Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Sports, Hobbies & Interests => Topic started by: Steve H on January 19, 2021, 12:00:58 PM
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We should have a gardening thread.
I have removed three of my apple trees in the back garden, because really I had far too many, and have released space for a new vegetable plot (I gave up my allotment a few years ago, because it was difficult to manage it with a full-time job, being half a mile away, but in my own back garden it should be possible). I've been looking at the 'Real Seeds' catalogue online, a firm which specialises in unusual varieties, and a wooden compost bin kit, of which I may buy two.* I had three home-made bins constructed from odd bits of wood, but they have more or less rotted away. Two is a good idea, so that you can have one maturing and one providing mature compost. Three is even better - one being filled, one maturing, and one being emptied - but two will do for now. These Harrod bins are good and capacious, and aren't made of plastic, which I try to avoid.
* (Harrod, not Harrods: I don't think they're connected with the posh department store.) (https://www.harrodhorticultural.com/rowlinson-allotment-compost-bin-pid8055.html?Aff=GPL&msclkid=b471de6d706e15cf1a8bbe6b628e0387&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Low%20Priority%20Shopping&utm_term=4579465931958544&utm_content=All%20Products)
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I suspect I won't be participating since I can kill a cactus with a loom, but stickied the topic for others.
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I suspect I won't be participating since I can kill a cactus with a loom, but stickied the topic for others.
Thanks!
Real Seeds. (https://www.realseeds.co.uk/index.html)
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I suspect I won't be participating since I can kill a cactus with a loom, but stickied the topic for others.
Ffs! A look! I would think anyone could kill a cactus with s loom
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Ffs! A look! I would think anyone could kill a cactus with s loom
I wondered what you meant!
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My one tip, always use gloves.
Not only does it protect you from all manner of prickly plants, but cats, much though I love them, use gardens.......I need not say any more!
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Much too wet to do anything in the way of gardening at the moment, but I will be buying seeds and a couple of tomato mini-greenhouses online soon. Tomato mini-greenhouse. (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Greenhouse-Tomato-Plant-PE-Cover-Bag-Garden-Grow-Green-House-Reinforced-Frame/393097004583?_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20160908110712%26meid%3Da463932df6254baba7a777fcaf19719f%26pid%3D100677%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D30%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D373277331442%26itm%3D393097004583%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2386202%26algv%3DSimplAMLv5PairwiseWeb&_trksid=p2386202.c100677.m4598)
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By "much too wet", I mean not just the stuff coming down, but also, and indeed more importantly, the stuff already in the ground, which is sodden. It'll be weeks before it's diggable.
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I prefer artificial plants in our home, and a few in the garden, these days they look like the real thing. Steve will no doubt freak out at the thought of it. ;D
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I prefer artificial plants in our home, and a few in the garden, these days they look like the real thing. Steve will no doubt freak out at the thought of it. ;D
What a dreadful idea!
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I must be psychic, I thought you would say something like that. ;D Most of our outdoor plants are real, but indoors plants make my eyes and nose run, so artificial ones are best.
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Well, I won't be doing any gardening at least until the snow melts, so watch this space...
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Just bought the March edition of 'Grow Your Own' magazine (we're not even out of January, ffs!), with a useful selection of free seeds, and a seed catalogue to supplement them. Now I just need to find a supplier online of rare spud varieties.
https://flic.kr/p/2kwabF1
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I found a rare spud supplier, and am going to order these:
https://www.seedpotatoesdirect.co.uk/maincrop-seed-potatoes/80-299-salad-blue-seed-potatoes.html#/30-pack_size-1kg
https://www.seedpotatoesdirect.co.uk/maincrop-seed-potatoes/48-pink-fir-apple-seed-potatoes.html
Both of which are interestingly unusual. I've grown 'Pink Fir Apple' before; it's a good general-purpose spud, not just for salads.
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Sowed onions (Red Baron) and Rosemary in general-purpose compost in seed trays today. The compost wasn't organic, I'm afraid, or at least it didn't specifically say that t was. I try to be organic, but t isn't always possible.
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Just checked my emails. The seed-potatoes may take some time to arrive, apparently, due to Covid, snow, etc., and the compost bins have been despatched, but I've got to allow up to five days. Well, they do say that gardening teaches you patience...
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I was out in the back garden this morning, measuring and roughly marking plots. John Seymour (the late great) recommends deep beds 5' wide and up to 20' long, and I can only fit three in side by side at that width, so I may have to go with a three-year crop rotation, which isn't as good as a four- or five-year, but will have to do. John Harrison in 'The Complete Vegetable Grower' recommends, if you use a three-year plan, solanaceae (spuds and toms*) followed by brassicas (cabbages and relatives) followed by everything else.
*and chillies, capsicums, aubergines, tobacco, and deadly nightshade. I may one day try chillies and capsicums, but not aubergines, which I'm not wild about, and definitely not the other two.
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Just to note I am passively (very) enjoying Steve's updates
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The compost bins arrived an hour ago - see photos in link. I've erected one, and the other can wait until tomorrow. They are simple to construct, but quite hard work: the mortise joints are quite stiff, and need hammering.
Having re-measured, I have discovered that I have, just about, got room for four 4'x15' deep beds, with 12" paths between them. The furthest bed from the house will be partly under the outermost branches of the big apple tree, which is not ideal, but not disastrous. It'll still get plenty of sun.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmU6nHZv
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My seed potatoes have arrived, and I've laid them out to chit (sprout). They're both old and rare varieties: 'Pink Fir Apple' on the left, the long, pinkish ones, and 'Salad Blue' on the right, which has dark blue skin and flesh, and the colour apparently survives cooking. Blue mashed potato might be an interesting novelty.
https://flic.kr/p/2kzPWSV
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My seed potatoes have arrived, and I've laid them out to chit (sprout). They're both old and rare varieties: 'Pink Fir Apple' on the left, the long, pinkish ones, and 'Salad Blue' on the right, which has dark blue skin and flesh, and the colour apparently survives cooking. Blue mashed potato might be an interesting novelty.
https://flic.kr/p/2kzPWSV
Did they come from inside the UK?
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Did they come from inside the UK?
Yes - Perth.
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'Red Baron' onion (left) and rosemary seedlings, which have popped up in the last few days, in the heated propagator (top removed for photo).
https://flic.kr/p/2kCaTDu
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Rain forecast until Sunday, and the ground's already sodden! When on earth am I going to be able to dig my new vegetable plots at this rate? >:( >:( >:(
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My son recently gave me some pre-planted pots of primulas in various colours, and narcissi. The primulas are already in full flower, having been grown under glass, presumably, and the narcissi are also well advanced. They're supposed to stay in the bowls as indoor plants, but they're all fully hardy, and have been hardened off over the last few days, and haven't come to any harm, so I've just planted them all in the front garden, teasing the roots out in the approved manner to prevent them continuing to grow round in a circle.
He also provided a camellia, which is a bit more problematical, as it grows up to 3 metres high and wide, but I can squeeze it in at the back of the back garden, though it'll be too close to the big apple tree to be ideal. I've told him not to provide any more large shrubs or trees, and to check the label for the ultimate dimensions!
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Just pricked out the 'Red Baron' onions into fibre pots. The rosemary seedlings need to be a bit bigger before I do them.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmUpyzMe
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Continued digging my deep beds. I will be doing more later. Pricked out my rosemary seedlings into individual pots. Yesterday, I planted more primulas and two pinks, a white pink and a pink pink, in the front garden, and sowed tropaeolum (nasturtium) seeds in fibre pots. I have just ordered online two big bags of shredded horse sh - er - manure, as I haven't got any compost ready to use.
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Two big, very heavy bags of shredded horse
sh manure arrived today. I will spread it on the spud bed tomorrow.
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The front garden, this morning, primulas and 'Tete-a-tete' narcissi in bloom. I've also recently planted lavender, which will bloom later, and tropaeolum ("nasturtium") seedlings, which will also bloom later. I've got some rosemary seedlings to plant out when they're bigger, and two small plants of rosemary in the garden. Rosemary and lavender are bee-friendly, as is apple-blossom, of which I have lots later in the Spring. I discovered a few weeks ago that the pretty and edible annual that I've been calling "nasturtium" all my life is really called tropaeolum, the true nasturtiums being watercresses, and unrelated.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmUWQcHW
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Third deep bed - the nearest one - finally dug. It's jolly hard work, because as well as digging - hard work in itself - I had to remove nettle and couch-grass roots as I went, which is also hard work. I didn't get all the roots up by any means, but I got all the thick, tough ones, and as much of the thinner ones as practicable, which will at least give them a major set-back. After that, I'll have to hoe off any that appear above ground, which will keep them under control and gradually weaken them. Fortunately, I don't have to re-dig the beds every year: once every 2-3 years is recommended for deep beds, so I might do one every year, in rotation (like the crops). I think the logical thing to do would be to dig the coming year's spud bed every winter, since it's a different bed each year.
In order from the furthest bed towards the camera, they are for potatoes and tomatoes (closely related); legumes (peas and beans); brassicas (cabbages, kale, etc., and possible turnips and/or swede, which are also brassicas); and the as yet undug bed nearer to the camera will be for everything else (mainly onions and chard this year). The rotation is away from the camera: spuds & toms will be followed by legumes, then brassicas, then everything else. The spud and tom bed has had horse manure on it, and the legume bed compost, both purchased. I may buy some more - you can't have too much.
Note the piled-up weed roots on the camera side of the nearest bed!
https://flic.kr/p/2kMCjce
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Will,
Should it be illegal to cut down a tree or hedge, unless it is dead, dying or causing damage? I hate seeing trees cut down.
My Mum's front hedge was Leylandi, it wasn't trimmed properly by the previous owners, so stuck out over the neighbours driveway and the pavement. Eventually we had to cut the lower branches back to the wood, so they would never sprout again, but had a couple of feet of growth at the top. Mum recently decided she wanted a new hedge. I've been pruning this one for 20 years, so I was a bit gutted. Some men came and chainsawed it down, promising to remove the stumps as well (17 of them).
They came with the stump grinder and ground down to a few inches below the surface, saying they couldn't go any further. The stumps are still there. They want £400 for that! Ripped off or what. Some people are just out to make a quick buck. Well I'm now going to show them how to do their job, I have already excavated and dug out 4 of them and hope to do the rest this week.
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We were charged £1,500 for a large tree to be cut down, which was too close to the house at our previous property.
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I hate seeing trees cut down (with the possible exception of Leylandii, which is the world's biggest weed, and a bloody menace), but sometimes it has to happen.
I've finally got something in the ground: my spuds (Salad Blue and Pink Fir Apple) in the solenaceae bed (haven't left any room for toms, so I won't grow them this year), and my kale (Scarlet, a red variety, obv.) and radishes (French Breakfast 3) in the brassica bed. Continued digging the last bed, the "everything else" one, which this year will be onions and Swiss Chard. Next job: sow runner beans in individual fibre pots. That'll have to wait until I buy more fibre pots and seed compost.
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I agree that trees shouldn't be cut down unless it is absolutely necessary. We were sad to see a monkey puzzle tree I had planted at our previous property had been cut down. It was about 20ft high, when we left there, it nowhere near the house and not doing any harm at all. :o
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Just dug a bit more of the everything-else bed, and planted out the onion seedlings in the bit I'd dug, as they'd been in fibre pots too long already.
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I hate seeing trees cut down (with the possible exception of Leylandii, which is the world's biggest weed, and a bloody menace), but sometimes it has to happen.
In defence of the Leyland Cypress, if pruned properly they make excellent screens and eliminate the need for fencing, which of course has to be replaced every so often.
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In defence of the Leyland Cypress, if pruned properly they make excellent screens and eliminate the need for fencing, which of course has to be replaced every so often.
There are other good screening and hedging plants, which don't shoot up into the stratosphere the second you turn your back.
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There are a lot of those trees as hedges in our neighbourhood. The neighbours spend a lot of time in spring and summer clipping them.
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I agree that trees shouldn't be cut down unless it is absolutely necessary. We were sad to see a monkey puzzle tree I had planted at our previous property had been cut down. It was about 20ft high, when we left there, it nowhere near the house and not doing any harm at all. :o
Same here - a hedge my Dad and I planted in our old garden in the 1980s recently disappeared. Mind you, it was a leylandii!
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It's probably in a hedge museum, somewhere, £20 to see it.
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Beautiful, sunny day, so I'm finishing building my compost heap. I've just got back from a trip out to pick weeds from beside country roads, and have almost filled one bin. I will go out again later and get a load more. I try to complete filling a bin in a few days, so that I can get a hot composting process going. I tore up two big cardboard boxes (which originally contained two bags of composted horse manure, hence the word "compost" rather appropriately printed on one piece) and screwed them up to make 3-D shapes, and put them in the bottom to encourage air flow, then piled the greenery, plus some more bits of cardboard and tougher stuff to provide structure, on top.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmVdzPUF
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I have finally finished digging the "everything else" bed, and sown Swiss Chard and "Lollo Rossa" Lettuce. The previously-dug half of the bed contains my onions. I don't know how much of what I've planted and sown will come up; it may have a lot of competition from perennial weeds. I've been removing roots as I dig, but have inevitably left some behind. At some stage, I may have to temporarily forget my organic principles, zap them all with weedkiller, and then go back to being organic.
Yesterday, I finished filling one compost bin, with weeds gathered from beside footpaths. I watered that heap this morning, and also the beds, as we haven't had significant rain for some time.
I don't think I'll grow onions in the future; I'll grow shallots instead, as they are much easier than onions: you plant whole shallots, and each one multiplies underground, so that you harvest a bunch of them. I read somewhere that the word "onion" is related to "union", "one", etc., because it is the only member of the allium family which doesn't multiply, providing many bulbs or cloves from one, unlike shallots, garlic, etc. That may be a load of Ronnie Rollocks, but it makes sense.
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Just bought an oscillating sprinkler hose attachment, which sprays a rectangular area, from Wilco, and set it up to water the veg. plot for an hour or so, because we haven't had any significant rain for some time.
I hope the weather warms up soon - my apple trees are on the verge of blossoming, and I want warm weather to encourage the bees and other pollenating insects.
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Filled the second compost bin with stuff collected from beside footpaths, plus screwed-up newspaper and cardboard to provide roughage. Weeded veg. beds. I have 12 runner bean seeds and 12 climbing bean seeds in fibre pots, to be planted out in May, but they have yet to germinate. Also collected seeds from hips on my old rose 'Honorine De Brabant', and sowed them, to see what comes up. Rose seeds are notoriously slow to germinate, so I may have to wait. a while. Split a big bag of compost between the two apple trees in the front garden, as a mulch, yesterday. I wish something other than my radishes would appear above ground! I think my onions have died.
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A pink (Dianthus) plant in my front garden, variety unknown, with one flower bigger and pinker than all the others. I wonder if it's a sport (genetic mutation), or a normal variation. I must find out how to propagate pinks, in case it's the former. (It could also be a reversion, which is the opposite of a sport: when a variety that began as a sport throws out a branch which reverts to the original variety. 'Rosa Mundi', a sport of the very old rose 'Rosa gallica "officinalis"' is a frequent reverter.)
https://flic.kr/p/2kUdGZJ
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My runner and climbing beans are germinating in their fibre pots on the windowsill. I will have to get some bamboo poles to grow them up. In the beds, something has finally appeared above ground apart from the radishes: a few of my 'Salad Blue' spuds have appeared, though none of the 'Pink Fir Apple' so far. I think all my onions, planted out a few weeks ago, are dead.
My compost heaps were showing no sign of heating up, probably because the material was too coarse. They had both sunk, so this morning I combined them in one bin, shredding everything by hand, which was tedious and took some time, but everything is now much more finely shredded. Bunged in a couple of spadefuls of soil to get the bacteria off to a head start.
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17 tree stumps removed - some quite small, others so big I had to use a masonry chisel and hammer to cut the main root out, as I couldn't fit a saw into the hole. Loppers great for roots.
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17?! Fuckest thou me - getting one out is an exhausting all-day job, in my book! How long did that take?
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Bought five rosemary plants for £10 a few days ago, and planted them in a row along the front of the front garden, in line with the two I planted a month or two ago. Today, I bought a large lavender plant for £8, and planted it in the back garden, between two apple trees. I may buy two more, and plant them in the other two gaps between trees. Both lavender and rosemary are great bee-attractors, which is good news both for the environment and for my apple trees, since their flowering periods overlap. Rosemary is also a useful culinary herb. Discovered that the Linnaean name for rosemary is not, as I thought, Rosmarinus officinalis, but Salvia rosmarinus - it was officially changed in 2017.
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It is an immutable law of gardening that however much compost material you collect, and however quickly you collect it, you will never fill a bin to the brim. I've been proving it again this afternoon.
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Hooray! My cabbages have appeared after all! I've just been in the garden, and there they were, lots of little seedlings in two rows. One advantage of sowing in drills is that the seedlings appear in straight lines, which makes them easy to distinguish from weeds.) I have done some initial thinning, and will have to do more later. I may created a seed bed for starting off brassicas for next year. I will now have to buy some netting to protect them from birds, especially those flying vermin, pigeons.
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AT LAST! My 'Pink Fir Apple' spuds have appeared above ground! The 'Salad Blue's appeared over a week ago, and I was beginning to despair of the PFA. It joins my cabbages and Swiss Chard, which I'd also given up on, which all appeared in the last 24 hours or so, and some of my onions, planted out a few weeks ago, and which I thought had died, have also resurrected! 😃
I assume this is all thanks to the heavy rain of the past 48 hours. I have been keeping the plot watered with my oscillating sprinkler, but that is probably not as effective as rain, since it only wets a given spot for about one second in ten.
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17?! Fuckest thou me - getting one out is an exhausting all-day job, in my book! How long did that take?
Hi Egbert, just seen this.
About 5 weeks. Yeah it was pretty exhausting, but satisfying. I've had a bit of experience when I took on an allotment covered in a mass of brambles that were very deep rooted. But with these stumps, I pretended I was an archaeologist and used a spade and a trowel to uncover the stumps, cutting away the side roots as I went. One weighed I reckon over 20kg, some were small as the trees had been outcompeted by the bigger ones. The hedge had been about 8 feet high, so not too massive!
Sounds like you're working wonders with your veggie patch, keep it up.
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Checked the weather forecast earlier: there doesn't seem to be any danger of frost in the next 10 days, and after that it's highly unlikely, so I planted out my runner beans (Scarlet Emperor, red flowers) and climbing French beans (Blue Lake, white flowers), 12 of each, at the bases of six four-cane pyramids, alternating the two varieties around each pyramid for a colour-contrast. Some of the Blue lakes had not appeared, but I planted their fibre pots anyway, in case they appear later I should have sown a few extra of each, to have spares in case of no-shows. Must remember next year. The soil is now wonderfully moist and friable after the recent rain; it was previously dry and lumpy, even after watering with the sprinkler.
The weather is lightly overcast but warm, with a light breeze, and the bees have been working hard on my apple-blossom, including the two late-bloomers, which are just starting to open.
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Been out in the garden removing weeds (there were plenty to remove), and planting out my courgette and squash plants in the "everything else" bed, where the onions and lettuces were, before the couch grass took over. (I weedkilled the couch grass a week or so ago.)
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Trying to decide what type of hedge to plant in place of the leylandii.
What do you think about yew? A friend told me it is the best. I don't like fully grown yews much - they aren't very easy to climb, too many branches and spikey bits - they seem nice when young, until they have to be trimmed, then they lose that Christmas tree look.
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A few months ago, my son bought a second-hand Briggs and Stratton petrol lawnmower - rather battered-looking, but it works. I used it yesterday to tackle the last overgrown area in the back garden, not just grass, but nettles, brambles, other weeds, and comfrey which I planted years ago as a compost activator. It ploughed through the lot, and chewed it all up into instant compost (well, not quite, as it still has to rot down, but it'll do so much more quickly chewed up than whole). It's terrific fun to operate, but it died on me before I'd finished - out of fuel. I'll have to buy more - I think it takes ordinary unleaded.
My runner beans are in full flower, bright red, but not yet my French beans, which will be white when they appear. My spuds are also in flower - 'Salad Blue' mauve, 'Pink Fir Apple' White. Spud flowers are quite weird and alien-looking, though pretty in their own way.
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Been using the petrol mower to chop up weeds for the compost heap. The heap heats up amazingly quickly when the ingredients are shredded, as the bugs have much more surface area to work on. I forked the heap up a bit, to mix in some kitchen waste, and the stuff from the middle that I brought to the top was literally steaming (and I do mean "literally" in the strict sense).
My apple trees are quite heavily laden, especially 'Cottenham Seedling' (cooker, 1920s) and 'Dabinett' (cider, c.1900). Looking forward to loads of cider in a couple of months.
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This afternoon, I tipped two sackoads of leafmould into one of the compost bins, which contained more-or-less finished compost. There was somewhat more leafmould than compost by volume, probably about 3:2. I mixed them together with the fork, and spread them around the apple trees as a mulch. leafmould doesn't contain much nutrient, but is a useful mulch, keeping weeds down, and eventually being dragged into the soil by worms, where it increases the depth of the humus, the largely organic top layer of soil, and aids water-retention. The leafmould was from last autumn's leaves, and still rather rough, but good enough for the purpose. If I'd left it another year or two, it'd've ended up like peat, and is a peat substitute.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=478
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Rather disappointing crop of spuds, especially 'Salad Blue', from two 15' rows. The 'Pink Fir Apple' were better, but not great. Possibly due to inadequate watering.
Better crop promised of dried beans from the 'Scarlet Emperor' runners and the French beans I can't remember the name of. The runner seeds are the big purple ones, the French seeds the small white ones, which are the haricot beans used in baked beans. This is just the first batch: there are lots more beans ripening. I've had some green and whole as well, but they're all a bit tough and stringy now, so I'll leave the rest to dry out and harvest the seeds.
PS - can't save the photos as attachments, for some reason: maybe they're too big. Will upload them to a Flickr album and post the link.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWSpgUR
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New hedge is in - 12 yews, each about 2 feet high.
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With the hosepipe ban now in place, I thought I'd dig around the roots of the 12 yew trees we planted in the spring, so that any rain and water from the watering can will seep into the soil rather than run off.