A Little Dirt Never Hurt-Gardening 2020

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  • @Ethne Alba , if I PM you my email address, would you send me a photo or two?

    I'm pretty sure there's no requirement in the UK based on how deep your pond is, thankfully.

    AG
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    edited May 2020
  • It seems our local nursery is very short in supply of both flower and vegetable plants. They report that growers can not get potting soil. That seems strange. I did order some seeds two months ago and received a notice they should be arriving next week. I will be planting directly in the beds at this late date. Meantime I spent the day glueing some old glass ware together in a small tower to make a bee drinking pond. I felt very bad last year when I found bees had drown in my bird fountain.
  • I've never heard of that, bees drowning. In hot weather I notice the wasps hovering around the taps on the allotment, I assume for a drink. They get first dibs.
  • Strange weather, a few frosts last week, which singed the spuds a bit, and obliterated early tomatoes. Today hot and sunny, get the hose out. No more frosts, I think. A good year for roses, possibly.
  • Bees used to drown all the time in our swimming pool. It's why they suggest you put rocks or something to stand on in your birdbath.
  • TukaiTukai Shipmate
    Seasons are all out of whack here in Australia. Drought followed by "black summer" (with smoke haze from huge bushfires obscuring the summer sun in January (and also including the hottest day on record for this city) - worse in the areas where the fires actually burnt of course. Plants don't know what's going on. Now on first official day of winter we have daffodils and irises (supposedly spring flowers) in bloom!
  • It's ultra dry in London, so frequent watering is required. We scan the weather forecasts, and the rain comes in from the west, and skirts round London.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Here the day couldn't be stickier if it had jam on it. The clouds are thickening. There are languid ripples of wind. If the forecast is right, it should rain most of the night and be 10° cooler tomorrow. Haste the day.
  • The cloud has moved in during the last hour. The temperature has gone from 'far too hot for me' to 'delightfully cool'. Not expecting rain, that would be too much to ask down here in the SE, but I will take cool for now.

    If anyone isn't happy with the change, blame Mr RoS - he wore shorts today!
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    The cloud has moved in during the last hour. The temperature has gone from 'far too hot for me' to 'delightfully cool'. Not expecting rain, that would be too much to ask down here in the SE, but I will take cool for now.

    If anyone isn't happy with the change, blame Mr RoS - he wore shorts today!
    I can go one better: the shorts I bought on eBay last week arrived today!

    I am looking forward to the rain to give the potatoes especially a proper soaking. My parents are on the south-east coast and as they are in the lee of the North Downs, they are effectively in the rain shadow of a rain shadow! Even if it rains a couple of miles away they often seem to miss out.

    I've planted the seeds for a final try at getting french beans to germinate today.
  • I've spent 8 hours in the garden today, doing things that got put on the back burner while the building works were going on. Second lot of runner beans and peas have been planted out, lettuce and radish thinned, plums and damsons also thinned and now netted.

    Tied in a climbing rose that has suddenly decided to live and now seems hell-bent on making up for lost time, and have sorted out the early clematis now it has finished flowering.

    My pinks are doing well but one which was moved has now decided to change colour, going from a cerise to white with a burgundy centre. Since I know bu**er-all about plants I'm mystified but grateful.

    Other than that just odd jobs, weeding and general tidying. By the time I'd watered in newly planted stuff it was ten past ten so I'm having a glass of something nice before bed.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    A drier morning than intimated, but hopefully a fair rainfall overnight. How much I can judge from the various buckets and upturned bin lids I leave out to collect it. But even from the window it looks perceptively more verdant out there.
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    We woke to a disappointing absence of rain, but it has started now. Fortunately we did water the garden last night. I have, I fear, ruined our lawns by mowing them at the weekend and they are completely brown. Once I'd done it Mr Nen told me he'd read somewhere you're not supposed to cut lawns in May. >rolleyes<
  • No sign of rain yet. We might get a splash later this afternoon, if we are lucky. Certainly more pleasant to be outside now, for me at any rate, although Mr RoS loved the heat
  • Much cooler with something falling from the sky ...
  • DormouseDormouse Shipmate
    I am a novice. We have courgette & squash plants growing in pots. Do I just let them run rampent, or should one pinch off side shoots or something else? I have no clue!!
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host, 8th Day Host
    My little container garden is very happy this morning! After a few days of minimal rain, we had a gully washer last night of 3 1/2 inches of water!

    The hot pepper plant has several peppers growing, two tiny tomatoes on the hot weather plant, and some nice herbs! I have a different variety of cilantro which looks like dill, and has tiny flowers like miniature Queen Anne's Lace! So, it occurred to me that cilantro may be related to carrot. After asking Google, I found out that is indeed the case!
  • Dormouse wrote: »
    I am a novice. We have courgette & squash plants growing in pots. Do I just let them run rampent, or should one pinch off side shoots or something else? I have no clue!!

    Just let them go as they please - the bigger pumpkins seem to able to limit themselves to one decent fruit per plant, the others may well produce several especially if you pick them as they come to a size suitable for eating, and cougettes will go on until autumn as long as you keep picking them. If you let any turn into marrows, the plant will turn to feeding those instead of producing new ones.

    AG
  • Yes, I've always found that picking the fruit at a decent size keeps the plant growing and producing more flowers. So different from tomatoes.
  • We've had a pond for 20 years. 15 feet by 4 feet, kidney bean shaped with a pump and waterfall. It's about 2 feet deep. We started with "feeder goldfish" which means live fish to be fed to carnivorous other fish. So we allowed dinner to live. They were 25¢ for 3, about 1/2 inch. They grow up and have babies. We've had as many as 26 goldies, presently 12, ranging in size from 1½inches inches to about 8. Because it is cold here in winter (down to -40°C or F, we have to bring them in to a 100 gallon aquarium for which we have filtration for 500 gallons per hour.

    Goldfish are smart. If you feed them in the same spot each day, they come over like puppy dogs. They will also suck on your fingers. When we can have people over and there are the attacks of forest tent caterpillars, the children like to catch them and throw them in. The goldies will eat houseflies and even wasps.
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    If I hadn't cut it the other week our lawn would have been awash with flowering grass. Not good when Mr Dragon suffers from hayfever. We had rain early morning and a bit this afternoon.

    I've got 5 courgette plants as I've got a multi-coloured mix so wanted to maximize the chance of getting the yellow ones. I have planted them in the bed where the suckers from next door's lilac pop up as I reckon they won't mind as much as something that has to establish a proper root system.
  • We have rain! Not drizzle, but proper rain that makes puddles on the drive, the soaking-in sort the garden needs.
    Not the kind that comes down in torrents, bounces off the land, runs down the gutters and straight into the drains.
    I am a happy gardener
  • Today's rain meant no excuse to put off sorting out the various sprays, bags of compost, plant pots and general gardening stuff. Sorting through it all I discovered 5 boxes with just one solitary grease band in each, 3 half-full boxes of blood and bonemeal, etc, so 3 hours flew by making sense of it all.

    The rain has arrived just as the peonies are all coming into full bloom - typical :grimace:
  • So, last nights rain just turned out to be what I call 'a freshener' - but much better than nothing.
    The rain refreshed all the parts of the garden that it reached, but it came in from the west and didn't reach the area on the sheltered east-facing side of the bungalow - where I have several tomatoes in large pots.
    Unless we get considerably more rain today I will have to go along them with the watering can tomorrow morning.
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    The garden has been blown every which way for ten hours now. And soaked.

    The birds have just started to sing, for the first time today.

    Plants all fine, quite how I dunno.....
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    We've had the wind (which has destroyed my one peony flower) but very little rain so I've just watered everywhere. I got some bedding plants on my foray into town this morning so have planted them as well. Parts of the lawns are showing some signs of recovery.

    I also took advice from my green-fingered aunt on the phone this morning and have cut all the old flowers, brown stalks, and some of the leaves off my Christmas Rose (helleborus niger) which was an absolute picture in January and I'm hoping for a repeat performance early next year.
  • DormouseDormouse Shipmate
    Trying to deter slugs and snails, I've smeared Tiger balm round the pots of courgettes and squash, and bean seedlings. There's also eggshells and ash on the soil. I hope this will put them off having a chew on the leaves.
  • Courgette stems here have been nibbled once. And once only. On each plant!

    Third week outside ......
  • It's been all sorts here today - from bright sun to throwing it down via hail and thunder.
  • Very blustery wind all day today, and cold with it. Mr RoS had to keep well away from the cliff edge on his walks. He reported that all dog walkers with small dogs had them on leads!

    Plants in the garden all being madly tossed about. I went out this morning & tied the tops of all the tomato plants more closely to their bamboo canes.
    The climbing beans will suffer most - they always shrivel in the winds here - although today it has been a northerly rather than the prevailing salty south-westerly. They had a difficult start, being a bit stunted by their wrappings of horticultural fleece against the cold weather at the end of April, then wilting in the heat throughout May.
    Nothing I can do to protect them from the current weather, so we wait and see.

    I had a few moments of hopeful excitement when the rain rattled against the windows, but they were only brief showers, and the wind dried up every vestige of moisture within minutes of the showers ending.

    As far as I could tell, nothing had actually blown away, so not total disaster so far.
  • Some of the welsh poppy leaves are now interestingly edged with a brown discolouration.

    Could this be the result of wind damage...?
  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    The Knotweed has been gardening today, so I'm assuming that she's sickening for something.

    In other news, I've been thinking about ponds when I should be working from home. One day I'd like a wildlife pond and have been thinking about how to fit one in - it needs to be around 2 feet / 60 centipedes deep to allow frogs to hibernate, but that's quite a hole in our stiff clay. On the other hand, I'm also collecting rocks from the local fields for a rockery (think Johnny Cash here) so I am pondering ways of building a rockery with a raised pond in it - I only need to raise it a foot and I have a far more manageable hole to dig, and the local drift geology tends to stone slabs so I can easily raise up a bit that I can then run water down for aeration. On the other hand, I'm a bit concerned that I might end up with something looking like a pimple. Blowed if I know!

    AG

    I have a tiny pond, only about 3 feet by 4 and only a foot deep. My partner gave me some frogspawn 3 years ago and the frogs have survived every winter so far! The last couple of weeks I have had dozens of tiny baby frogs venturing out of it for the first time.
  • Very strong wind last night knocked over and broke my heavy glass multi tired bee water station I had made, from old dishes. I am sad.
  • Oh, i'm so sorry!
  • DiomedesDiomedes Shipmate
    What a sad thing to happen. I hope it's not beyond salvage. I thought it was such a lovely idea when you first described it.
  • So sorry about your bee water station. :(

    We had rain yesterday afternoon/evening. The nice steady variety and, because the wind had dropped to nearly zero and there was heavy cloud cover, the wet remained where it was needed. Very happy not to have to get the hose out this morning.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I have dug up about half of a 30' x 2' strip of lawn for a projected herb border. Old turf, matted with dead moss and the ground like a brick. A lot of forking and yanking. I have blistered fingers and will likely have an interesting collection of aches tomorrow.
  • I think I will be aching tomorrow too! I've done a sizeable area's digging today (and popped the black plastic straight back over it to keep the moisture in), got all my brassicas into the cage (pigeons, for the keeping off), and one more squash and some dwarf beans too. I could have been done in half the time (exaggeration), but people I hadn't seen in yonks kept stopping by to chat at a sensible distance and, TBH, I appreciated the opportunity to stop bending down to pick the roots out of every forkful.

    Trouble with using weed control membrane (AKA black plastic) is that if you put it down when the ground is dry, it stays dry underneath. No choice this year, so I've uncovered the next bit of ground I want to dig, cleared the brash off the top, and am praying for a bit of rain. It's actually not too bad underneath, but the top layer is like rock at the mo, especially where last year's brassica cage was as that's where I've trampled most.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Re the thread title - 'A little dirt never hurt' - well a lot of dirt does. I finished lifting the turf and started siting the pots. Wonder if pneumatic drills are easy to come by.

    Anyway it's not due to be damp until Thursday, so leaving it in hopes the gentle rain from heaven softens it up a bit.
  • Like this? https://www.hirestation.co.uk/tool-hire/Demolition/Pneumatic-Breaker-Hire/030105/

    Might be hiring one myself for our backyard... though that will be shifting concrete!

    AG
  • This year's planting of swiss card was doing so well - until Mr or Mrs Fox managed to unpeg the netting from round the bed last night :(
    It didn't exactly dig anything up, but dislodged a few by digging next to them, and smothered several with the displaced earth.
    It is a constant battle to keep the soil/compost in beds and pots inaccessible to foxy paws (and the young leafy veg to sparrow's beaks)
    Where's a head-banging emoji when you need one?)
  • @Firenze Rather than a Kango drill, I think what you might need is one of these.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    @Firenze Rather than a Kango drill, I think what you might need is one of these.

    Being old fashioned I'd rather go for a couple of Clydesdales and a plough. But since garden access is via a couple of flights of stairs, either is moot.

  • Five courgette flowers - all female :(
    And yes, I know I could stuff them, but I'm with Shirley Conran on the stuffing of vegetables.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited June 2020
    Spent another five hours on the herb border - a lot in just digging out for quite modestly-sized pots. Not only is the ground hard, but it is thickly laced with roots from the nearby hedge. For straightening the edges even the speciality spade useless against some tussocks - I had to saw through them with a retired bread knife.

    Just to finish the last couple of yards of pebbles and wait for the seeds to arrive.

    Next up, a climber in the back corner. A rambling rose would be nice, but it is too heavily shaded. Lead contender at the mo' is Virginia Creeper.
  • No, shade needn't stop you having a rose. Two of the best for shade are Albertine and Danse de feu. A climbing hydrangea will also cope with shade, ditto star jasmine, and there are numerous clematis that will also be happy.

    Virginia creeper is lovely in the autumn until the leaves fall off, at which point it becomes a nightmare because the fleshy stems that attach the leaves to the vines become detached from both leaf and vine and as well as beinga pain to pick up they don't rot.
  • Having uncovered much of my remaining digging, the rain clouds have resolutely skirted my plot. It's hurled it down at work (maybe 15 miles in a straight line from the allotment), not a drop at home.

    I am hopeful that what is forecast today (Believing the weather forecast at the mo is about as sensible as believing in fairies) will come and then I can stick the cover back on on the way home tonight, as the forecast after today is dry again.

    AG
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    No, shade needn't stop you having a rose. Two of the best for shade are Albertine and Danse de feu. A climbing hydrangea will also cope with shade, ditto star jasmine, and there are numerous clematis that will also be happy.

    Virginia creeper is lovely in the autumn until the leaves fall off, at which point it becomes a nightmare because the fleshy stems that attach the leaves to the vines become detached from both leaf and vine and as well as beinga pain to pick up they don't rot.

    Thank you for the advice. Albertine is a favourite of mine.

    The proposed site is a corner of the garden currently under membrane and gravel (in an effort to suppress the bindweed whose redoubt it was). There is new wooden fencing along one side and very old and picturesquely crumbling brick wall on the other, the whole overtopped by a neighbour's elder. She'd agreed to have it felled, but then Lockdown.

    I think I will look for a clematis and aim it at the fence, then get a rose for the wall next year - variety depending on what happens about the tree.
  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    We put in a pea section of the garden for the toddler. We added a cone-shaped trellis out of bamboo for the peas to grow up and create a tent, hopefully. I'm so excited, and so is the little one!! But I planted peas from seed for the first time ever- how long should I give them to germinate?
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