always grow about twelve dahlias round three sides of a small lawn and I bought six assorted dinner plate ones today They are called dinner plate because the name reflects the size of the blooms. I already have six wich usually bear blooms of about fifteen inches across. They are quite easy to grow but they do need sturdy support in wet or windy weather. I will be starting these tubers into growth in the greenhouse over the next couple of weeks.
I had an accident in the garden towards the later part of last summer and that is the reason I did not post any pictures of my tomato's which I grew in upside down planters. They did exeedingly well with a crop in ecess of what it would have been using the conventional method.
I am now fully recovered from a badly bruised hip and shoulder after several appointments at the new Q.E. A&E department so I will soon be carrying out the digging I should have done in the autumn.
stitcher
 
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