You cunts doing gardening at all this year (2024) or what?

[Brian Freeze]

Have struggled to get the mojo for gardening the last few months which is not a good sign of my wellbeing. Think I'm a bit fucked from working too much. Am trying though.

So, cleaning out old plant pots from last year and sorting out the rubble, we normally just green bin the old compost to go for the corporation compost. Could/should we incorporate some back into our own compost heap or is that likely to lead to a bad brew?

Also, any ideas please of plants to grow in bits of driftwood. Trying to grow some houseleeks for this purpose but is there anything else you could recommend?

[Buelligan]

Sorry to hear about you being overworked and under-gardened!  Getting out there soon as always works for me.  Nothing as good as being out, touching soil and plants, smelling the earth, hearing the birds, watching the leaves, heals the soul.  Heal your soul, dear Brian.

I keep old compost (from pots) in a big old galvanised bin, check it for vine weevil etc and use it as a mulch or soil conditioner.  If it's free from pests/diseases, like the plant that was in that pot before, it's just organic matter that's lost most of its nutrients, fine to incorporate into or use as a mulch for, flower or veg beds, you can add some pelleted chicken manure or whatevs too.

Is the driftwood indoor or outdoors?

Planted melons (Charantais), pumpkins and my courgettes early this morning.  Just in pots in my bedroom until they germinate.  Thinking about sowing some red orach today.  Going to do it this pm if there's time. 

[confettiinmyhair]

I'm having some early slug and snail troubles. Anything in the ground is getting chewed up fast. Any solutions?

[Underturd]

Beer.

[Buelligan]

I use plastic bottles with the bottom chopped off.  Put them over things that get eaten to death - dahlia shoots or young salads.  Then, when the plants have grown enough to withstand a bit of chewing I take them off.  Also nightly visits by torchlight and take the buggers off for a ride into the countryside. 

[Buelligan]

For anyone not already watching Corbyn's Garden - not really - Charles Dowding's no dig gardening channel, his jobs for April vid has just dropped.  Has some slug and snail talk.  Obvs, he's in the UK, so for Ferris, wait a month or so, for me, this is the past.

[Ferris]

We planted cabbage and it got ragged to fuck by slugs (and their mates, snails) but the trade off was everything else seemed basically fine.

Also planted a 2" thick border of chives around our veg and that may or may not have helped.

[madhair60]

i cut the grass and moved some raised beds today, so I suppose I have now done some gardening

[Ferris]

Snow has finally fucked off here so did a quick patrol of the back yard:

Year 3 (4?) of our apple tree and it seems to have survived the winter and to be eager to get fuckin growing so that's nice. Hop bines nowhere to be seen but they can take another 3 weeks or so to get going assuming they've also made it through the winter.

We have a nesting pair of cardinals that returned this week so that's also nice. They sound like Star Wars sound effects and look like this:



The woodpeckers down the street are back as well, you can hear them tapping away. Northern Flickers and a couple of downy woodpeckers from memory. The blue jays are also back and as much as I love the baseball team, the actual birds are noisy cunts that fight other birds. Like blue magpies.

That means spring is here (sort of) and we're likely past last frost so can start planning and planting - have to get it all in the ground by mid April to get the full 6 month growing season. Ok cheers.

[Emma Raducanu]

Where might (should) one purchase turf in the UK? I'd purchase grass seed normally but want more instant result this year

[Buelligan]

If you're having a new lawn every year, maybe you're doing something wrong.

I'm just leaving this image here because it makes me laugh and you mentioned grass parakeet seed.

[gib]

getting right into the old microgreens

[Emma Raducanu]

If you're having a new lawn every year, maybe you're doing something wrong.

Absolutely. When I bought the house, the lawn was pretty terrible. It was only during lockdown that I had time to remove the weeds. I oversowed with grass seed and finally had a lawn I was happy with. Over the intervening years, moss has taken over round the edge of the garden that receives little sunlight. More generally however, the lawn thins out over winter and seems constantly extremely damp. I've aerated by 'lifting' the grass with a fork but I'm not sure if I need to incorporate sand or something. Each year around April I oversow and by May it looks good again but it's the edge this time I just wanna lay some turf over instead because it's really bad

[Pink Gregory]

Absolutely. When I bought the house, the lawn was pretty terrible. It was only during lockdown that I had time to remove the weeds. I oversowed with grass seed and finally had a lawn I was happy with. Over the intervening years, moss has taken over round the edge of the garden that receives little sunlight. More generally however, the lawn thins out over winter and seems constantly extremely damp. I've aerated by 'lifting' the grass with a fork but I'm not sure if I need to incorporate sand or something. Each year around April I oversow and by May it looks good again but it's the edge this time I just wanna lay some turf over instead because it's really bad

Top dressing with sand/compost will help, as will aerating, but if it's in shade the moss will always be a seasonal problem

I'm biased against turf myself because I hate doing it, but unless you're changing the use of the area I don't see the point without first resolving the underlying problems, if they are resolvable.  You can get shade mixes of grass seed but I'm not so sure they're that effective.

[Dex Sawash]

We've got red clay soil with no natural topsoil due to massive re-contouring of the terrain to create buldable lots. No kind of monoculture lawn will grow without montly men with ven spraying grow juice/broadleaf killer all over it. Mine was beautiful zoysia or somesuch when we moved here in 2018. Now it is 100% mixed weed/clover/invasives. Bees like the clover.

Bored myself typing that out, sorry you had to read it.

[thenoise]

Allotment a waterlogged mess (and that's just the parking area), but I got seedlings on my windowsills, so that's something.

[Brian Freeze]

Thanks for the compost advice, wasn't sure about disease management and all that.

Is the driftwood indoor or outdoors? 

Outdoors, assuming the houseleeks are hardy enough. Have collected a couple of decent lumps of wood already and hope to get some more from the coast next week.

[Underturd]

We used to have houseleeks outdoors all year round, and the only harm they came to was from me eating bits of them, so don't do that, and they should be OK.

[king_tubby]

Just planted the cunting late spuds.

[Ferris]

Did our Big Planting yesterday. Fucking shattered still, but got a load of stuff into the ground, and found the first hop shoots of the year which means they've survived. Excellent.

[Buelligan]

Been eating strawberries like.  Broad beans too.  Tatties are fluffy and green in the breeze.  Poppies fluttering and I know not what all.  Worried about my melons.

Got some padron peppers in today.