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Source: (consider it) Thread: Back to the garden
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768

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Or nearly. I'm currently nursing the tail end of a cold I'd never met before, so it's taking forever to give up and go away.

There is a corner in my garden I had allocated to spring stuff, as it gets shaded later by the forsythia, and is, anyway, in on the northern side of a fence. It had primroses in it, I had moved some crocuses there from what is now the veggie part of the garden, and I have put in Solomon's Seal, Lily of the Valley, and other bulbs added last year. The Solomon's Seal has been managing well. The crocuses are just leaves (though others from the same batch, elsewhere, are fine.) The primroses have vanished. The new bulbs have popped up a bit, but the whole area looks bare.

Close examination makes it look as if it has been trodden on, though not by anything that leaves footprints. A self sown fern has a squashed middle. One of the bulbs looks trodden as well.

It is below a holder on the fence for jars of bird specific peanut butter, and a nesting box which has drawn the attention of some great tits. I have seen ground feeding birds around, but there is no evidence of beaks disturbing the soil.

I have put over part of the area a wire basket intended for wardrobes which I got from someone about the throw it away at the dump, and put containers (bulbs, primulas) on it so it looks better, and may allow the things underneath to have a chance to get going. (I suspect the pigeons, but haven't caught them at it.)

I'm rather cross about the primroses, as I had transplanted them from the last place where they had been self sown in the lawn, and getting hold of more may be problematic.

I'm hoping to be able to get out and work properly some time this week. I've got to get potatoes in for Friday! I'm not sure whether to go for bags, pots or the actual ground this year. I had to get rid of all the bags last year with the pests I shouldn't have had.

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Golden Key
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# 1468

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Your garden sounds wonderful, Penny! [Smile] Feel better soon.

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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")

Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Penny S
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# 14768

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I have obviously written too much about what I look forward to and not enough about what it is like at the moment.

One of our local builders described it at one point as being - long pause - "a country garden". And he didn't mean a cottage one. He meant one in the process of becoming, with aspects of allotment architecture (things being upcycled into other things) but not realised yet.

But, really good thing. I am now playing host to a thrush. They have been on the threatened list, like sparrows, and I haven't seen one for probably decades. And it's picking up nesting materials, though I don't know where it's going.

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Doone
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# 18470

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quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I have obviously written too much about what I look forward to and not enough about what it is like at the moment.

One of our local builders described it at one point as being - long pause - "a country garden". And he didn't mean a cottage one. He meant one in the process of becoming, with aspects of allotment architecture (things being upcycled into other things) but not realised yet.

But, really good thing. I am now playing host to a thrush. They have been on the threatened list, like sparrows, and I haven't seen one for probably decades. And it's picking up nesting materials, though I don't know where it's going.

Oh yes, we were very excited to see a thrush and a wren in the garden this morning and two chaffinches yesterday. We get lots of birds, but mostly tits of various types, magpies and robins.
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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I have obviously written too much about what I look forward to and not enough about what it is like at the moment.

Presumably this is the latest incarnation of the Gardening thread?
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passer

Indigo
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I also have acquired a pair of nesting song-thrushes. They were around last year, after a gap of at least twenty years. I have plenty of other nesting birds in and around the garden - wrens, robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, gold-, bull-, and chaffinches, and great, coal, long-tailed and blue tits. But the songthrushes vanished from around here in the early nineties. I had greenfinches as well till a couple of years ago, but they appear all to have succumbed to trichomonosis - here's hoping they come back some day.

The other problem for my box-nesters is tree bees. They have requisitioned two of my four boxes for the last couple of years.

Regarding the barren patch Penny, I have similar problems around the base of my feeders, caused mainly by wood pigeons. They don't peck at the earth as such, but trample every hint of a green shoot that endeavours to grow.

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Boogie

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# 13538

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quote:
Originally posted by passer:

The other problem for my box-nesters is tree bees. They have requisitioned two of my four boxes for the last couple of years.

Same here [Frown]

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Pigwidgeon

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# 10192

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quote:
Originally posted by passer:
The other problem for my box-nesters is tree bees. They have requisitioned two of my four boxes for the last couple of years.

You're blaming Tree Bee?

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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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I am having friend's stepdaughter's boyfriend come over Easter and redd up the garden. I think this year I am mainly growing grass. Maybe spuds in a bucket and the odd pot of herbs, but I feel anything more is beyond me, physically and logistically.
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Moo

Ship's tough old bird
# 107

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I am toying with the idea of planting some peppermint and basil. There are rabbits in my yard; would they leave the herbs alone?

Moo

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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.

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Sandemaniac
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# 12829

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I took four feet off the top of a Leylandii hedge today armed only with a stepladder, a ppruning saw and a pair of loppers. While it worked, and doesn't look too bad (still to come - running a hedge trimmer over the top, when I get round to getting some petrol), I'd fairly strongly recommend not doing it the way I did!

AG

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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869

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passer

Indigo
# 13329

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quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
quote:
Originally posted by passer:
The other problem for my box-nesters is tree bees. They have requisitioned two of my four boxes for the last couple of years.

You're blaming Tree Bee?
Sadly so. She may seem quiet and unassuming on here, but in the wild she and her kin have been rapidly moving north for the last fifteen years or so, another European migrant stealthily taking over thousands of des. res. and depriving our British Residents of their rightful errr... rights, or something! One of my colonies was in turn taken over by wax moths, somewhat ironically!

On the positive side, my comfrey and cotoneaster have never had so many flowers, and the veg have done uncommonly well also.

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Graven Image
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# 8755

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After reading Mel Bartholomew book, Square Foot Gardening I blocked off my garden into small one foot plots with some old boards I had laying around. It has worked wonders for me. I do one or two squares of work at a time. I have the energy to weed, plant and care for one or two squares and can easily do my whole garden in a week. I have mixed flowers with herbs and vegetables. As there are only two of us these little one foot squares work just fine. The only problem is I did not mark the squares and have two or three I am unsure what I planted. [Confused] I admit for the rest of the yard as of last year I have a young man come twice a month to take care of it. At 77 I decided to just do what I enjoy.
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jacobsen

seeker
# 14998

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How wise, GI. Our TV gardening expert, Monty Don,stated last week that the ground was too cold to do anything yet, so with his gracious permission I'm just enjoying the birds.

[ 21. March 2016, 06:54: Message edited by: jacobsen ]

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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
I am toying with the idea of planting some peppermint and basil. There are rabbits in my yard; would they leave the herbs alone?

Moo

Probably not. But mint is such a spreader it might outgrow them. Basil wouldn't do outdoors where I am, but I have a vigorous rosemary bush. I've also done thyme, parsley, chives and hyssop in pots.

While we don't have rabbits, we have foxes (probably a correlation there) and one year one took to digging up the herb patch. I think I discouraged it eventually with chili powder - I don't know if that would work for rabbits.

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Boogie

Boogie on down!
# 13538

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I am on a mission this year to produce a decent lawn - this is far more of a challenge as we have two big dogs hoolying in the garden!

I am also going to clear the side of the house (now a dumping ground) and plant peonies there. They won't be seen by anyone but I'm going to use them as cut flowers - I adore peonies and they are very expensive from florists and usually unavailable.

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Garden. Room. Walk

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jedijudy

Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333

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Boogie, I love peonies! Good luck with them. One of my dear childhood memories was watching my mother tend her gardens and how glorious the peonies were.

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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.

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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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If your climate is good for peonies (or if you select cultivars that suit your weather) they can be glorious. But they come and go too soon.
I am pleased to report that my hydrangeas did not die over the winter. I am a fan of extravagant bloom.

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Boogie

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# 13538

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quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:
Boogie, I love peonies! Good luck with them. One of my dear childhood memories was watching my mother tend her gardens and how glorious the peonies were.

Thank you! They only flower once a year, so no wonder they can't be bought easily.


quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
If your climate is good for peonies (or if you select cultivars that suit your weather) they can be glorious.

I have one plant and its flowers are indeed glorious!

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:

I am pleased to report that my hydrangeas did not die over the winter.

Great news. Our hydrangeas adored the rain rain rain rain rain!

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:

I am a fan of extravagant bloom.

Me too!

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Chamois
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# 16204

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I've just come in from a satisfying two hours in the garden digging up dandelions. I haven't got a chance of eradicating them - dandelions and all the rose tribe seem to be indigenous to my area - but my philosophy is that a single dandelion removed means one dandelion fewer to spread seed all over the garden.

Our London Clay soil is definitely still much too cold for planting. The first few annual weeds are showing in the beds which get full sun but my potato bed is showing no signs of life at all. So I won't be planting my potatoes on Good Friday.

Time for a nice cup of tea after all the hard work pulling up roots.

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amber.
Ship's Aspiedestra
# 11142

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Waving to all. Long time since I've been around on gardening threads.
Our poor garden has suffered from the rain. And, indeed, from me not giving it enough attention. The bottom half near the stream is now mostly deep puddles, and the top half requires extensive waving of shears and other implements. I would claim that we have a lawn, but it seems to be mostly moss.
Glad to learn of Monty Don's fine advice to sit indoors and contemplate it all, instead [Smile]

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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Hi Amber. Good to see you.

Trouble is, I expect Mr Don can garden when he likes: the rest of us have to hope for a combination of weather and time and a chance to get to the garden centre. On which subject - bijou moanette: time was there were stores, or parts of them, selling plants and horticultural requisites within walking distance. All gone. Now it's either whatever some supermarkets decide to briefly feature in their Seasonal range, or the full-on motorised expedition to some sprawling campus where you have to fight your way through the coffee shops and country outfitters to actually find a few packets of seeds and a bag of mulch.

[ 22. March 2016, 10:48: Message edited by: Firenze ]

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Ariel
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# 58

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I've given up my allotment and am taking an indefinite break from gardening, mud-encrusted boots, slugs, a car boot full of sacks of grass and bindweed, allotment theft, tomato blight, etc.

I'll miss the fresh rhubarb and lavender but not the other things.

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Boogie

Boogie on down!
# 13538

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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:

I'll miss the fresh rhubarb and lavender but not the other things.

A nice pot of lavender somewhere maybe?

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Penny S
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# 14768

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It was the blackbirds trampling - I'm going to move the peanut butter, as they are now trampling the terracotta bowl of bulbs.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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It is probably cheaper to go to the farmers' market and simply buy the produce you need. Gardening (tools, mulch, sprays, seeds, young plants) really adds up!

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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page

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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
A nice pot of lavender somewhere maybe?

I thought of that but there isn't anywhere to put it, unfortunately - it won't thrive indoors and outside is a car park. A pity because I had seven little lavenders (mauves, pinks and whites), until someone dug one up and went off with it, but maybe one of these days I'll have somewhere to leave a pot outside safely.
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ArachnidinElmet
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# 17346

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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
...time was there were stores, or parts of them, selling plants and horticultural requisites within walking distance. All gone. Now it's either whatever some supermarkets decide to briefly feature in their Seasonal range, or the full-on motorised expedition to some sprawling campus where you have to fight your way through the coffee shops and country outfitters to actually find a few packets of seeds and a bag of mulch.

Very true. We have quite a number of pretty good garden centres/nurseries round about, both of the mostly plant and the combined home décor/café kind. None of them are easy to get to in anything but a car, often involving a 4 bus round trip. Not fun with anything bulky, although in compensation they're a pretty good source of cake.

Not much gardening being done here, but the spring bulbs all look pretty good. We have a sea of mini daffs.

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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka

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jacobsen

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# 14998

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Whilst sitting in the GP's waiting room, I came across Alan Titmarsh on roses - (sadly, only in the Express magazine.) I now feel enthused about getting more rose bushes and letting loose with my supply of organic compost, straight from the horse's - ass and well-rotted over a couple of years. [Big Grin]

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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.

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Offeiriad

Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031

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Firenze, support your local nurseries where they still exist, but Scotland has some of the finest online rare plant nurseries in the world - I even buy from Scottish nurseries here in France!
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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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quote:
Originally posted by Offeiriad:
Scotland has some of the finest online rare plant nurseries in the world

I'm sure: we have two apple trees (Hawthornden and Lemon Queen) got from a chap in Perthshire who cultivates rare Scottish varieties. My moan is more that, when a month or so ago, I wanted some hyacinth bulbs, there was nowhere in my normal orbit where I could just roll up and buy them.

It's not rare plants I want, just ordinary ones.

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Nicodemia
WYSIWYG
# 4756

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One of our local garden centres (we have 5 within a 20 min drive!) had me seething on Monday. Twice a year, on birthdays, we go there, join up with family, and have a nice lunch, followed by a mooch round the centre. To my horror, this year it has completely changed all its departments round! There is now a VERY long walk to the restaurant, past hideously expensive patio furniture, some pretty hideous anyway, through seed potatoes, gardening implements etc. Not good for the disabled. The entrance was once full of delicious edibles, artisan this and that, and things you never see anywhere else. Easy to buy, especially if you are hungry. Now its next to the restaurant, so you come out, full of now rather ordinary food, and the last thing you want to look at is food!

And all the lovely and very buy-able knick knacks, toiletries have disappeared. I'm sure they are somewhere, but I couldn't find them!

Its so boring now. I wrote and told them I wouldn't be going again. So there!

On the flowery front, I have some gorgeous early tulips in a pot, bright orange with yellow streaks, which cheer up the view from the kitchen window no end! I love having patio pots, but the rain, rain, rain seems to have done for one pot of tulips!

Daffodils in garden doing fine however. Been out while soil is softish waging war on buttercup, but I can never win!

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Penny S
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# 14768

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Something has been digging little scrapes into my raised beds. I clearly haven't got rid of the rats. (Have holes for hedgehogs - not flipping likely?)
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Sandemaniac
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# 12829

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Scrofula! Great hairy stacks of arse gravy!

First the allotment was way too sticky to to anything on, so came home, to find that the hedge trimmer won't start, there's so much plastic on it I have a bastard of a time finding anywhere to earth the plug to see if it sparks, and I'm far from convnced that fuel is getting to the cylinder anyway.

Ah well, got some other stuff done instead...

AG

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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869

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Ariel
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# 58

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I've given up my allotment. It's not the same as having your own garden. I never felt the same way about it since someone targeted it last year and kept helping themselves to my stuff, and then my plants.

Someone else can have that pleasure and wrestle with the grass, bindweed, slugs, cabbage flies, blight, periodic floods and sharp-eyed intruders with carrier bags.

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Boogie

Boogie on down!
# 13538

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I started clearing the rubble from the prospective peony bed today [Yipee]

(Plus a large Canadian Canoe, which has had to find a new home!)

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Graven Image
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# 8755

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A week of raining has stopped so I took a walk to the garden.
Peas are up along with potatoes, chard, chives, parsley, and cardoon. Also up and doing well are a whole bunch of weeds. I know what I will be doing next week. I usually do not plant a garden until May but decided to plant seeds last fall and cover up chives and parsley with straw and it worked.

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Penny S
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# 14768

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Neighbour's buddleia down. My plastic grow house tipped over. Fence looking wobbly. Wind still strong.
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Chamois
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# 16204

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The gale has blown down one of my sprouting broccoli plants, so it looks like broccoli for lunch.

Everything else looks fine but I haven't actually been outside yet the wind is still so strong.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011  |  IP: Logged
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768

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My strawberry plant stack of three metal baskets is in the hole I tried to dig for the water tank and which is intended to grow watercress. It all disappeared last year, seedlings and rooted stems from Waitrose, all at once. The little crawlers can't rasp away the hairy bittercress, oh no, not good enough for them.

This year, it will be planted in gravel with poultry grit on top, and inter-planted with said hairy bittercress.

The USB lead from the camera in the bird box had been pulled askew by the honeysuckle, which had been pulled out of position by the old washing line support, which is supposed to be leaning against the cupboard, waiting to be found a useful re-use. Probably fixing the growhouse more securely.

One good thing. The wire pergola overgrown with Albertine rose, which had fallen in every previous strong wind in the winter, is still standing, supported by a wire coat-hanger round the gate post, though it does seem to have loosened a metal bracket which was supposed to add to the wire.

Memo to self. Take some stuff to the dry-cleaners. I have only one hanger left.

Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009  |  IP: Logged
Chamois
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# 16204

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Glad to hear the Albertine pergola is still standing, Penny S. Albertine is a glorious rose.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011  |  IP: Logged
Penny S
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# 14768

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This is the rose from the porch over my grandparents' house. My mother used to take cuttings of it, and the honeysuckle that grew with it whenever we moved, but in the last move, when she was ill, she didn't manage to do it.

And then, I happened to go past the house, and saw the originals were still there, so I wrote to the occupants and was invited to go and take cuttings again. I had to go again for the honeysuckle, but both are now doing fine, and I also have a choysia which the lady there gave me as well. They must have moved in straight after my grandparents. The honeysuckle is one with paired flowers, which I have seen growing wild about Sussex and Kent, but which is not native. I also have the native one with the big pink clusters which my parents had in their last home.

I have a problem with Grandad's mints, though. They didn't do well at my last place, and I thought I had lost one altogether (and again, couldn't go back to get clones). They don't do well in pots, either, but if I put them in the ground here, they go bananas.

I have quite a few cloned things with histories, and some not cloned but the same variety of things we grew up with.

Sadly, I have lost the dark red cowslip Mum had found somewhere, and her horseshoe trefoil, and the corydalis. I had two goes at the cowslip, which since primroses and primulas do well I am puzzled by, and I can't find a supplier anywhere, except in huge nursery quantities. The others should be fairly easy to get hold of, being of the weed type of thing! I think they got overgrown by the inherited London Pride.

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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The FSB has been and dug up about a third of the garden, couch grass and all, bless him.

I am thinking though, that with average temperatures still in single figures, I have a little time before planting season. Any recommendations for ground coverers and self-seeding stalwarts?

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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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The daylily leaves are well up -- they do well n my area and spread readily. No blooms until June or so, of course. But the tender leaves are a favorite with deer, so i went out today and sprayed them with stinky deer repellent. This usually elicits an immediate thunderstorm.

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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page

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jacobsen

seeker
# 14998

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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Any recommendations for ground coverers and self-seeding stalwarts?

Nasturtiums will take over the earth, for a season, and come back year after year. Rather like Starwars.

I have a healthy clump of primulas in a border and noticed yesterday, courtesy of the wind which gave the first opportunity this year to dry my washing OUTSIDE, that there was a procession of baby primulas which had seeded themselves across the grass in a line heading for the midday sun. I was reminded of the Israelites in the deserts, except that their path must have been spiral in order to have made it last for 40 years.
[Big Grin]

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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.

Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009  |  IP: Logged
Penny S
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# 14768

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You really don't want vinca, do you?
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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Cleome will selfseed forever and ever and ever, provided you either leave the dead flower stalks in place at the end of the year, or at least give them a good shake before discarding them. They will pop up in spring everywhere, though they prefer sidewalk and driveway cracks above all.

Feverfew and catmint also selfseed everywhere, and are easily pulled out where you don't want them. Unlike a lot of things.

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Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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Vinca has already crept in from next door.

Funny thing about nasturtiums - every year I sow seeds in a little strip between the brick wall and some paving, which is the kind of poor soil they are supposed to like. And usually they come up - and one year they boiled over and went racing down the borders. But they never self seed. I have tried them in other places, but to no avail.

It's like the conundrum of the bindweed, which thrives. But plant its cultivated cousin, Morning Glory - and zilch.

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Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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You could use herbs as ground cover. Mint is notorious for taking over and comes in lots of varieties. Thymes and sages are good ground cover plants, and come in a range of pretty colours. Both are perennial or self seeding. Oregano is supposed to work, but I've never managed to grow it. Alpine strawberries can form perennial ground cover which doesn't spread, or ordinary strawberries allowed to spread. I'm not sure about c(h)amomile, because it's supposed to work to create lawns, but I've never tried.

Bay trees, rosemary, angelica and/or fennel could add height. Just don't plant rue - it might add height but other plants don't like it.

There's a variegated vinca which is prettier and (marginally) less invasive.

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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat

Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768

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There's a ground hugging hypericum used in parks, and variegated ivies (to cut down the thuggishness). Also varieties of lamium.
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