The Gardening Thread

[pipnasty]

We often get frosts round here until the first week of June (we had snow in May last year) which leaves us with a very short growing season. So, you need a bit of luck sometimes when planting things out with the aim to try and get stuff in the ground as soon as possible. We were going to plant out all of our beans and courgettes last week but, in the end, I just couldn't be arsed. Which is good, cos this small cold and wet spell has brought out all of the hungry slugs and snails and they would have ate the lot by now. The weather looks better next week though.

[charlie clown]

On 05/05/2022 at 12:48, pipnasty said:

We often get frosts round here until the first week of June (we had snow in May last year) which leaves us with a very short growing season. So, you need a bit of luck sometimes when planting things out with the aim to try and get stuff in the ground as soon as possible. We were going to plant out all of our beans and courgettes last week but, in the end, I just couldn't be arsed. Which is good, cos this small cold and wet spell has brought out all of the hungry slugs and snails and they would have ate the lot by now. The weather looks better next week though.

Yeah, I put a load of dahlias in the borders about six weeks back, more through impatience than anything and then we got a frost or two a week or so later. I'm hoping they were sheltered enough for it not to have hit them too hard but I won't really know until the end of May.

Late frosts are a real bugger though. I'm convinced it killed all the pears on our aging pear tree a couple of years back when we had a late deep-ish one when the blossom was out.

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by charlie clown

[charlie clown]

Finally getting my kitchen garden into shape...

 

[pipnasty]

Looks great that - nice one

[Rex Ham]

On 05/05/2022 at 12:16, charlie clown said:

I always plant second earlies. Where does this leave me?

...between a rock and a hard place...

[Jarg Armani]

I planted some dried beans from the cupboard a few weeks ago just to see if anything would happen. Something has happened, they are growing like mad, and now I need to pot them out somewhere. I haven't got a raised bed yet, we have got some trellis on the fence, any ideas? I could put them in containers with some cane in near the trellis I suppose.

 

Black turtle bean and haricot they are btw.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Jarg Armani

[pipnasty]

Jarg and the Beanstalk

[Senrab_nhoj]

1 minute ago, Jarg Armani said:

I planted some dried beans from the cupboard a few weeks ago just to see if anything would happen. Something has happened, they are growing like mad, and now I need to pot them out somewhere. I haven't got a raised bed yet, we have got some trellis on the fence, any ideas? I could put them in containers with some cane in near the trellis I suppose.

 

Black turtle bean and haricot they are btw.

Sounds like a sensible plan

[D.Boon]

1 hour ago, charlie clown said:

Finally getting my kitchen garden into shape...

 

Yes! A forum reveal!!

[charlie clown]

4 hours ago, D.Boon said:

Yes! A forum reveal!!

haha - second forum pic of me in the last few months that after Falconhoof posting at Christmas. That twitter pic is ages old though - IIRC it was from A@A's stags weekend.... one amount of beer.

[D.Boon]

Ah yes I remember you looking suave with Falconhoof. 

[Barnesy_10]

gonna build a compost bin this week... proper excited about it 

I have a leaf vacuum which minces the leaves up... will that be better than just putting full leaves in it?

[Gethin]

12 minutes ago, Barnesy_10 said:

gonna build a compost bin this week... proper excited about it 

I have a leaf vacuum which minces the leaves up... will that be better than just putting full leaves in it?

You can absolutely do that - and the mulching will help, but personally I treat leaf mulch and regular compost differently.

My regular compost gets lawn cuttings, less chunky garden waste, uncooked (non-meat) food waste, shredded paper. This takes 4-6 months to be useful compost providing you turn it reasonably regularly

The leaves go in another bin and can take a year or longer to break down to something useful

I use the compost on the veggies and new plants as it's got more nutrients in it than the mulch.

I use the leaf mulch as general mulch on my flower beds

[Barnesy_10]

35 minutes ago, Gethin said:

You can absolutely do that - and the mulching will help, but personally I treat leaf mulch and regular compost differently.

My regular compost gets lawn cuttings, less chunky garden waste, uncooked (non-meat) food waste, shredded paper. This takes 4-6 months to be useful compost providing you turn it reasonably regularly

The leaves go in another bin and can take a year or longer to break down to something useful

I use the compost on the veggies and new plants as it's got more nutrients in it than the mulch.

I use the leaf mulch as general mulch on my flower beds

yeah that all makes sense! cheers for the advice

[Gethin]

2 hours ago, Barnesy_10 said:

yeah that all makes sense! cheers for the advice

I’ve just spent 3 hours moving leaf mulch and turning compost cos of this, so I’m blaming you for being achy as f*** now. You f***er. 

Needed doing, but that’s not the point here. I’d have gladly ignored it for a couple of weeks

[Barnesy_10]

4 hours ago, Gethin said:

I’ve just spent 3 hours moving leaf mulch and turning compost cos of this, so I’m blaming you for being achy as f*** now. You f***er. 

Needed doing, but that’s not the point here. I’d have gladly ignored it for a couple of weeks

Sorry mate. But it got you out and about and took your mind off the pre match nerves.

So this moving and turning mulch and compost. Is it simply just shoving your hoe or spade into the heap and mixing it about? 

 

[charlie clown]

12 hours ago, Barnesy_10 said:

Sorry mate. But it got you out and about and took your mind off the pre match nerves.

So this moving and turning mulch and compost. Is it simply just shoving your hoe or spade into the heap and mixing it about? 

 

The usual advice is to 'turn it'. Which basically means taking the top layer off with a garden fork and putting it into a pile, upside-down, usually in an adjacent spot. Then taking the next layer and doing the same, landing this second layer on top of the first layer you took off. Repeat over and over and until you've effectively turned your whole heap upside down. It aerates the compost which in turn stimulates the breakdown of the raw materials. It's supposed to speed up the end-to-end composting process.

[Gethin]

12 hours ago, Barnesy_10 said:

Sorry mate. But it got you out and about and took your mind off the pre match nerves.

So this moving and turning mulch and compost. Is it simply just shoving your hoe or spade into the heap and mixing it about? 

 

That it did - almost fell asleep at half time though

Basically what CC just said. I use something like this for turning the compost https://www.homebargains.co.uk/products/4381-garden-garden-claw.aspx

I was doing a bit more than that yesterday. I've got four 1.5 cubic metre bins and wanted to get them so that they've got:

Bin 1: New stuff for composting

Bin 2: 2-6 months old, almost ready to use compost.

Bin 3: Ready to use

Bin 4: Leaf mulch.

Bins 3 & 4 both had last autumn's leaves in them and were packed full in November - but they'd broken down enough to combine them, Then I shifted 3/4 of the contents of bin 1 (the dark stuff at the bottom) to bin 2.

Dead interesting stuff but it's very satisfying turning waste into something productive. Saves loads of trips to the tip too

Edited May 11, 2022 by Gethin

[charlie clown]

ha - makes mine look like a right eyesore.

[Barnesy_10]

yeah thats a beauty of a compost heap that Gethin... I guess you have guests who don't want to see an eyesore from their bedroom windows 

[Gethin]

2 minutes ago, Barnesy_10 said:

yeah thats a beauty of a compost heap that Gethin... I guess you have guests who don't want to see an eyesore from their bedroom windows 

Yeah - one of the rooms directly overlooks that, so you've got to have it looking respectable. Made the frame of it out of the railway sleepers that were still intact when I re-landscaped a different part of the garden a couple of years back. The rest of it is just OSB and 2x1

[charlie clown]

I've had a long list of jobs to do which with being away at weekends, recovery from the seizure, torrential rain, shortening daylight, I've not been able to get round to for months. With the glorious weather on Saturday and the first half of Sunday, and little else in the diary, I managed at last to get at least some of those jobs ticked off. So I've planted about 400 bulbs for the spring, mowed the lawn, got some winter flowering stuff into pots, tidied up loads of garbage that's just accumulated in some parts of the garden, planted up and mulched a new stretch of border, turned the compost, pulled up about a hundred saplings that were crowding out a stretch of woody undergrowth... It was knackering but it felt so good to get out and and my hands dirty again. Another (therapeutic) step towards normality.

[Bootser]

Charlie Thrower Good man yourself!

[charlie clown]

I recently discovered that a remote little farm building about two miles down the road from us has a massive horse manure pile that you can dig yourself for free. I went down on Saturday and it is superb quality stuff. I lined the back of the car with polythene, put in a builders bag and with my wellies and a garden fork I filled the bag as much as I could. I mulched a lot of the fruit & veg plot and one of the flowering beds on Saturday. Yesterday I did a post-winter tidy up of one of the other beds.

Small steps but as a first garden session of the year it was pretty positive. I needed to go back to the s*** heap another half a dozen times to get all the manure I need but that's OK. It's like black gold and its completely free.  We've got glorious weather today so I'm sat here wishing I could be out there again but there's work-work to do...

[Nebraska Red]

Our back garden looks decimated and almost bare. North East Florida was hit by numerous hard frosts the past couple of months which destroyed many of the tropical plants that grow here.

We have trimmed back almost everything that was showing signs of new growth, but we will need to replace more than half of the plants we had before. 

We'll be looking closely at the hardiness stats on all the new stuff we look at in the coming weeks.