OT - Any gardeners in the house?

rjsterry

Wrath Rob wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

The Fuggler wrote:

Everything else has been dreadful. Except weeds. Doing really well this year.

Tell me about it! we have borage growing everywhere. Apparently you can use it in cooking, but as a plant it is wildly invasive, can only be dug out - leaves just snap off leaving a massive tap root, then grow back - and the leaves sting on contact with skin. With that and rampant nigella and Aquilegia (and those are the pretty ones, some days I just feel like glyphosate-ing the whole f***ing garden.

I have a love/hate relationship with my garden.

Wait till you get bind weed. That's never coming out...

Got that too - I reckon the borage is worse. And many others besides. If only the things I want to grow were as hardy as the weeds. The house was bought from the daughter of a deceased old lady, and the garden had not surprisingly been let go a bit. That said, we did inherit several vigorous rose bushes in various shades, assorted penstemons and fuchsias, an acanthus, a clump of irises, a lovely clematis that produces two 'crops' of enormous deep purple flowers a year, and a few other assorted bulbs, so I shouldn't complain too much. I'll give the netting a try for next years brassicas.

tgotb

Wrath Rob wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Slightly OT, but I've just (this week) taken over an allotment. Most of it is getting glyphosated, but there are some raspberry bushes I'd like to keep. Only problem is that they have been allowed to go fairly wild; they're about 9 feet tall, and are encroaching on communal paths, neighbours' allotments etc. Anyone have any advice on when/how to prune them?

Wait until the canes (not trees) have finished fruiting and then cut those ones off right at the bottom, i.e. only the ones that have had rasberries on them. This will in itself be a pretty vicious pruning but trust me, it grows back next year. If you need to prune the remaining canes, wait until October when the plant is more dormant and won't be put at risk by a heavy prune.

Next year, put up some posts and wire to tie the canes to and keep them a bit more ordered.

Thanks, a vicious pruning sounds infinitely preferable to sorting out the mess that's there at the moment!

Jay dubbleU

mudcow007 wrote:

Wrath Rob wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

The Fuggler wrote:

Everything else has been dreadful. Except weeds. Doing really well this year.

Tell me about it! we have borage growing everywhere.

I have a love/hate relationship with my garden.

Wait till you get bind weed. That's never coming out...

i have more marestail/ horsetail than grass an plants put together.

weed killer doesn't touch it, so i keep having to pull it up hoping it will eventually kill the swine

the only stuff effective the EU banned (ammonium sulphamate - you can still buy it as a compost accelerator, i just hope i dont trip an pour any on the weeds on the way to the compost bin )

Mares tail roots go down about 3/5m so you've got a lot of pulling to do - get a rubber glove and a wollen glove - soak the woollen glove in glyphosate and run your hands up the stem of as many plants as you can. Don't get tempted to use ammonium sulphate if it rains it can wash off and end up on your good plants - once it gets into a bed it kills everything

team47b

Small slugs have faster metabolism so eat more than the big variety.

Frogs or ducks will solve the problem (don't get both as ducks also eat frogs)

Slugs purpose in life? THEY EAT DOG SH1T!!!

What's to like about them?

Fireblade96

This has been The Year of the Slug here. There are hundreds of them, they've eaten whole pansies overnight just as they're flowering nicely, and even toppled a largeish potato plant by biting right through the stem !

I've given up on beer traps and all pretence at organic gardening and now scatter bucketloads of slug pellets nightly. It's like Slug-a-geddon in the mornings !

And then the spuds got blight :-(
One single apple on the tree.

The mulberries are looking good though :-)

MrSweary

Lost all our courgettes this year to the slimy little g*ts apart from the one surrounded by gravel. Not actually bothered beacuse we planted them very late (due to moving house) so didn't expect much aside from some tasty flowers. Drowned a lot of slugs though.

Cherry toms in the tubs are going great guns though!

gosport_commuter

Slugs have decimated great swathes of plants this year. MASSIVE gits they are too!

Most of the veg has done rubbish, but the cherry tomatoes have done great, and our onions are huge! Our broccoli bolted early on, and the peas have been awefull.

Monkeypump

Wrath Rob wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

The Fuggler wrote:

Everything else has been dreadful. Except weeds. Doing really well this year.

Tell me about it! we have borage growing everywhere. Apparently you can use it in cooking, but as a plant it is wildly invasive, can only be dug out - leaves just snap off leaving a massive tap root, then grow back - and the leaves sting on contact with skin. With that and rampant nigella and Aquilegia (and those are the pretty ones, some days I just feel like glyphosate-ing the whole f***ing garden.

I have a love/hate relationship with my garden.

Wait till you get bind weed. That's never coming out...

I am currently waging war with the militant bindweed in our back garden. Have removed the biggest root network I've ever seen, so we'll see what happens there.

Veggie crops have been limited this year, although we have about 6 million chillis of various varieties.

On the slug front, do bark chippings slow them down? I've just put some new raised planters in, and have a small tree to plant nearby. The chippings would be primarily decorative, but would be nice if they stopped the slimy buggers getting to the planters.

msmancunia

Possibly re bark chippings - I put some down in the beds in the recently landscaped front garden, until I decide what I'm planting, and have noticed a distinct lack of slime there. The back is a different matter though...

There's some really good stuff you can get for bindweed - can't remember what it is and it's quite time consuming as you have to paint it on the leaves with a brush, but it got rid of my mum's completely.

Jay dubbleU

Glyphosate - sold as Roundup

tgotb

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Glyphosate - sold as Roundup

You only have to paint it on with a brush if you're trying to avoid collateral damage. If you're clearing the whole area you can spray it.

We have a big bindweed problem. Cleared it from our garden, but it comes back from next door, where it's endemic (neighbour can't even be bothered to mow the lawn, so is never going to worry about something as trivial as bindweed). When she went on holiday we were given a key and asked to feed the gerbil, so I took the precaution of Glyphosating a DMZ on her side of the fence. Cunningly, I sprayed it the day before she came back, so the garden looked untouched; it was only a week or so later that a 2-foot-wide strip of her garden went brown. Mind you, I'd be pretty surprised if she actually noticed...

5milestogo

mudcow007 wrote:

......the nemesis that calls its self "The Slug"........
besides a shotgun anyone any ideas?

Someone mentioned to me wool balls - slugs get all tied up by them. Haven'y used them myself but I need to do something.
Those long fat brown ones - I recall reading they are the Spainish variety.

I have a problem with foxes. The old girl behind me has a set in her garden but is reluctant to do anything. With a 4 yr old & 2 yr old I do get a bit worried in the garden sometimes as they seem fearless. Beyond 'marking my own territory' any suggestions for limiting there activity?

SteppenHerring

Bindweed has been the winner this year - along with slugs. Why can't they genetically engineer a slug that eats bindweed?

The weather has also knackered a load of things. All I've harvested with success this year is a few lettuce, shallots, garlic, courgettes and carrots. I put my climbing French beans out too early and they crashed. All my pak choi bolted. I have no pets so basically have a slug-pellet mulch.

rjsterry

5milestogo wrote:

mudcow007 wrote:

......the nemesis that calls its self "The Slug"........
besides a shotgun anyone any ideas?

Someone mentioned to me wool balls - slugs get all tied up by them. Haven'y used them myself but I need to do something.
Those long fat brown ones - I recall reading they are the Spainish variety.

I have a problem with foxes. The old girl behind me has a set in her garden but is reluctant to do anything. With a 4 yr old & 2 yr old I do get a bit worried in the garden sometimes as they seem fearless. Beyond 'marking my own territory' any suggestions for limiting there activity?

I'd be more worried about fox sh!t - one once shat on the handle of my daughter's watering can - than the chance of one going for children. You might find something that they don't like the smell of - like the garlic based stuff that keeps cats away.

vermin

My brassicas are about 6ft tall. Is that normal? (They are supposed to be broccoli, but are showing no signs of producing broccoli.

rjsterry

vermin wrote:

My brassicas are about 6ft tall. Is that normal? (They are supposed to be broccoli, but are showing no signs of producing broccoli.

I think it's too late
http://www.growsonyou.com/question/show/52278

posh_pedaller

If the slugs are depriving you of food by eating your veg...

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/c ... cook-slugs

msmancunia

posh_pedaller wrote:

If the slugs are depriving you of food by eating your veg...

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/c ... cook-slugs

That is vile.

But if I ever come home and the fridge is empty, I won't be short of a meal - I've got tons of the slimy little beasts outside.

rjsterry

Bump.

Anyone got any idea what this is? Not something we've planted, but we've been in the house for four years or so, so it must have been dormant or self seeded.

[Gah, can't get the link to work from an iPad - will sort this tomorrow.]

Looks like some sort of bulb, but just roots below ground.

Picked our first two straw s and plenty of cherries on the way.

tgotb

rjsterry wrote:

Bump.

Anyone got any idea what this is? Not something we've planted, but we've been in the house for four years or so, so it must have been dormant or self seeded.

[Dodgy link]

Looks like some sort of bulb, but just roots below ground.

Picked our first two straw s and plenty of cherries on the way.

Looks like a dodgy URL to me. I managed to find your pics of garden in snow, bike frame etc, but no pics of any plants...

Anyone have any tips on:
Mangetout - I lovingly reared plants indoors, planted them out, and overnight something ate them down to the ground; don't think it's slugs/snails, and nothing else has been touched.
Blackfly on my runner beans - insecticide?
Pumpkins - seeds in pots on my windowsill not germinating

rjsterry

Ooh, that's not the idea. Was trying to copy and paste the url on an iPad, and it's obviously grabbed the wrong url. You couldn't just take the link out of your post too? Ta.

Could be birds or various small mammals eating your peas try some mesh. We gave up fighting the black fly last time we grew runners - didn't seem to affect the crop much.

tgotb

LOL - serves you right for using Apple :-)

rjsterry

Here we go.

graham.

rjsterry wrote:

Here we go.

Sisyrinchium Striatum, according to OH.

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=1838

rjsterry

Graham. wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Here we go.

Sisyrinchium Striatum, according to OH.

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=1838

Thanks for that. I'd tried the RHS plant finder, but I must not have input the right description.

pollys_bott

I'm a bit of a hellebore addict and have 130+ flowering this year: they've self-sown like mad the last few years and I have oodles of seedlings, many of which will be flowering size next year. If anyone wants some then please feel free to pm me, can stick some pics up too if required.

FoldingJoe

Plum tree blossoming nicely this year - only problem is a good proportion of it is hanging over into next doors garden!!

Wonder where I stand, legally, if I am scrumping for my own fruit, but in next doors garden!!?

secretsam

Beer. Best bitter. Nice and strong.

Put it in pots buried around your plants, the bu99ers love it, in they go, pi553d and dead.

Alternatively: drink the beer yourself, after a few you won't give a sh17 about the slugs

rubertoe

I think Asprilla is looking for a gardener.