General Gardening Discussion

Your zone is much more temperate than mine... zone envy for me!If you want low maintenance and beginner plants there's a boat load of never let you down shade plants. Things like hostas that come back every year and if you change your mind later, don't mind being moved.I still love my...

Brilliant thanks @pete

PS we burn turf. as it is called over here. I buy it from my neighbour the ferryman who has two fields he cuts from. The money thus stays on the island and helps him feed his family. The alternative is Polish coal. So go figure the carbon footprint for that, and ESB costs a small fortune. ...

Noooo ! Not this already. Will check today, I have a new weapon this year; Grazers G4:

Hi,Thanks in advance for any help.Forgive me for my ignorance on this, I'm a total beginner, I had a gardener booked to look at the ten year old crab apple tree in my back Garden but obviously he's not coming now and is unlikely to for a long while yet.My Mum bought and planted it, for...

Can anyone recommend a good 2 prong hand weeder for getting the weeds out of the lawn all the ones I try seem to bend when I use them, could really do with a cast iron one!

Thanks @pete , Miracle Grow it is then once a week for the next 6 weeks, keep it simple.

NB. When the leaves on potato plants die down like that it means the potatoes are ready to dig up. Not necessarily immediately but ready. All perfectly normal and healthy

True, and we had a problem with that. Unfortunately it is rarely possible to determine the boundary line unless the original markers are still in place. Land Registry told me that the thickness of the drawn lines on Land Registry documents/maps can easily cover 18" of land. I don't know if...

Thank you for the reply! The concrete blocks at the back are coming out tomorrow, so there will be no plants coming in from there. They're on our side of the fence.I've been hoeing the surface soil about 2-3 inches. With the fork I have been attacking the big clumps. Sometimes up to 5-6 inches...

That's pretty Spruce.

Thanks @ARMANDII I'll start tomorrow, I always find doing once a week things at the weekend much easier to remember.

Hi,Usually get several seed and plant catalogues this time of year, but just received Suttons Summer Garden Planner and it really is something else.Its the largest one we have seen, 120 full colour well presented A4 pages with seeds, plants and hardware, many a lot different from most...

I think the nasties were, tributyltin and gamma HCH, Lindane ,that is off the top of my head, I did do some COSHH assessments a long time ago for the workshop, but it all got beyond me.It was in a white spirit solution so was readily absorbed.

Nice one Steve

This was mine from last summer. It's a lot bigger now but I don't have any recent photos. Your plant will need some kind of framework to tie it to.G.

Weight of crop per seed sown?For me that's got to be Marrows with 100 lbs+ yield per plant.

I have found using a Dutch Hoe in the borders where I use the Hoe to cut the Celandine as it's in leaf. I did have a large patch of Celandines surrounding my Acer Brilliantissimum and found that using the Hoe worked well as it sliced through the Celandines and they haven't come back this year...

My Acers are just beginning to wake up with buds swelling as Sian said "be patient", also I wouldn't use any fertiliser until it is growing strongly, as the plant cannot use it and you are just wasting money. Mine are in ordinairy garden soil pH about 6-6.5 seldom get fed and grow well. The only...

I've got Excel OCD, keeping spreadsheets for all sorts of things especially to track what seeds I have, plot rotation, yields, taste, first cropping times. Been doing this since 2001, I find it useful to look back to previous years for when to sow, how long seeds take to germinate, light...