General Gardening Discussion

For the first few years in this garden we had loads of Moss in the lawn. then we planted a mini orchard in it. I let the hedge grow taller and it shaded the grass more, then we'd cut the grass and leaving clippings on top, and even just mow the fallen beach hedge leaves into a mulch in situ -...

I don't know what minimum temperature they need but we overwintered a plant in our car port. It was unintentional. It was left there amongst the hundreds of pot plants we have in the car port and flowered the following year. This year is year three and it had again survived the winter but we...

@Sirius My fargesia nitidia flowered about 5 years ago and I took it out the following year, found a few seedlings, but many.

Guess this means slug-food is pretty rare in your garden. My slugs wouldn't touch the rhubarb until it was the last available food source.Edit: if you are lucky this problem will go away after one season since plants aren't eager to be eaten themselves. So in the upcoming months or year...

The most useful plant in my garden is the one I can look at lovingly and think ........ I grew that from a seed

Many thanks.

Thank you very much everyone for all your help and advises, options!

Hmmmm....all this dosing the soil with detergent/vinegar/salt/bleach! I use the proprietary little round traps that you squeeze a few drops of anticide into. Other creatures can't access it, it gets taken straight back to the nest and destroys it. It works extremely well without polluting the...

I'm not too sure on the building regs. We want some greenery to soften the look of the house up a little bit.

I'd be inclined, sorry about the pun, to keep the slope dig it over incorporating some of the gravel and plant it up with drought tolerant plants, mostly low growing and spreading to hold the soil in place.

I'd cut back the stems with the the dead leaves still on them.

I don't know what your conifer is.We often prune the top of our small bright green conifer (Cupressus i think) and then the tree happily grows back over the cut area and looks good again. Cutting of the dead growth 'may' work for you too.

I would temporally connect it to a mains tap at the top end, with another hose, so the extra pressure will dislodge any blockages or air locks.

@Jack Sparrow I have ringed a couple that I'm fairly sure are hollyhocks, there are several more I think, but use those two as a template. I was looking at a seedling about 30 minutes ago and thinking it needs to go in the ground.

To be brutally honest even the good one looks like its not happy. Is it a sunny aspect? As said earlier a repot would help.

@JWK I always think of Chelsea a bit like I think of a fashion show. The problem isn't the show, it's people copying it without using their imagination and putting their own twist on it, being a tad more subtle in their own style and understanding that the show and the high street are two very...

@pete your mate could well be right, over the years I have lost plants to overwatering so am on the cautious side.

Quite like that, don't think I've seen one beforeI'll see if there's one nearby, thanks

You shouldn't have any problems there, virgin soil that has been through an 8mm screen blended with spent mushroom compost.The problems are when you buy from greenfield sites, where the problems start, but who is to blame?I watched a programme called "Inside the factory" there was a part...