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March 28, 2024, 11:10:52 AM

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Gardening thread 2021

Started by Ferris, April 05, 2021, 02:26:54 AM

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Buelligan

The good thing about planting tulips deep is that it can extend their lives.  Tulips are usually pretty short lived and tend to continue longer if deeply planted (I don't know why).  Thanks for the kind words.

Emma Raducanu

My garden is going for it at the minute. All the usual perennials coming through plus everything I've planted this year is looking great. There, I've cursed it all now. I'm still absolutely loving this slow pace of life. Get up, water everything in the morning with a cup of coffee in hand. Sit down, relax, repeat.

touchingcloth

We've got seedlings planted for the horta in the garden. They're mainly things which are more expensive to buy or harder to find in the shops (artichokes, squashes, chillies, radishes, ugly tomatoes), greens (various lettuces, rocket, cabbages), misc. (sweetcorn, broad beans, peas), and some sacrificial marigolds to hopefully attract the slugs and snails.



I'm not looking forward to the weeding that's needed before they're planted out, but we seem to have successfully made the 10m3 of compost we need for it over the past few months, so it's going to be rewarding spreading that stuff out as my shoulders hated me for having to turn the damn stuff so often.

The first shoots are starting to appear in the herbs we've potted by the kitchen:


Ferris


Ferris

I like coming into this thread and tending to it.



You'll have to zoom right in there, but there's two unmistakable red/green hop vines coming up. Very exciting.

Buelligan

The hop thing's really exciting.  Never grown 'em myself. 

Ferris

Quote from: Buelligan on April 28, 2021, 05:20:24 PM
The hop thing's really exciting.  Never grown 'em myself.

Neither have I - from what I've read, "loads of sun" and these fuckers are on my deck facing south so let's see!

There's loads of stuff on the internet by middle aged men with beards[nb]trust me, I can tell[/nb] about maximizing lupulin oil yields and that type of thing but obviously I haven't bothered with any of that. If I grow a single hop, I will be delighted.

B - I still haven't got those beans in the ground yet. Must do that this weekend, they're getting huge and blocking out the window...

Ferris

Onions sprouting, and all that guerrilla gardening I did in the central verge is bearing fruit (well, garlic).

Here's an ignorant question - when a plant gets leaves, does it grow faster? I think my hop plants are a bit behind, but they've just got two leaves in the last day or so and I'm wondering if that means they'll rocket up due to (checks GCSE biology textbook) photosynthesis? Or if they've got roots out there collecting nutrients etc will leaves make a difference.

What make plant grow? Is leaf? Or is root?

Ferris

Oh go on then, here they are:



Bonus wonky garlic:


Buelligan

Leaf and root, man, leaf and root.  For most, there are some, a very few, who use other peoples' roots - saw some Orobanche[nb]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orobanche[/nb] growing on the mountain yesterday, but they're the exception, for most, root and leaf.


ZoyzaSorris

Yeah both are needed in equal proportion - well if you have to have an excess of one, more roots is what you want, as too much leaf and not enough root results in too much evaporation and not enough water coming in - wilting and eventually death. This is why usually one gets rid of most of the leaves when making a cutting.

Have a bunch of ivy broomrapes on the banks of the stream behind the back fence . Very strange things

Ferris


Buelligan

Fantastic!  Make sure you get them out into the ground soon as you can.  Got my first flower open on the orange tree today, perfumed like a motherfucker.  Have an orange on it, it looks like a prime orange.  Been experimenting with leaving it there, been there two years now.  Two years, how much longer can this continue?

Ferris

Fruit trees will be next year's project I think, love the idea of an orange tree but doubt they'd last long here. Is there a way I can check what survives where? I'm in zone 6b I think.

Getting stuff in the ground is tricky at the moment - we're pending some pretty major landscaping (about 30% of the back yard is covered by the foundations of a piece of shit shed (broken glass, rusty nails, the works), so a man with a digger has to come round and scrape the top 10cm of the entire back yard away and I'm worried if I plant anything too nice he'll accidentally squash it. We're also missing a fence (don't ask) and some horrible spruce tree roots have smashed up all the back fence post bit so that all needs replacing.

Covid restrictions mean no one can leave or enter the city at the mo for at least another month so doubt man will be able to chug along in his digger until mid June at the earliest. Until then, I'm just getting progressively larger pots from the place down the road and hoping everything survives!

Attila

Just received three tiny woad plugs and a small potted dyers' camonile. They're currently resting in the shade, nested in raw (waste) sheeps wool -- keeps the slugs away.

Last year's woad plants are loaded with bright yellow flowers.

Buelligan

Very exciting.  Found some Alkanet up on the mountain today.

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on May 12, 2021, 01:41:13 PM
Fruit trees will be next year's project I think, love the idea of an orange tree but doubt they'd last long here. Is there a way I can check what survives where? I'm in zone 6b I think.

Getting stuff in the ground is tricky at the moment - we're pending some pretty major landscaping (about 30% of the back yard is covered by the foundations of a piece of shit shed (broken glass, rusty nails, the works), so a man with a digger has to come round and scrape the top 10cm of the entire back yard away and I'm worried if I plant anything too nice he'll accidentally squash it. We're also missing a fence (don't ask) and some horrible spruce tree roots have smashed up all the back fence post bit so that all needs replacing.

Covid restrictions mean no one can leave or enter the city at the mo for at least another month so doubt man will be able to chug along in his digger until mid June at the earliest. Until then, I'm just getting progressively larger pots from the place down the road and hoping everything survives!

I think you should probably do a bit of research on the subject of soil before that lad comes with the digger.  You might also like to think about considering a raised bed system.  Might work better for you.  Here's a quick tutorial on raised beds, I'm sure you can find loads more.  Brilliant thing is, you can choose to do build one or two this year and if they're not working for you, rip them out next year and try something else.  Could work out cheaper and better than pots. 

Read about topsoil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsoil  or https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=375 or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUUHJpHSDs

Ferris

We're deffo in for the raised beds - the soil in the city is black thanks to hundreds of years of coal burning and there could be heavy metals and all sorts in the ground. If we get raised beds, we have better control over what we grow and eat, especially with a toddler (who has helped plant everything and is excited to water the plants every day, which is nice).

Same issue for us though - if we build raised beds, where's matey and his digger gonna go? They want to scrape the whole outside area and re-sod it. Once they're done, I can tackle the borders[nb]which are separated by huge boulders/rocks... wait a minute, those are the old foundation stones from the renovation ~10 years ago. Another baffling decision made by the chap who used to live here. He painted the hallway 2 different shades of grey - for one table he painted around it in a perfect silhouette, rather than, say, move the table a foot to the left and paint the whole wall so now we have a perfect outline of his old table on our wall in a slightly different shade of grey... one of many such tales I could tell[/nb] but I don't want to start all that until I have a clean slate, and I can't get to the timber yard at the moment anyway so can't build em yet. Tell you what, this covids gone a bit too far for me and I don't care who knows it!

touchingcloth

We prepped the garden ready for planting back last October, but other things got in the way and of course we procrastinated and didn't actually plant. Ruing the fuck out of that decision thanks to having to have spent a few days weeding the area that we originally prepped :'(

Emma Raducanu



Can anyone identify these flowers? (sorry, they've not quite come to flower just yet). They come up every year and I'm guessing self seeding as they run along a 10m border with wild abandon. They were here before me and I've never been able to figure out what they are and I want to plant more of these or similar.

Buelligan

Yes, they're Aquilegias.  Lovely things that grow easily from seed and hybridise themselves too.

Emma Raducanu

Thank you! I've wanted to know for years. I planted a veriety of penstemon last week because it was the closest I could think of.

Attila

Last year's woad in bloom this morning:





This year's first three woad plugs, about 2x the size they were a couple of days ago. They grow really fast:



Dyers' camomile, also noticeably grown and perked up since its arrival earlier this week:



Last year's catnip is starting to push out lots of new leaves:



Mr Gus enjoying a fresh spring of said catnip this morning:



And Tiny Toast face-planted in her cup 'o catnip. She will sleep like this.


Buelligan

Hehe, fabulous pics Attila.  I love your cats.

Emma Raducanu

Yep, nice pics. I like seeing what other cabbers are growing. We should have a 'show us your garden thread'. I keep imagining buelligan living somewhere like longmeadow then I remember the cave.

NattyDread 2

Quote from: DolphinFace on May 15, 2021, 04:39:54 PMI like seeing what other cabbers are growing. We should have a 'show us your garden thread'.

Good idea.

We had a bit of demolition and building going on the last few months which twatted the one small flattish bit of lawn we have. (Huge garden but most of it is a steep hill). Got the kids to scatter some grass seed around the rubble today so fingers crossed it'll look less like a building site come summer.
Also put up a wee plastic greenhouse thing. £40 job from Wilko. The last one did us a few years which is pretty good going for the north west highlands. Much shorter growing season here so they're well worth it.
Trying out some Pineapple and Lemon 'Aja' chillies this year. Anyone tried 'em?

Ferris

The chillies are the only thing I planted that have fucking refused to grow so no pointers from me.

Attila

Quote from: Buelligan on May 15, 2021, 11:44:48 AM
Hehe, fabulous pics Attila.  I love your cats.

Cheers -- we've got the fixings for raised beds, so I'm hoping to get that sorted sooner rather than later.

I've got my eye on buying a few more weirdo dye plants next month when my pocket money recovers a bit.

NattyDread 2

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on May 15, 2021, 10:48:11 PM
The chillies are the only thing I planted that have fucking refused to grow so no pointers from me.

The spoilt wee buggers were started in a heated propagator then sat under a grow light for a few weeks, so they've had a charmed existence so far. Greenhouse only seemed to shock them for the first night and they've all grown a pair now and are absolutely loving life.
Are yours under cover Ferris?

Ferris

Quote from: NattyDread 2 on May 15, 2021, 11:34:44 PM
The spoilt wee buggers were started in a heated propagator then sat under a grow light for a few weeks, so they've had a charmed existence so far. Greenhouse only seemed to shock them for the first night and they've all grown a pair now and are absolutely loving life.
Are yours under cover Ferris?

Under cover, in our flippin' house next to the window. If they can't cut it in here, they've had their chips.

Everything else has grown very well so fuck knows what they're playing at.

Ferris

Hop update - apparently they grow 2ft a week until July now!

Been very interesting following along with them in detail, watching the extra leaf bits turn up and the colours change. Apparently my yield will be crap this year but I really don't care, I've learned a lot for the future.