Here too - first few daffs out this weekend. And I discovered a bit of flowering currant too - a soft dusky pink.

First mowing of the grass today - you just can't beat a well striped lawn!

We have stacks of hellebores in the garden, and they are really earning their keep at the moment.

Sadly I had to dispose of a eucalyptus tree which didn't survive the harsh winter.

Our order from Bakker got delivered to the neighbour by mistake but finally arrived chez nous. We've got a baby lemon tree and a baby mimosa as well as some shrubs to reinforce one of the hedges, some hydrangeas and geraniums and what looks like an un manageable number of dahlias.

Now we have to find the time to plant them all.

You put me to shame stetenorve - our grass despertately need mowing but whenever Ii have time to do it it's too wet. I must get organised!

I've got a eucalyptus seedling you could have! I love these, but we get the odd baby from our neighbour's tree that just can't stay where it is. Am always sad to dig them out, but OH starts getting twitchy.

... hellebores enough to sink a ship (forget who I'm quoting there). Love these too.

Pick axe, two forks, one spade, one trowel, one rake, small secateurs, large secateurs, heavy gloves, watering can, bag of compost, wheelbarrow, lots of will power, my partner and three cats and a dog in the garden this afternoon - all to plant three small shrubs. I really should stop being seduced by gardening catalogues. There are three more to plant tomorrow! I am almost hoping it will rain.

But rainy weather is the BEST time to plant shrubs and trees!

Oh so glad to read your post!!! It's the first one from you I've seen since Japan's troubles began. Have thought of you a great deal. Hope you are still all OK.

Yes, you are right - rainy weather is best but ideally I would like it to rain after I have been out and done the work!! It looks as if the three shrubs I planted have taken and so far the dogs haven't dug them up so fingers crossed and I will get out there and do the rest!

Once again, so pleased to see your post!

Not my own garden but the display of crocuses on the Stray near where I live is absolutely gorgeous and the daffs are breaking too

Pulled my first crop of the year; baby turnips.

Golf ball sized, snowy white with purple tops and meltingly gorgeous.

Sorry - it doesn't take much to get me excited.


Nearly given up on beans from seed, though; have had to buy some plants and popped them in around the wigwam. Fingers crossed.

First cucumber this year!

The raspberries have been gorgeous so far.

Brought a huge carrier bag full of tomatoes home from work today!

End of term arrived at 12h30 precisely today and among my first thoughts was the garden!! At last I can get down to a bit of work there though will have to be at it at 05h00 because it will quickly become too hot. As it is, a lot is already burnt after one three very hot days.

Congratualtaions on the tomatoes stetenorve - hope they are tasty.

The weekend before last we had our exams and afterwards a meal with the examiner and his wife. She is apparantly avery keen gardener who grows practically all her own vegetables and over dinner she gave me some tips on keeping the weeds down. I have, since then been seen crawling round the garden on all fours beheading the dandelions. The trick, she said is never to let the weeds seed!!

Apple trees very heavy with fruit, and earlier this year than usual. Must do something to stop the birds helping themselves. Don't mind them taking the ones on the ground but not digging holes in the ripening ones on the tree. Plums need some sunshine to ripen, a few blackcurrants, birds got all the gooseberries.

Tried to grow some beetroot as I absolutely love it. A dismal failure. The beetroot was so small I could hardly see it. Don't know what I did wrong.

I failed to grow beetroot last year. We have been overrun with raspberries this year, but they are having a rest at the moment, although I see some buds, so may be more later. Current problem is what to do with all the cucumbers. I have never had more than 3 ripen in a year before. This year they are ripening 3 at a time, and the children are getting sick of them.

Cucumber anyone?

So far this holiday I have cut the hazel nut bush that was preventing me from getting to my washing line, cut the forcythias and some other shrubs, and best of all cut the wisteria - you could almost not see one side of the house at all. I found to my horror it has damaged part of a small roof over the shower room. I had to get up really early to do that as it was too hot too work outside after 9 am. Now we have had a very wet week and we need to cut the grass.

Glad to hear you have apples jm-hamilton and hope you manage to eat them before the bitds. Have you tried hanging old CD discs in the trees? They do that a lot here and it seems to frighten the birds off. We didn't do it and the birds got most of our cherries!

We have loads of grapes on the vines which we haven't looked after. The vines have climbed up into the peach trees - which never give any fruit so we now have grape trees! I have asked my parnter to treat the grapes in the hope that they wouldn't go mouldy yet again this year but so far nothing doing!

My poor little apple tree is seriously overloaded this year despite my efforts removing some of the fruit earlier in the summer.

I planted my beetroot late this year. It's looking good so far, lovely green leaves and the bulbs are just starting to swell up. I just need to remember to wear gloves when I pick them - I discovered last year my skin reacts to the leaves

I have hung a few Cds but will either need to get the ladder out to do the top of the tree or lean precariously out of the bedroom window.

Some years ago I had a vine, but it was so enthusiastic I couldn't put anything else near it. We did get a few grapes for a couple of years but I got tired of it and dug it out.

Re beetroot - I've got lots of leaves, but without digging up the beetroot I won't know if any are ready. I based my assessment of my crop on the one I did dig up - maybe the rest are better - how do I know?

You probably tried to harvest too early. You see the top of the bulb sticking up out of the soil - this year the plan is to have some when small leaving others to get to full size.

Thanks - I'll leave the rest where they are and hope for the best. I'll have a go next year too

Does anyone know anything about asters? We planted some last year and had a lovely show of flowers. We thought they would reseed and flower again this year. We have got is a metre high clump stems covered with green leaves; Looks more like a bush than a patch of flowers!

Aquarelle thanks for your kind thoughts earlier on.

Re: asters...I think your clump will flower OK, won't it, it just might not look very poetic!

Our "summer holiday lily" - the one that always flowers in the last week of term - has flowered, but Viohazard has extra classes and I still have the last day or two of exam marking to go.

My gardening...to my delight, the road services came and shored up our front steps - they were cracking badly thanks to quake subsidence, but the road guys fixed the crack in the steps as well as the roadside subsidence that was causing the problem.

I was so delighted that I pulled out the saddest-looking items from the containers on my front steps, and planted a few herbs and a kind of Japanese hibiscus. It has a deep mulberry-colored flower, like those on this blogRed Fuyo, and looks similar to an American cotton rose.

I want to move an established box hedge. I've been told that the plants can be moved, as their roots are fairly shallow. I was going to do it a couple of months ago but didn't because it was so dry and then we had the hose-pipe ban and I knew they'd need a lot of watering, but it's so wet now that I don't think that would be a problem. Would it be OK to go ahead? Will I kill them off? Any advice welcome, please

I am no expert but the rule we have always applied is that if the sap is rising it could be a risk. When we have wanted to take that risk we have dug up a large clod of earth with the roots so that the plant doesn't know it has been moved. We have watered a lot and it probably wouldn't work here if we moved them to a place which was hotter than their original spot. Some have taken, some not.

I'm so glad someone had revived this thread - I've been thinking about having a look for it now that spring is here - well was here until we got a weather relapse this week. We have had primroses and violets but a too early hot spell put paid to them rather sooner than usual. The bulbs didn't do at all well. Daffodils, crocuses and tulips - half of them simply didn't bloom.but we have got some nice little azaleas at the moment.

In the middle of our garden/field we have a large hump under which the rubble from the house rebuilding was put back in 1986. We had the rubble covered with earth and a large scale rockery type thing installed but the landscapers mucked it up. It was too steep oin one side for us to manage to maintain it and they didn't put the right trees on it and not all the right bushes. We maintained it for a long time but it eventually got beyond us and became a huge bramble patch.

We now have a valiant young gardener who is on day 3 of clearing the brambles. He says it will take a couple of years to get it back as we would like it but he will come every couple of months to do the worst of the maintainance. (I shall have to get a few more pupils to foot the bill!) It has been lovely to rediscover the few plants that have survived and the little basin the frogs used to use. However the cats are cheesed off.
No more happy hours of hunting in the wilderness!

Anyone else got a happy garden story?

The text book would say it's probably not the best time, but I always say do things in the garden when you have time to do them! If you move them with a good root ball attached, and water them in, they'll certainly have a go at surviving - plants don't want to die.

I have box plants in my back garden which I have moved several times. And don't forget every time you trim the hedge, try making new plants from the trimmings - even a 10% success rate could yield loads of plants which you can use for replacements, or swaps with friends.

Bright ideas required please. I have a corner of the garden where the bamboo grew. It died a couple of years ago. I don't know why. (Nasty suspicion about the neighbours, but probably best not to voice my thoughts.)

What could I put there instead? All the roots have been dug out, and sufficient time has passed I hope that anything nasty that might have been put down has had time to go away.

The space is not particularly sunny, and is a sort of elongated hedge shaped area up against the fence.

I wondered about something hardy like a hawthorn hedge - basically it needs to look green and hide the fence. I don't particularly mind if it's deciduous.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

How about various Dogwoods (Cornus)? You can get them with various colours of stem which provides winter colour if against a dark background. I have a Cornus Sibirica which has crimson/coral coloured stems with a variegated green/cream leaf. Just remember to prune hard in spring so that you get new growth and colour for next winter.

Is this a specifically outdoor gardening thread, or might indoor gardening (if that is what it could be called!) be included too? It's just that I have this rather sick-looking Christmas cactus that doesn't flower at Christmas any more, and seems to be wilting by the day......

Anyone know anything about cactuses (cacti?)

How old is it? How is it looked after? Whereabouts is it in the house?

Susie - I second the vote for dogwoods. I have one (several?) at the bottom of the garden and OH always complains that it's doing too well. Mine is variegated too, but I think it's Cornus Alba.

It's about 6 years old, but has grown very little in that time (even less than cacti normally grow). It lives on top of the piano in our study, so reasonably constant temperature. It's not near a window or in full sunlight - wonder if that might be affecting it? It gets watered once a week, and fed from time to time during the summer. I don't normally care for cacti, but this was a present and it does look lovely when it flowers.

My Christmas cactus seems to thrive on neglect! I water it about once a fortnight most of the year but give it a real soaking each time. I then forget about it a bit during the autumn until it looks 1/2 dead then drench it when I've spotted how ill it looks. It rewards me each year with a lovely display of orange flowers. Though it did do that in November last year and was bare by Christmas.

Ah - perhaps I need to neglect it a bit more?!

Could I suggest giving it a bit more sunlight? After all cacti tend to survive in hot desert conditions - therefore, sunny and dry - so perhaps that's why the neglect plus 2 soaks a year works - the cactus *thinks* it's the rainy season.

My Christmas cactus sits on the kitchen window sill and gets quite a bit of direct sunlight. It's not extremely healthy, (needs repotting) but it does bloom regularly.

Does anyone know why poppies may have thriving leaves and no flowers? They've been there two years now. (I've no idea what kind of poppies they are, was given them a couple of years ago). It seems the only flowers I can grow are dandelions, lovely as they are they tend to take over. My garden has the sun in the mornings, and probably not for long as it goes up and over the house quite quickly bar the height of summer. Maybe they need more sun?

Thanks - I will try that. It's really looking rather at the moment.

Thanks for the advice Aquarelle and Stetenorve I might see how the weather is at the weekend and have a think about trying the 'moving them with so much soil that they don't notice' approach. It will involve digging a trench, I think, rather than individual holes, but I have a strong 16-year-old around who will be only too happy to get out of revision. Or maybe I'll paint the bathroom...

I will try and do cuttings as well this year, Stetenorve - thanks for reminding me. The garden plan may well require a lot more box plants, so that would make a great deal of sense. I did try once before, several years ago, but ended up with a lot of dead box twigs. I'll try again

I have a perennial oriental poppy (fairly bright green, hairy leaves) that seems to like part shade, as it grows happily where there is only morning sun, but the self-seeded opium poppy seedlings that pop up where they like (silver-grey smooth leaves) only ever appear in the beds that get sun for much more of the day. That's as far as I can help, I'm afraid.

Just thought I'd mention how stunning my hellebore plants are looking at the moment. They are relatively cheap to buy, flower for months, set seedlings freely, and provide some green cover in winter. They do well in full sun or shade.

It's a fabulous day for gardening. Bright and sunny, started off very windy which was good because it dried up the soil and it's now perfect for weeding. I've done loads and I'm just having a little break before I go back to it. I'm a fair weather gardener, I'm afraid, so I'll have to make the most of this perfect weather for it

So what are the plans for spring bulbs? Owing to thorough-going neglect over summer, I have a fair amount of room to plant buls this autumn.

Jonquils, crocuses, a few tulips, babuiana......what are your plans?

Given that the new place I'm living is very concrete outside, I'm thinking nothing more fancy than daffodils in pots, and keeping the hedge in check!

Is anyone any good at identifying caterpillars? We've caught one quite large specimen, having established that it likes to eat grape vine leaves... I've no idea what else it might eat though, and it'd be good to take it somewhere where it won't starve, but won't eat Dad's grapes either!

I am considering grubbing up my front garden and planting lots of lavender plants and tulip bulbs. I did the "lots of tulips" thing once before and it was very spectacular. But because I cant be bothered lifting them and have planted thuggy plants/let the lupins take over... I am now in great need of some drastic re-planting.


...and how are Dad's grapes? My grapes look good but are very sour this year.

There are a fair few of them, but no where near ripe yet...

I'm glad the thread has woken up as I was thinking of posting something here anyway.

First of all, an oddity. I planted an Amelanchier tree in the front about 6 years ago to replace a measly specimen of a generic cherry blossom that the builders put in. The Amelanchier has white star-shaped blossom around early April, which is easily blown away. It has reddish fruits which don't last long either. It colours and drops its leaves very early - usually one of the first to go around early October.

Here's the oddity. The last couple of weeks, it's put on sudden side shoot growth and popped some flowers . Today its leaves have started to show the first signs of turning.

It's never done this late second flowering before.

The other thing is that it hasn't grown that much in the time it's been in. There is a clay pan in the front garden. I did dig it as much as I could and put a lot of organic matter in, but I suspect the clay is the culprit - probably stopping the roots from spreading.

I seem to have lost an awful lot of bulbs the last two winters. I planted some new ones, including Aliums for the first time last year and they did well. So I think I'll put n some more. I coudl do with some tulips as well.

Yes, I'm glad to see the thread back in action. Mind you, nothing much in the way of gardening has gone on down here during the summer - far too hot and a lot of things jut shrivelled up. However, the asters are now blooming, the peaches anre falling off the tree but aren't edible, the figs are ripening and are edible and the plane trees are looking thinner having already started to shed some leaves. I need to start the autumn tidying but at the moment I haven't either the time of the energy. Perhaps next weekend.....

Bon courage to everyone!

Yes, garden has been sadly neglected over the summer due to domestic stuff taking over. No apples this year after a bumper crop last year. Everything's just green - we have a few roses (don't like roses - occasionally try to kill them, certainly don't look after them) and pansies, but otherwise very boring due to neglect.

I'm sending away for anything free - so bulbs that are on offer in the Sunday papers are getting my attention, but I suppose I'll have to go to the garden centre/Homebase or somewhere and find something to put in.

Well I said our peaches weren't edible and now I have to take that back. We found one unspoilt beautifully scented peach, cut it in half and ate half each. It was delicious. We are now full of good resolutions about looking after the peach tree properly this year!

I also went to collect some more figs and saw a beautiful green shiny scarab beetle feasting away on ripe fig. I don't much like insects but I didn't disturb this one. Which reminds me, last year we had a lot of asiatic hornets in the garden but there was no sign of a nest anywhere nearby. I believe they have a flight radius of several kilometres. Anyway, so far this year we haven't seen any hornets of any kind - but not many bees either.

Those things are scary. There are nests in a local nature reserve, and I sometimes see the heavies out flying patrol.

Some of my neighbours have got the most horrendous problem with chafer grubs. The birds (mostly magpies) have churned up their entire front lawns to get at them. The lawns look like ploughed fields. I've never come across chafer grubs/beetles before but I've been reading about them and they sound like the suburban equivalent of a plague of locusts. Has anyone here had them?

My mum had issues a couple of years ago and put down a special big treatment on the lawn which seems to have helped. I seem to remember it took several treatments.