Gardening

[Loxstock92]

22 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

So... anyone else hyped about the summer?? Can't wait to get my herbs and tomatoes going.

Got a nice strelitzia this winter that I hope picks up as well.

Fancy adding some more chili plants as well, but think I can't deal with more aphids so might stick to tomatoes.

I am, looking forward to seeing how the flowerbeds I built last year will look as started a little late and just to get some colour back in the garden. 

[villakram]

Just thinking about ours now, but temps still below zero at night for a few more weeks. First spring in our house, but we have deer... lots & lots of deer. Should be fun.

Tomato/basil etc/peppers in our current plans and various things that deer don't like.

Edited March 15, 2021 by villakram

[chrisp65]

I’ve got wood.

 

A lorry load has been delivered, that’s next weekend sorted, making screens and backdrops for climbers.

 

[AlwaysAVFC]

Possibly my first time posting in this thread but now being in my first house for 6 weeks and the warmer weather on its way, I've started on the garden. My idea of gardening has been mowing the lawn when necessary but now it's mine I feel a bit more responsibility.

The garden looked ok when we viewed it but needs more work than we thought. Focusing on being fairly low maintenance and cheap for now. Just spent £1k on new fencing that we knew needed replacing down the line but turned into a priority when we moved in.

Actually quite pleased with what we've done so far, after a bit of tidying up. The big issue for us though is, there is a pond. It's been neglected for a while and need to decide what we do. Since before we moved in we've changed our mind so much from filling it in, to sorting it out. There's no particular easy option, filling it in will be cheaper but I'm guessing a lot of hard work. Sorting it out, the lining needs some repairing and I'm aware of at least one hole. The pump etc will most likely need replacing also. I doubt we will get fish, just a bit of a water feature but we have a 3 year old too.

Further down the line there might be some plants and vegetables just trying into get it a bit aesthetic and somewhere to relax and have a barbecue, for now.

 

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, AlwaysAVFC said:

Possibly my first time posting in this thread but now being in my first house for 6 weeks and the warmer weather on its way, I've started on the garden. My idea of gardening has been mowing the lawn when necessary but now it's mine I feel a bit more responsibility.

The garden looked ok when we viewed it but needs more work than we thought. Focusing on being fairly low maintenance and cheap for now. Just spent £1k on new fencing that we knew needed replacing down the line but turned into a priority when we moved in.

Actually quite pleased with what we've done so far, after a bit of tidying up. The big issue for us though is, there is a pond. It's been neglected for a while and need to decide what we do. Since before we moved in we've changed our mind so much from filling it in, to sorting it out. There's no particular easy option, filling it in will be cheaper but I'm guessing a lot of hard work. Sorting it out, the lining needs some repairing and I'm aware of at least one hole. The pump etc will most likely need replacing also. I doubt we will get fish, just a bit of a water feature but we have a 3 year old too.

Further down the line there might be some plants and vegetables just trying into get it a bit aesthetic and somewhere to relax and have a barbecue, for now.

 

Personally, unless you intend to stand guard at all times, I’d either fill it in, or leave it just a couple of years.

3 year olds and ponds don’t mix well.

Stick it on the bottom of the to do list, that’ll buy you enough time for the little shit to be big enough to just stand up when they fall in.

Once they’re 5 or 6, what could be better than a pond with bugs and tadpoles and frogs every year.

 

[AlwaysAVFC]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Once they’re 5 or 6, what could be better than a pond with bugs and tadpoles and frogs every year.

Our original plan was to get rid of it and then we thought just that. A great bit of nature to experience. There was a big frog orgy in there the other week (didn't put it like that to the girls) and expecting lots of little frogs in the coming weeks.

There is still a foot or so of water in it,  so it's still a danger as it is. So probably need to make a decision sooner rather than later, so if we keep it we can put a bit of protection in.

 

[Seat68]

I have a greenhouse to erect this weekend, thats fine and doesn’t concern me. The area its going into currently has bark chips laid out on it, a look at what lies beneath and it is a kind of muddy pebbles/borderline small hardcore. Not sure how I would lay a base on this. Any suggestions?

[lapal_fan]

3 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I have a greenhouse to erect this weekend, thats fine and doesn’t concern me. The area its going into currently has bark chips laid out on it, a look at what lies beneath and it is a kind of muddy pebbles/borderline small hardcore. Not sure how I would lay a base on this. Any suggestions?

clear it.  square the area you need with wooden batons, go down wickes/B&Q/other and buy concrete mix/sand - get a mixer or a bosh bucket and knock your concrete up, pour into area, level the surface and leave - tada - you now have a pad to put your greenhouse on. 

But.. if you're not good with shelves, maybe get someone to do this for you?  

[StefanAVFC]

Once the house is done, I'm taking the garden on as my project. First time ever doing any gardening.

[Seat68]

48 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

clear it.  square the area you need with wooden batons, go down wickes/B&Q/other and buy concrete mix/sand - get a mixer or a bosh bucket and knock your concrete up, pour into area, level the surface and leave - tada - you now have a pad to put your greenhouse on. 

But.. if you're not good with shelves, maybe get someone to do this for you?  

My wife has a team of contractors at his disposal but I think this I need this to show that I am not an impotent fool. 

Question on clearing it, how far down? Till I reach earth?

[lapal_fan]

2 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

My wife has a team of contractors at his disposal but I think this I need this to show that I am not an impotent fool. 

Question on clearing it, how far down? Till I reach earth?

It's only a greenhouse, I wouldn't go any further than 12 foot down mate. 

  

You never know, you might unearth Iguanodon remains and become a popular figure in the Palaeontology world.

You just want to avoid concreting on loose earth, so in my garden, that's a shovels length below grass - just depends on your situation. 

[chrisp65]

If the area is level and it isn’t a swamp or prone to ridiculous levels of heave, just lay patio slabs over some plastic sheeting.

I tamped down some existing ground similar to what you’ve described, sort of gravel and bits n bobs of hardcore on some pretty stable ground, put the control barrier down, put patio slabs on top of that. 

Greenhouse has been there 10 years or more and is fine. 

All you really need is something hefty to secure it down to so it doesn’t blow away in a storm. That’s the patio slabs.

 

[Seat68]

Thanks all, the garden is not my domain but I can put up greenhouses, as I have done in the past, we had a base in situe then. 
 

[AlwaysAVFC]

Decided to try and empty my pond and see where I went from there. The pond is beyond saving so now in the process of taking it out.

So after thinking i'll keep it simple for now, I've got a big pile of large rocks and a now smelly pond which is emptying very slowly. I've just done 3 trips to the tip to take some paving slabs from around the pond plus some rubble and soon to have a big hole in the garden, and not sure what the plan for it is yet. 

In addition to this, the patio beyond the pond is raised (5 bricks high) and some of it has displaced, so will need to get on to YouTube for some bricklaying lessons.

The joys of home ownership 

Oh and also trying to re-home the resident frogs. Every time I think I have them all, some more appear.

[KenjiOgiwara]

https://ibb.co/8rnCFvg

Tomatoes coming along. Chili ain't too pleased yet

[KenjiOgiwara]

On 19/09/2020 at 14:44, blandy said:

Turns out that alongside the avocado plant a chilli plant had grown, which was nice. Must have accidentally got a chill seed in the soil. Lots of hot Birdseye chillis

You guys that got chili plants... how do you deal with aphids? I swear it drives me nuts. I never have any problems with aphids on ANY other plants. But whenever I plant Jala, ghost, birds eye or habaneros, they always get infected with aphids. It's just weird.

I don't even understand where they come from. I live in a cold ass country, 4 stories high. Yet they just appear on the plants when it reaches a couple of months maturity.

[blandy]

19 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

You guys that got chili plants... how do you deal with aphids?

A mix of luck and mostly keeping the plant on a sunny windowsill, though it goes outside in the daytime when it's flowering.

That one in the pic I posted, it survived the winter and is now growing new leaves. It's still fighting the avocado for dominance of the pot - they're equal size. Plus I bought it a friend, so hopefully get a bumper crop of chillies this summer.

[KenjiOgiwara]

After 6 weeks inside, I took the tomato plants outside yesterday. They did well during the day, but seems the night time was a bit too cold - around 10 degrees. The result was that my regular bush tomatoes had their bottom 2-4 branches wilted.

Ironically my cherry tomatoes haven't and look just fine. Feck if I know why.

I dunno what to do now. I took them inside again, but the wilted leaves, how do you deal with that? Do you wait a couple of days and see if they recover? If not do you pinch the branches or pinch the leaves?

May has been a really shitty weather month so far and 2021 have been pretty cold tbh.

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by KenjiOgiwara

[mjmooney]

I have this weird thing where I hate gardening (really relieved to have got rid of the allotment) - apart from an occasional bit of heavy labouring, I leave it all to the missus, who's enthusiastic and knowledgeable. 

BUT... I really like watching TV gardening programmes. Can't remember all the names, but there seem to be loads of them around at the moment, mostly in the 'makeover' genre:  

1. Gardener's World - still the granddaddy of them all. Monty Don and his dogs (that ratty little thing is a poor replacement for Nigel, though), the viewers' phone-filmed contributions, cockney spiv Adam Frost, etc. 

2. Carol Klein on C5 - unpretentious, no frills practical tips. 

3. Charlie Dimmock and the Rich Brothers. She's let herself go a bit, eh? 

4. That one with Angela Scanlon (would) and the VR design gimmick. 

5. Unctuous Alan Titchmarch and his mob. You have to have a tragic backstory to get on this one. 

6. That weird new one with the most ill matched trio of presenters - the scouse scally, the skinny hippy model (who clearly knows **** all about gardening) and the American carpenter with one hand who is in constant risk of losing the other one with his use of circular saws and the like. 

There must be some others. Any fans here? 

[chrisp65]

Working on the garden again today after being postponed for the best part of a month due to bad weather and bad timing of other things to do.

I’d mapped out where some screen was going, we discussed it, we agreed it. I’d dug some post holes, we discussed it, we agreed it.

I have now put the screen panel in the post hole and put some post mix in the base so that is now setting. The conversation goes like this:

Mrs: I didn’t think it was going by there.

Me: It’s exactly where we agreed, what don’t you like about it?

Mrs: I thought it would be further over to the left.

Me: But it’s exactly where the post holes were, that I stood posts in, so we could see what it would look like.

Mrs: Yeah, I know, but I thought it would be further over.

Me: So you thought I wasn’t going to put the posts in the post holes?

Mrs: I just thought it would end up further to the left.

Me: Are you on **** drugs?