Gardening 2018

Airwave!

I've just separated the lavendar seeds from the stalks, that I harvested two weeks ago, its an ongoing job. Madam uses it in her crafts. These ones have grown and need digging up in the winter ready for some new ones.

I smell loverly!!!

Some of our shrubs have gone a bit woody and after extensive trimming and tiding I think they will have to be dug up. I was thinking of a small tree or a taller shrub next to a 7foot retaining wall, its a sunny sheltered spot.

Grass has been cut for the first time in over two months. Lots more to do.

barbara12

Gosh our garden is getting so untidy I was the gardener..OH try's but hoes plants has well has weeds :roll: we have decided to take out quite a few shrubs to make things easier..now lavender I have just been drying mine the bedrooms smells lovely..

Airwave!

Loverly smell isn't it! I've put the tops into a long carboard box and let it dry in the porch then just strip the seeds off. The plants are about ten years old which advice says is past their best by a few years, they will be replaced come next spring.

Rain has stopped play today.

dreamdaisy

Crikey, Airwave, steady on there lad! Last Friday we had all our lavender dug up because the drought, then three bouts of extraordinarily heavy rain and hail, finished off our elderly plants. Although there was some green and flowers all you could see was the very woody interiors. I think they had been in for at least twenty years so have done their bit.

We discovered we have a nicely-shaped flower bed which is now being shown in all its glory with just five plants, three silver grey-green speared leaf plants and two silver-white things with very wavy leaves and spikes of yellow flowers that look like the middle of daisies. The garden at that end looks oddly wider and bigger now all the lavender stragglers have gone and, with the deep blue of the garage wall behind them, the grey's and silvers look wonderful.

I think the recently colder nights have hit our young passion flower, it's very droopy. DD

Airwave!

I understand that professionally farmed growers change their plants every five years to stop them getting 'woody'. If you cut the stalks off every year it makes the plants put their growth into the flowers. A hedge trimmer is useful!

dreamdaisy

Thank you for the tip, we have a small clump in a flowerbed so I will try that with them. DD

Airwave!

They are in the trailer now and the six will be replaced with two, I have been so efficient farming the lavender that its not being used so just the two. I quite fancy a taller shrub, any suggestions, they need to be rugged to withstand high winds at the top, the others will be sheltered. Planting will be springtime.

dreamdaisy

Today I am trying an experiment. I have scattered a bag of cheap cooking salt over one part of our gravelled and very weedy drive, it is now raining gently and I am hoping that in due course weeds will be killed . . . . if it works it will be far cheaper than the chemicals which are effective but expensive. Does anyone have experience of this or is it an old wives' tale? DD

Airwave!

Thats a new one on me, I try to catch them while they are small, the weed wand (gas gun) works well then otherwise its chemicals. I do buy rocksalt to put on the driveway during the icey spells, not that we've had many, but hadn't noticed any less weeds?

Airwave!

Seems like an odd growing year this one, not many apples, some pears, plums are growing well but not ripening and have a lot of maggots. After yeArs of spending money on poopy seeds, we have loads of them growing in the veg plot! Grass is certainly not green and loads of weeds are growing, a bumper year for bindweed.

Hellpppp!

frogmorton

Airwave where did you get your poopy seeds from

Brilliant typo!

A bad year here too although not for squash for those who like to grow veg!!

Our grass is still trying to recover from that drought last year....the grass died and the weeds didn't :roll:

Airwave!

I've given my garden a reasonably good ignoring this year and everything grows despite what I don't do. Winter time is coming and I can get out and do things without melting. Woolly jumpers forever!

daffy2

This year has been harder work so far than 2018. Even before the hot weather arrived plants were struggling due to months of NEasterly airflow/winds which not only kept the temperature right down but also dried everything out and mostly prevented rain - double whammy. Resident and very active mole managed to see off those plants that did try and grow - if I watered to keep plants alive it would bring out the worms and then the mole so no-win.
Salads have mostly been a non-starter, although once this hotspot goes I'll start sowing winter lettuce etc in the hopes that September will be kind and let them get established.
However climbing French beans have come through as they usually do(much better use of my limited space and longer cropping than dwarf) and the toms are redeeming the situation. Several different sorts all growing outside. My old faithful 'Outdoor Girl' managed, despite the poor early start and continuing lack of moisture, to get the first ripe fruit in before the end of July. Now others are ripening well - not large quantities, but that's OK as it's only me.They often don't get to the kitchen as I go on a daily tour of the garden; the temptation of a sunwarmed tom is not one I bother to resist too much!

Airwave!

Daffy2, re your live in mole, I suggest sitting on a revolving stool with a ten gauge shot gun and firing at will, I doubt if you'd hit much but it'd make you feel a lot better!

We planted toms in the veg patch rather than the green house, no watering, no food and no sticks, they've gone mad, grown AND ripened, yum yum!