I should plant the crocus outside now.

If you grow seed for flowers, how large should they be to plant on into seed trays to grow until they are put in the garden. LIke 2 leaves, 4 and so on???
Thanks.

Thanks for the advice about the crocuses. I will follow it.

Yesterday my partner spent two hours on the lawn tractor and I spent the same time with the brush cutter. We finally got back to the patio around which we have worked so hard this spring to make a border. One of our dogs had done her own gardenning while we were cutting the grass. She has unearthed an newly planted azalea and broken it , to pieces, dug a huge hole and destroyed a large clup of irises.

Oh woe!!!!!!

They should have at least one set of true leaves - the first leaves that appear are the "seed leaves" or cotyledons. If they've been sown in a single seed tray you need to pot them on into individual pots or cells before the roots get too congested and tangled up, so that you can prick out the individual seedlings with the minimum amount of root damage. When you're handling them, always pick them up by the seed leaves, and use a dibber (or a lolly ice stick!) to support the roots, otherwise the stems can easily break.

That's perfect. Thank you very much. The second lot of leaves are just forming, so I'll leave it a few more days.

By the way, all have come up now except the busy lizzies, but Sharon(she who must be obeyed) says they take a while. The packet says 10 -21 days, and it's 14 today.

Oooooo a gardening thread, I like it

My orchids are all starting to bloom. My citrus are blooming too, and starting to set fruit. Grapefruit seedlings have popped up through the soil. My mango seedling is growing so fast I expect it will be taller than me in a few more minutes........

Orchids, grapefruits and mangoes Where do you live aesir???

\

Just ate the first ripe tomato - a delicious tiny Sungold, plucked straight from the plant.

Show off

Guilty! (Well, I am a tenor...)

And I will be harvesting a courgette from another greenhouse (unheated) this afternoon to take home for Mrs S to cut up and serve with a dip to our friends who are coming round for supper and a sing.

I have just planted some potatoes - not sure what they are as I bought them ages ago and 40 red onions - I counted every one of them as I put them in. Have not grown either before so I will just have to keep my fingers crossed that I get some good crops.

I've got loads of lilac blossom about to bloom, which I'm thrilled about because it hardly ever blossoms at all

ah, lilac - we have a white lilac just come into bloom - and in front of it, a little self-seeded eucalyptus. They look so pretty together.

My first peony is fully out today - one of my 'birthday flowers' since I can remember...

It seems a really good year for flowering shrubs and trees. Our lilac has just finished and we have had cherry, peach and apple blossom, and wisteria and boule de neige - don't know the English name. They have all finished but now we have syrinqa and elderberry, pyracantha and hawthorne in bloom as well as azaleas and some roses.

Also our composter - the first for many years - is beginning to look as if it might work and smells fruity rather than mouldy. Certainly keeps the kitchen dusbins emptier!

I put the bean posts up yesterday, and swept the patio underneath them. They are in very large tubs.
There is something about runner bean sticks that make a garden look like a real garden. They look comforting like the way horns sound in an orchestra.
If instruments were people, horns would be Dads, and so would bean posts.
Bev

I've already asked this question in the Paper Mountain thread I started earlier today and I know we are not supposed to cross post but I just thought gardeners might also have some hints about paper in compost.

I've got this mountain of A4 printed on on one side and am looking at ways to get rid of it. If I put it in the composter should I shred it in the paper shredder, screw up individual sheets it up or tear it up first? How much can I put in? The composter is less tha a quarter full at the moment.

Another question about compost - is it true that you shouldn't put orange, llemon and grapefruit skins in because they are too acid?

http://www.doctorgreenfingers.co.uk/index.html

This is a good web site Aquarelle. You might find something there.
Bev

Many thanks. Will have a look at that after lunch!

I wonder if your 'boule de neige' might be a viburnum ?

Is it safe to plant out my runner beans now do you think?

This week should be fine to plant out runner beans. Have you grown them in a heated or unheated greenhouse? If the former, they would benefit from a little hardening off before being plunged in the soil.

Yes it is!! Thank you maggiemay. I Googled viburnum for a picture and there it was! I shall now go and show off to my partner!!

Thank you stetenorve.
Ive grown them in my unheated greenhouse. They are starting to look for sticks to grow up so Im keen to get them out. Ive had the greenhouse door open all day for ages now (its only a tiny one, about the size of a wardrobe) hoping to make all my plants tougher.

Some of my runner beans have grown 2 inches today, they were just peeping through this morning, and are now 2inches tall

wow!

I planted mine out today. I put them out the other day to harden them off during the day, and forgot to take them in again They seem OK I planted out runner beans, blauhilde climbing beans, cucumbers and courgettes, and planted straight into the ground some more dwarf runners (1st lot already coming up) and some more carrots. I planted some more calendula this year, and what I already had has self-seeded, so now I have lots My sister has given me some broccoli plants, and I have my netting ready, as the cabbage whites obliterated them last year.

The other day I saw a beautiful shrub in someone's garden which was covered in bright red berries, which is unusual for this time of year. The owners couldn't tell me what it was because it was there when they moved in. Could it be a skimmia? I gather to get the berries, you have to have a male + female bush, but at the garden centres, they don't say which is which and they all look the same to me Um, how can you tell the difference....

Skimmia berries shouldn't be red at this time of year. If it's of any interest, the word "skimmia" is thought to (maybe) come from the Japanese word for bad seed..."ashiki-mi".

I'm deliberately trying to make mine later this year - I only sowed them 2 weeks ago as we're going on hol in August and our house sitter doesn't want to harvest them so I don't want them going dormant too early.

I decided to hack back a broom shrub this afternoon because it was overwhelming a chaenemoles. I got very badly scratched all up my arms in the process and I look as if I've been in a cat fight.

Does anyone go to the National Gardens Scheme gardens, or have one themselves?

I've discovered that the cotoneaster in my garden is also full of bright red berries. I can't understand why berries are out at this time of year

Today I have two tiny little asparagus spears ( well, hardly spears, more like cocktail sticks). I was ready to give up hope and plant something else instead. I think I'd better resist the temptation to eat them, then maybe I'll get more next year.

I'd like to try step-over apples around my vegetable beds which are each a couple of yards long by about 4' across.

The only information I have been able to find about cultivation is to use very dwarfing (M27) rootstock.
No idea how you get them to bend over 12" from the ground without snapping the main stem.

Anyone else tried these with any success?

I'd love to have some of these

You could try the fruit advice line at Brogdale http://www.brogdalecollections.co.uk/brogd...tification.html

I've just been sorting out my nettle patch so that it's not growing over the path. Now I have tingling arms from all the stings

Are all the musical gardeners too busy to post any news?

At work yesterday, we threw out some tomato plants which were sown in January, harvested from May onwards and were now exhausted. However, we have been potting up some of the side shoots, which are now producing fruits, and today I took off a side shoot from a "side shoot" plant to grow on, meaning that we now have a grandson plant.

As the nearest greenhouse to the office (I have 23 to choose from) is heated, we're going to see if we can produce tomatoes all year round. I'll keep you posted.

Started today on taking cuttings from the hebe plants in the garden centre car park.

Just caught up with this; thanks for the link, CM.

Must have got sidetracked, but haven't given up on the idea - lets hope it is something that can be done in the autumn.
Serves me right for crowing about my parsley last year. Had none at all this year.

I am so jealous. I have 4 tomato plants this year they are all pretty ropey really. Ive got a "Gardener's Delight" in my little unheated grrenhouse (its more like a glass wardrobe really) with about 7 toms on. Some are quite big but still green. Actually I'm wondering if the plant was wrongly labelled., Ive grown GD before and I didn't expect them to get that big. (I bought all 4 as plants because it was too cold this year for me to consider planting seeds). Outside in pots I have another GD plant and One Ailsa Craig both have about a dozen toms each but all green. My other plant is in a hanging basket. The label is completely blank(!!) and it's smothered with tiny toms, one or two of which are slightly orange.... I think I need to use bigger pots then they could have more food and be stronger plants. Other than that I'll just have to wait for a bit of sun to ripen them.

too much info?

Spent most of the weekend and last week reshaping the front garden. Shrubs reduced into separate bushes redefined the front lawn and weeded and mulched the border.

Yesterday cleared the pond from about a decades worth of plant life and tidying up the edges.

Today I need to finish tidying up from yesterday and start on the last border if the back garden (looks like a jungle) then all that's left is to re-edge the back lawn. Before I can do this though I need to wake up my neighbour's cat that has taken refuge from the earlier rain and is asleep on my lap!

We planted veg late (dug over the soil under what had been a bit of a tip at the side of the house!) - just kind of chucked stuff in the ground and hoped for the best.

We have a huge tomato plant, covered in green fruit, and still flowering, and a couple of diddy ones that I'm hoping will give us lots of cherry tomatoes. Courgettes are going bonkers. Aubergine went nowhere (they never do). potatoes are all flowering. onions looking good. carrots ... who knows till you dig them out...

It's been a good few months.

Ha! I know what theyre like, so heavy and they pin you to the chair for hours on end.........

at least I've removed it from the top shelf of the airing cupboard where it had it's late morning snooze (jumped in when I wasn't looking). At least I'm forgiven after stopping it chasing the frogs I tempoarily displaced from the pond yesterday.

I've been doing much the same - but it still looks rather like a jungle. There is a rush-like plant which appears from nowhere and if not check will colonise a whole bed or border within the year when you turn your back. I've never had these things before and I spend hours once I start chopping it back and trying to dig it out. It is a real nuisance: has drooping spindly catkin-like flowers. Does anyone know what it is? At least I dead-headed last year and more or less stopped it seeding - but the roots clumps seem to multiply rapidly.

Add the ivy and brambles coming through the fence from next door - and it doesn't look anything like as nice as the picture on my profile at the moment (and no, that wasn't intended as a shameless plug! - rather a wistful look back at how it looked a couple of years back).

Courgettes - make sure you keep harvesting them, keep them wel watered and fed, and they will crop for ages.

Aubergines - need to be in a greenhouse. I've got 10 plants in the heated greenhouse at work, and each has produced at least 6 fruits.

Carrots - you can ease the soil away from the top of one of your carrots, which will give you an indication of how much it has swelled. Beware of attracting the carrot fly, though!




Hi Clarimoo - Gardener's Delight is definitely a cherry tomato, so should not produce large fruit!

Fghting a continuous war against brambles and winning the odd battle. Same thing with the ivy. Grass pretty yellow now as we haven't had much rain since the hot spell last month. Wisteria flowering for the second time, bad year for roses. Great year for stinging nettles. Moles have departed and been replaced by voles. Sweet little things but the cats are steadily murdering them. Composter buzzing with fruit flies but not composting much - but then we only set it up a couple of months ago.

No vegetables - but then we didn't plant any. Lots of elderberries. Can one do anything with them apart from elderberry wine?

Sure you're adding yer browns to the composter? Mine's been much nicer to know since I've been tearing cardboard boxes and layering it with the kitchen and garden rubbish.

Made a bad mistake in planting morning glories this year...I'm out of the house so early in the morning and so late home that I've seen none of the flowers until term ended last week!

My aubergines certainly don't need a greenhouse, but I was late planting them, and am just admiring my first cream and pale purple striped one ripen.

We had our first runner beans for lunch yesterday. They were so sweet. It makes a difference when you pick and cook them immediately.
My nasturtiums were a disaster. They were thin, straggly and pathetic. What did I do wrong? They were in pots.

Beans! Didn't get a chance to plant any this year.

Nasturtiums...whenever mine have been straggly, they've simply been underfed...they seem to be quite greedy!

we're quite a bit south of you so are into our 4th week of beans. The runners are doing ok but the round beans are great this year. I think next week will be the start if the 'what do you want with your beans?' menu.

You can have mine, they are taking over and junglifying. I didnt even plant them deliberately just left a couple of self seeders because I thought they would make my veg look cheerful.