We planted out the camellia my son gave me yesterday. This morning it had blown over and the roots seemed very dry. I've soaked them and planted it a bit deeper and hope it survives.
We're off on holiday next week, but when we're back we'll be planting up various seeds.
We're finding that the soil is quite dry, which seems amazing after all the rain we've had. I suppose it's about drainage, yet we're on London clay, well, I think we are.
Part of some plant in the new (to me) garden blew down in the high winds last night, so I need to get out and put some stakes and string round the rest of it before the next gale.
Talk to me about composting. I've never done it in my life but maybe I should start. Do I get a plastic compost bin and just start filling it with grass cuttings etc? I remember my father building a compost heap at the bottom of our garden out of wood. It was pretty smelly and harboured mice...
Nenya, a plastic bin may be the easiest way to start. Your council may have some at discounted prices or you may see them on local FB pages.
Just putting grass cuttings in is the sure way to get a smelly, slimy mess. The books will tell you that you need a mix of "greens" and "browns", by which they mean a mix of nitrogen rich things like grass cuttings or other stuff that has been actively growing, and dead, carbon rich material such as brown foliage, prunings or cardboard.
I tried composting a few years ago in a bin that rotated end over end. It was not successful for me as I needed Cheery husband to do the tumbling and he had no interest in doing so. I've been worm farming for a long time now and have found it to be much easier than the tumbler or bins on the ground idea (do you have to turn the contents over?). I do find the worm farm trays when fully broken down, are a bit heavy to lift and for some that might be a consideration as well as having space to have the farm.
It's now turned damp here and I'm very pleased it got up early and managed to plant the sweet pea seedlings that Cheery husband found at another branch of our hardware/garden centre chain. All going well, if the seeds I planted fail to germinate/grow, I'll have a backup in my seedlings.
I also have a wormery which deals with all food waste except cooked food, citrus or onion. You need to put card in there too. I cut up all our loo roll middles.
There's a tap on it and the liquid which comes out is great plant food.
Each year I clear it out into a flower bed in December and start it again in April. I buy the worms - they come in the post!
I have a friend who's had a wormery for some years and was making encouraging noises about them to me. They sound like rather a lot of work - and the RHS website tells me they shouldn't be used as a substitute for traditional composting...
I have had a wormery for about 20 years and we feed it with food waste which we put in brown paper bags in the kitchen (our food delivery comes in paper bags). Like Boogie, we use the compost on our beds and the liquid feed gets used everywhere.
Plastic bins work fine, but be careful with grass. You need a mix of stuff also, bits of cardboard are good. This is a good time to start, as it will heat up, assuming British conditions. But also wooden ones work, as with pallets.
I don't find my wormery a lot of work at all. I rather enjoy watching them do their work. I go and put the scraps in every morning and have a little chat with them.
But then, we don't have enough garden waste for a compost bin as I cover every inch with growing things and the weeds don't get a chance.
My friend has six compost bins along the side of her garden. In the spring she plants her courgettes and squashes in the full ones. They grow beautifully!
Each year I clear it out into a flower bed in December and start it again in April. I buy the worms - they come in the post!
What happens to the worms? Do they just disappear off into the soil of the garden? And the wormery itself - does it live outside?
My neighbour two doors down (who has an amazing garden) called round this afternoon and gave me some advice on some things I'd left in the ground which turn out to be weeds and on some of the shrubs that have been planted. She didn't know what all of them were but was pretty gung-ho about them - "I'd get on a stepladder and take the top out of that if I were you." She has a compost bin but never takes stuff out of it as she's always worried about what might be living in there. Do they harbour rodent life?
The worms actually move up the various trays in the wormery, eating the levels, so the bottom tray often has few worms anyway. https://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk has lots of info especially on their blog, it’s where I bought our ‘can o’ worms’ years ago, though that model doesn’t exist anymore.
My wormery lives on the patio by the shed for shelter.
We have two compost bins and fill them with a mix of grass cuttings, cardboard, brown paper and food waste. We’re vegetarians so we throw all our food waste in the compost bin, trickier if you're a meat eater I guess. One bin is the stuff that is ready to use, the other is the one that we add too. We have had rats in the bin, so we stopped using it over the winter, but its up and running again now.
Up betimes - about 5 am - so decided to capitalise on sunny morning and reasonable energy levels to get in some overdue planting. That's the achillea, bergenia, epimedium, heuchera and nasturtiums in, plus a lot of weeding and mowing the grass moss.
Now knackered and backache, so the remaining bedding will have to wait.
Our wormery is outside. All vegetable waste apart from citrus goes into it. We were warned against onions, but that gets eaten as well. We also put in old cotton T-shirts etc and the worms eat everything but the synthetic sewing thread.
They keep going all year in our sub-tropics, though on really hot days we have to make sure they don't overheat. We have had the same worms or their offspring for years.
Our worm farm is outside too, on really hot days I put a towel over the top and wet it, hoping it will keep things cool-ish, meat safe style!
I'm excited that I've had a good run with the sweet pea seeds I've just planted. Most appear to have germinated and I hope they will go from strength to strength. We are expecting a cool morning tomorrow, but I have them in a sheltered place, so I hope they will be ok.
A trip out to the cool climate native nursery this morning. Picked up some more grevilleas and a bottlebrush as well as some native violets and daisies which I'll put into pots. We almost lashed out on a waratah, but the nursery person advised us the the position we planned to put it was unsuitable, so we did not purchase. I was grateful for their advice, as the plant was not cheap and we would have been disappointed to lose it.
We've found a really lovely garden centre fairly close by - it was too early in the year for me to be able to purchase any of the plants I went for but the coffee and cake were great!
We have also purchased a compost bin so it will be interesting to see how we get on with that. I only intend to use it for garden, not kitchen, waste. Thinking about my dad's compost bin years ago (the one that offered hospitality to the rodents) I remember piling stuff into the top of it (and the smell of it) but I never remember him drawing any wonderful compost out at the bottom to put on the garden.
Short term I think we'll need to purchase more compost, the soil here being so thin and poor.
Only little bits of garden pottering recently. Cheery husband planted our Royal Mantle prostrate grevilleas into the least planted garden bed. We hope it will help suppress weeds. We haven't yet planted out our new bottlebrush, but we have a long weekend coming up and I hope there will be a chance to get that into the ground.
Last week I divided some lily of the valley plants and have 3 pots ready to give away to friends. I have another potful for myself. I also decided to repot a lavender I had in a pot that was looking as though the potting mix was getting a bit tired. It was hard to get the lavender out of the pot and now I have two plants, they have survived the last week, so hopefully they will be ok.
We do buy the cheapest potting mix at the garden centre, but that's only for throwing into the worm farm to cover the newest addition of scraps. It seems to work well for that, but I try to buy the better potting mix for potting into.
So far the sweet pea seedlings appear to be doing OK!
We have a paved drive and share a short private drive area where moss and weeds are starting to flourish so we need to address that. I've read that a mixture of white vinegar, salt and washing up liquid is an effective and insect friendly weedkiller - has anyone tried it?
I planted six of last years dahlia seeds and they've all come up!
I don't have space to take up the tubers and store them so I left them in the ground, well covered. But they haven't survived - so I'm very pleased with the seedings. They're glorious, tall collarette dahlias with beautiful colours.
I've got hundreds of seeds so I shall keep planting them for the next week or two, indoors of course, and I'll give them to the RNLI charity stall to sell.
First serious day in the thing outside. I may have mentioned that we disposed of the “lawn” and the decking so our efforts were confined to edging and pruning a hefty hydrangea: a little late but it gives the new growth a chance.
Tomorrow will be the planting of herbs.
My white rose bush has died, my neighbor claims if I take a cutting from a healthy rose bush, put honey on the end of the stem, strip off all of the leaves and stick into a potato, it will root a new rose. Has anyone ever heard of this, or tried it? It seems a bit far fetched, but I guess it is worth a try.
I planted courgette, bean and sweetcorn seeds 3 weeks ago, inside as the nights are chilly. The beans and courgettes are popping up happily but no sign of any sweetcorn growth. Think I’ll have to plant another few. Or wait till the soil’s warmer and plant them outside.
If it works, you need to plant it in a different spot to where you had the old one. A rose won't grow where there's already been one before.
I found this, I would really have to plant it in the same spot as the roses are in a row.
AI Overview
Yes, you can plant a new rose in the same spot, but you must take precautions to avoid "Rose Replant Disease" (soil sickness), which can cause the new rose to fail. You must replace the old soil to a depth of 16-18 inches with fresh soil/compost, @la vie en rouge
If it works, you need to plant it in a different spot to where you had the old one. A rose won't grow where there's already been one before.
I found this, I would really have to plant it in the same spot as the roses are in a row.
AI Overview
Yes, you can plant a new rose in the same spot, but you must take precautions to avoid "Rose Replant Disease" (soil sickness), which can cause the new rose to fail. You must replace the old soil to a depth of 16-18 inches with fresh soil/compost, @la vie en rouge
[hostly halo on]
Thanks for noting that it's an AI overview, @Graven Image . Please could you indicate where it is from, in line with the ruling in the Styx?
If it works, you need to plant it in a different spot to where you had the old one. A rose won't grow where there's already been one before.
I found this, I would really have to plant it in the same spot as the roses are in a row.
AI Overview
Yes, you can plant a new rose in the same spot, but you must take precautions to avoid "Rose Replant Disease" (soil sickness), which can cause the new rose to fail. You must replace the old soil to a depth of 16-18 inches with fresh soil/compost, @la vie en rouge
[hostly halo on]
Thanks for noting that it's an AI overview, @Graven Image . Please could you indicate where it is from, in line with the ruling in the Styx?
I overdid things outside yesterday, grubbing up moss from the shared drive, so have been confined indoors most of today. Our front garden is looking rather lovely - standard shrub planting for a new build, I think, but pretty all the same.
We've planted out our usual quota of veg, but we were just on hols and the dryness affecting southern England was a bit alarming. 1 mm of rain in April, however everything looks OK, except the mulberry.
I was unpacking the water feature - a stand with a cascade of bowls - when the crucial one fell and shattered. Repair being impossible, I've sent off for another, different design and resin, rather than too-fragile ceramic.
But waste not... I'm thinking the stand could be adapted to hold small flower pots with tumbling planting.
We've planted out our usual quota of veg, but we were just on hols and the dryness affecting southern England was a bit alarming. 1 mm of rain in April, however everything looks OK, except the mulberry.
We are lucky, we have house sitters for the dogs when we go away, and we make sure they our gardeners too.
April was also the time of great inspection on our allotment, but we are old hands at this now, so before we went away, we straightened the edges, got rid of the worst weeds, etc. The Gauleiters really like bare earth in spring, but we have so many perennials, bare earth is at a premium.
I had a nice bed of lettuce coming up. It has been raining so I had not been out on my back patio for several days. My lettuce is gone, not a leaf or a stem left. There are no signs of snails or such. I am wondering what of our wild life likes leafy greens. I will replant it and cover it at night.
I think quite often snails and slugs don't leave a trail, and they disappear underground. We've had whole rows of plants disappear. So we use slug pellets.
We do not have pigeons, but we do have crows, geese, squirrels, possums, lizards, skunks and raccoons. I have not seen s slug or snail in three years of living her, but perhaps.
Comments
We're off on holiday next week, but when we're back we'll be planting up various seeds.
Talk to me about composting. I've never done it in my life but maybe I should start. Do I get a plastic compost bin and just start filling it with grass cuttings etc? I remember my father building a compost heap at the bottom of our garden out of wood. It was pretty smelly and harboured mice...
Just putting grass cuttings in is the sure way to get a smelly, slimy mess. The books will tell you that you need a mix of "greens" and "browns", by which they mean a mix of nitrogen rich things like grass cuttings or other stuff that has been actively growing, and dead, carbon rich material such as brown foliage, prunings or cardboard.
It's now turned damp here and I'm very pleased it got up early and managed to plant the sweet pea seedlings that Cheery husband found at another branch of our hardware/garden centre chain. All going well, if the seeds I planted fail to germinate/grow, I'll have a backup in my seedlings.
There's a tap on it and the liquid which comes out is great plant food.
Each year I clear it out into a flower bed in December and start it again in April. I buy the worms - they come in the post!
But then, we don't have enough garden waste for a compost bin as I cover every inch with growing things and the weeds don't get a chance.
My friend has six compost bins along the side of her garden. In the spring she plants her courgettes and squashes in the full ones. They grow beautifully!
My neighbour two doors down (who has an amazing garden) called round this afternoon and gave me some advice on some things I'd left in the ground which turn out to be weeds and on some of the shrubs that have been planted. She didn't know what all of them were but was pretty gung-ho about them - "I'd get on a stepladder and take the top out of that if I were you." She has a compost bin but never takes stuff out of it as she's always worried about what might be living in there. Do they harbour rodent life?
Yes and yes 🙂
https://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk has lots of info especially on their blog, it’s where I bought our ‘can o’ worms’ years ago, though that model doesn’t exist anymore.
My wormery lives on the patio by the shed for shelter.
Now knackered and backache, so the remaining bedding will have to wait.
They keep going all year in our sub-tropics, though on really hot days we have to make sure they don't overheat. We have had the same worms or their offspring for years.
I'm excited that I've had a good run with the sweet pea seeds I've just planted. Most appear to have germinated and I hope they will go from strength to strength. We are expecting a cool morning tomorrow, but I have them in a sheltered place, so I hope they will be ok.
A trip out to the cool climate native nursery this morning. Picked up some more grevilleas and a bottlebrush as well as some native violets and daisies which I'll put into pots. We almost lashed out on a waratah, but the nursery person advised us the the position we planned to put it was unsuitable, so we did not purchase. I was grateful for their advice, as the plant was not cheap and we would have been disappointed to lose it.
We have also purchased a compost bin so it will be interesting to see how we get on with that. I only intend to use it for garden, not kitchen, waste. Thinking about my dad's compost bin years ago (the one that offered hospitality to the rodents) I remember piling stuff into the top of it (and the smell of it) but I never remember him drawing any wonderful compost out at the bottom to put on the garden.
Short term I think we'll need to purchase more compost, the soil here being so thin and poor.
Wherever you get it from, just buy one bag to start with so that you can check the quality. 🙂
Last week I divided some lily of the valley plants and have 3 pots ready to give away to friends. I have another potful for myself. I also decided to repot a lavender I had in a pot that was looking as though the potting mix was getting a bit tired. It was hard to get the lavender out of the pot and now I have two plants, they have survived the last week, so hopefully they will be ok.
We do buy the cheapest potting mix at the garden centre, but that's only for throwing into the worm farm to cover the newest addition of scraps. It seems to work well for that, but I try to buy the better potting mix for potting into.
So far the sweet pea seedlings appear to be doing OK!
Very bright day, but fortunately found very broad-brimmed straw hat I got in China, for keeping the sun off my now thinning hair.
I don't have space to take up the tubers and store them so I left them in the ground, well covered. But they haven't survived - so I'm very pleased with the seedings. They're glorious, tall collarette dahlias with beautiful colours.
I've got hundreds of seeds so I shall keep planting them for the next week or two, indoors of course, and I'll give them to the RNLI charity stall to sell.
Tomorrow will be the planting of herbs.
I found this, I would really have to plant it in the same spot as the roses are in a row.
AI Overview
Yes, you can plant a new rose in the same spot, but you must take precautions to avoid "Rose Replant Disease" (soil sickness), which can cause the new rose to fail. You must replace the old soil to a depth of 16-18 inches with fresh soil/compost, @la vie en rouge
[hostly halo on]
Thanks for noting that it's an AI overview, @Graven Image . Please could you indicate where it is from, in line with the ruling in the Styx?
[hostly halo off]
Arethosemyfeet, Heaven Host
Sorry, It is from "Paul Zimmer Roses Site,"
I usually start planting out in the second week of May.
But waste not... I'm thinking the stand could be adapted to hold small flower pots with tumbling planting.
Hope the stand looks good with its new purpose.
We are lucky, we have house sitters for the dogs when we go away, and we make sure they our gardeners too.
Yes, good point. We net green veg.