Are there many gardeners here??
My tomatoes were a waste of time this year. The first lot were drowned, then the second were so slow they have only just got some fruit on them, and now the leaves are going autumnal
We had 2 meals off the beans
Most of my bedding drowned too.
On the plus side, the lawns are green rather than brown, and the shrubs have grown.
Bev.

Made a gorgeous tomato soup out of mine this year, they were very straggled and small but lovely. I put my beans in early so we had quite a few. The pigeons had the tops off all my onions, but still got some. Potatoes got blight, they were rubbish - one meal but they were freebees so didn't cost me anything.

The fruit has been good this year though - I've made loads of jam.

I just don't know whether to leave my pumpkins on and hope they ripen in the next 25 days or bring them in and hope they ripen in the window - looking very green at the moment. Any suggestions.

I have been trying to cut the grass just now and was driven in by the humidity and the midgies - so bad they have followed me in. There have been very few midgie days this year so I think they are all trying to catch up. There are swarms of them

I've no advice to offer but definately will be needing some

Our tomatoes haven't done too well either, they've got black botches on a lot of them, but we cut the good bits out and eat them.

Cucumbers have done really well, anyone want one?

Runner beans also doing well, unfortunately the children eat them raw when they are still quite small, rarely do they get as far as a saucepan. (They've eaten them raw for years, doesn't seem to harm them.)
Mange tout peas the same, they get eaten straight off the plant, don't think they even get into the rest of the garden.

Beetroot ok but not fantastic, decided against carrots this year as the carrot flies get them.

Leeks doing well, they'll keep us going all spring.

A good crop of sweetcorn, although it's all eaten now and the plants chopped up on the compost heap.

Apple trees laden, Bramleys need picking over though, especially if, like us, you are vegetarian.

I've given up on all my plants - the only thing that did well were the couple of left-over seed potatos my Dad gave me - they've produced beautiful spuds and heaps on each plant.

Any methods for shifting a nasty little mole would be welcome though...

My neighbour uses the 'stick with a bottle resting on top it' into the latest molehill system - doesn't seem to work very well as she has to keep moving the stick as the hills increase!

I love plants, though I have a lazy thumb rather than a green thumb!

We are rather shaded by other houses (and our own plum trees...) so I get the most mileage out of leaf-vegetables which don't need as much sunshine as fruiting vegetables.We had a very cloudy summer too, and the courgettes (which usually hate the hot Japanese summer anyway) sulked royally.

I find the mini-tomatoes suffer less from pests than the big ones - they ripen before the bugs notice they're there, I think!

A friend told me that brussels' sprouts are much less bug-prone in her garden than cabbage, so I'm definitely going to grow some in containers on my balcony this year.

Other than that, the closer a plant is to a weed, the better it grows, so I always grow runner beans rather than dwarf bush beans etc. I've just pulled the tropical bean vines and bitter gourd vines off the house, ready to plant something for autumn. So far, I've planted lots of Chinese chives, and am considering those flowering Chinese brassicas that you can cut by the stem. Choy sum flowering pak choi, a kind of green, stemmy brassica - purple-flowered type will tolerate more cold. Also broccoli raab/rapini!

Any favourites for autumn planting?

I'll lend you our cat. He caught three in the space of two days during the summer. I just wish he would find a better place to leave them than on the drive behind the rear wheel of my car, though...

well, this thread made me really jealous..... hehehe.....

i really want to have a beatiful garden and manage them......

my parents are to busy to make it....

Mind you the weather is one extreme to the other - this year the rain ruined loads, last year was sooo hot the only thing it was good for was compost!


By the way, anyone got any ideas about discouraging rabbits from an allotment? The only suggestion I've had so far is a shot gun which isn't really an option.

My broken reeds, most of my "garden" is in a strip between house and road about 20cm wide, or in containers - even in shady places, climbing beans (like snake beans) or gourds, malabar spinach etc will climb till they find the sun and provide a good crop in a small place - and that's only the EDIBLE side of gardening!

Apple tree laden - am waiting for it to ripen fully as the fruit is wonderful as dessert apples........having said that, I also use the slightly less ripe fruit to cook, and it needs no sugar added at all, simply a dash of elderflower concentrate, a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, and a good handful of sultanas..... mmmmmm lovely!!

Have hundreds of tomatoes on my greenhouse plants and these are ripening slowly - 2 at a time!!! At this rate it'll be next spring before they're all ripe!!! Maybe green tomato chutney is an option this year....

Glad to hear it wasn't a good year for tomatoes and not just a bad year for my small sons'! He's very proud of what he grew, but the plants were always either drowning or dried out. Same with most things! Except for the roses and geraniums, which seem to have done well in spite of me and the weather.

What do you do with climbing nastirtiums?
Do you just leave the seeds in the ground where they fall, or do you collect them to sow next Spring?

A lot of my bedding did very well this summer. They had plenty of rain, and I think there was quite a lot of sun in between showers as there have been loads of flowers.

Tomatoes - like others, were disappointing. The plants grew like crazy, but a lot of the fruit went black.

How about a few pictures from your gardens, folks? Being naturally nosey, I'd love to see people's successes and failures! Unfortunately my technology isn't good enough to post pictures.

Unfortunately I'm now living in a flat which has no garden But I decided this summer to see what would happen if I started to plant stuff in the kitchen.

I really got into eating avocado's at the beginning of the year so had a go at growing one, it took ages to get going but finally it shot up and it's doing well.

My mini tomato plants, started off well now are limping a bit, the spring onions and corriander died off quick, but the basil isn't too bad, tho it's looking a bit miserable now!

Had some peppers going and they did really well - only trouble is now I think something's munching it - dont really want to put insect killing stuff on it - but I think I need to do something to save it. There's little cobweb bits between the leaves and on the stalk and little white bits are on the leaves - any suggestions? I do have one pepper growing on the plant, would be nice if it could get big enough to be eaten

Well, this is popular
I'm not a "gardener" as such, but do dabble.
As far as the Nastyturns (nasturtiums) are concerned, gather the seeds and keep them in a envelope in the kitchen drawer until next year. They love dry, hot places.
Moles.........get a cat or dog. OR listen to Jasper Carrots' advice about getting rid of moles
I did some tidying up yesterday, and am about to go out to do more. We have a north facing garden..........ferns, hostas, ivy.........and in the middle of winter, the grass is too wet to stand on, so I have to "clear" the garden up for winter fairly early. It gets so wet that you can sink into the grass.
Keep it green
Bev.

some plants pests can be removed by spraying with a weak solution of washing up liquid - although it does really qualify as insect-killing stuff I guess, but I would rather use it than stronger insecticide. It works with aphid infestations in the garden - although ladybirds eat the aphids (and might not survive the liquid either, so I only use it if there aren't any ladybirds around).

Otherwise can you wipe off the cobwebby stuff with a piece of damp tissue or kitchen paper?

Yeah I've given them a good wipe yesterday and poked them with a cotten bud a couple of days ago - swear something off there bit me :s

We'll just have to wait and see if they recover - might try the washing up liquid idea if the beasties come back, would rather not use anything harsher than that

Thanks x

Derris is also very mild

I'm off out to the garden centre/nursery to get some winter pansies, wall flowers and other bit and bobs for the winter.
Anyone else do winter bedding for some colour??
Bev.

Ooh, definitely! Our front door (practically on the street) faces north, so without buying plants it would be a dismal spot. I like to buy polyanthus and primula - especially the "CAndy" type "Julian" primula x polyanthus crosses which you can see on the link under "Sakata seeds...".

Somehow I seem to resist the popular ornamental cabbages which people often plant instead of flowers over winter here! They are pretty enough, but tend to look very sad and dusty by the end of the winter.

Japan has lots of violets which are not scented, but which have a huge range of flower- and leaf-shapes. I have to keep my hands firmly in my pockets at the garden centre, or I'd bankrupt myself.

I don't keep my hands in my pockets when I go for walks locally though - there are often spray chrysanthemums blooming at the edges of neglected fields and carparks, and many cuttings I've "rescued" are now safely blooming in my tiny garden, while the parent plant has been concreted over .

Here are some chrysanthemum container plantings...spot the ornamental cabbage in there too!

Have done the pots today. Used pansies, and polyanthus. I also bought some tiny fir trees, I don't know their name, but they are about 8 inches tall and a yellowy green. Apparently they grow to 5 foot in open ground, slowly. In a pot they are much slower and bound by the pot to a smaller size. Then there were the purple heather type plants, which smell funny They contrast well with the conifer thingies and the purple pansies.
Bev.

Yellow-green thingies, I know them well, we call them "gold crest" in Japan. It's almost depressing to think that people all around the world are planting exactly the same things, thanks to the power of the gardening media!

We have the purple heather type thingies too, but they are maybe not so popular for winter plantings as various silver-leaved thingies.

We also have New Zealand tea-tree pot plants at this time of year, but as the climate is so different, I kill the poor things off without fail every time I succumb to nostalgia and buy them!
tea-tree

I'm glad you understand "thingies" As I said, I'm not a gardener, just dabble
Bev.

OK Folks, it's spring, it's sunny. Let's garden.
I'm off out to tidy and Basil is mowing the lawns/moss.
Keep it green.
Beverley.

It may be spring, but it's tipping down here

Still, it makes the grass/plants grow...

Ah, a fair weather gardener Me too. If it was raining here you wouldn't find me in the garden for dust nor money
Later.
Bev.

Just come in from the garden
It's warm enough for jeans and a jumper out there.
I split the garden into 6 areas to weed and sort. Meant to do 1 per day to save back ache, but did 2 1/2. Green bin is full now and I've got to do something to eat.
Most things are OK. One of my ferns looked, brown/rusty coloured. SO i stripped those leaves off. Hope I haven't killed it
Anyone else been out there yet?
Bev.

I have been picking the last of the kale - very sweet, and the swiss chard has overwintered and is producing new growth. It still feels too cold to sow anything in the ground, and I usually wait till May, but this weekend I set up my mini patio greenhouse thingy and sowed some leeks and lettuce in pots. The leeks are probably too late but I'll try anyway. This year I'm going to try sowing chard and maybe even beetroot in modules to get them off to an earlier start.

Oddly enough in spite of last year's poor summer I got a really good crop of veg from my three small raised beds. And there are still lots of apples and blackcurrants in the freezer.

In case you hadn't noticed, I am more interested in growing edibles, but I do have some easy care flowers as well. The daffs are looking good at the moment.

Potatoes, carrots beetroot, peas, broad beans, garlics and onions are all in and starting to come up.
Inside I have a forest of chilli and tomato plants.

I unwisely planted two mints in the same pot last year - one was lush, thin-skinned, and distinctly a limp character, while the other was hairy and aggressive. The lush got going earlier this year and I was hoping that some kind of equality might be achieved, but the minute the weather warmed up, out came hairy-shanks, and quickly spread right round the pot!

Finally realized that my collection of broken teapots would be perfect for swampy Japanese herbs, so at last, they are lined up along the garden wall, just handy for quick raids from the kitchen.

Ianporsche, when are you planting your tomatoes outside? I planted my single solitary tomato yesterday!

Is nobody else out in their gardens, or tending their windowsill pots?!

Must run, only an hour of daylight left, rain predicted for tomorrow, and I need to replant a big container which used to house a daisy bush ripped out by the roots in an unseasonal typhoon!

Our chard and kale have run to seed SO badly - no-one likes them, so I don't know why we grew them. The spinach did well though, and my purple sprouting is, well, sprouting for england!

I'm getting some gaura, Peruvian daffodils, aqualegia and godetia for my birthday tomorrow. I've really got back into gardening recently - can't wait for the flowers to grow! I even have my own little patch now. It's been so cold up here in the sticks that I haven't dared to plant any seeds yet - hope it warms up soon!

I won first prize for a cake in a local flower show last year, and it has given me the confidence to enter vegetables and flowers this year - wish me luck! Does anyone else enter shows and stuff? There are always those funny old men with their prize carrots and broad beans, aren't there?

Cheers.

Gardening is something of a topic of hilarity in my student house. For a start, none of us have time to keep on top of it, and none of us know that much about it.

I've been having fun so far this year being suprised by all the 'random unexpecteds' that have appeared in the front garden. First it was swathes of snowdrops, then an absolutely stunning white camilla (the soils here are alkali for goodness sake!) that has flowered its socks off. Then come up a clump of hyacinths, a few odd daffodils, and now some rather straggley blue bells. I daren't wonder whats going to be next!

As opposed to doing any gardening, well, we did buy some grass seed, to try and fill in the gaps in the lawn, which seems to be sprouting okay. And at least we haven't had to water it. I am seriously considering buying some raddish and rocket seeds, which I reckon I could grow in a few pots, and use to prop up salads, but currently have no money for pots and compost! For similar reasons, the herb bed we thought about putting together never materialised either... oh well. I never thought of gardening as a expensive hobby!

I love chard. I chop the white bits and shred the green and use them in stir fries.
Bev.

I'll probably put my tomatoes out in the plasticy green house thing in the next couple of weeks, then after a week or so pop them outside- assuming we don't get any more frost.

I'll probably sow pumpkins soon too (don't sow pumpkins too early- the plants grow at a terrific rate, you can end up with a 1 ft tall plant 1 week after sowing so you need to know the frosts are over).



Tamsin- you don't have to buy pots, you can use yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, ice cream tubs, cut the bottom off cider or milk (plastic) bottles etc etc. Compost is about £3 for 50 L- or you could just use soil from your garden. Lettuces are well worth growing, very easy, very quick and shop bought lettuce is very expensive.

Is nobody else out in their gardens ?

Yes! but it's only the last week or two that it's really been pleasant enough to enjoy being outside.

We have rosemary, arabis, forget-me-nots, and bluebells (the garden variety, not the wild ones) and this year we have as many white ones as blue - the blue and white look quite good mixed in with the pinky-purple honesty. And some striking yellowy-green and whitey-green euphorbias, a white-flowering potentilla and a mahonia.

I have a columbine in pot by the front porch which is in bud.

Tamsin the idea of using yogurt pots is a good one - you don't need posh garden-shop pots.

I haven't tried chard - but kale is great. We grew kale and purple sprouting one year and they did well.

I feel positively nostalgic for chard! As Bev says, if you treat the stalk and the leaf as two separate vegetables, its charms will become more apparent.

Tamsin, you can even make holes in the bottom of the bag of compost, cut the top off, and grow stuff straight in the bag. For some reason, I did more gardening when I was a university student than ever since - 7 of us in my flat dug up the entire back garden...and missed a few lectures while we were at it. If you have twitchy fingers, it's amazing what "cuttings" can be found hanging temptingly over garden walls (ask first, you will not only get a glow of virtue, you will probably get 10 more plants as well!), or more righteously, in corners of badly maintained carparks etc. Moss is nice to grow too, and plenty of that around waiting to be taken home.

I have a kind of neighborhood plant-swap network developed from chats over garden fences - one lady comes and raid bits off my chrysanthemums when the season is right, and heels in some little donation in return - one advantage of my "garden" being mostly an 18" strip between house and road!

Currently doing duty as containers are: the teapots, old cracked bowls, a bent metal bucket left behind by a road crew (looks wonderful with geraniums and daisies!), the bottom of a large rubbish container which lost its lid in the typhoon, Viohazard's and Airman's toy trucks with sempervivums in the trays, a chunk of wood which simply has plants and soil mounded up on top of it (needs a lot of watering but looks pretty - look for a book called "Gardening on Pavement, Tables, and Hard Surfaces if you want to get bit by that particular bug)...and even one or two actual plant pots!

Yesterday I found THREE New Zealand plants on sale at my local garden centre, and was overcome with homesickness...no I'm hoping that my husband won't notice just how many new things are concealed behind the older greenery!

I did make up a container of his mother's favourite plants to compensate - cuttings from her geraniums, lily of the valley, and a pretty little country favorite whose name in Japanese means "forget the city"!

P.S. Maggiemay, my honesty is flowering too! The seeds don't look their best in the rainy Japanese early summer, but the flowers are so pretty and unpretentious.

My rosemary is #2 of that ilk (#1 succumbed to the constant upheaval of having all my kids' friends' hamsters buried under it). I like the way weeping rosemary looks with nutmeg geranium's small leaves and dainty white flowers.

I tried chard and kale last year and enjoyed both- I think the secret is not to let the leaves that you eat get too big, they are less bitter that way.
The same thing with broad beans- most of the ones you see for sale are only fit for cattle feed.

You can grow potatoes quite well straight into the bag of compost. Potatoes are well worth growing- the taste of home grown is far superior to shop bought.

Saying that, I also gave serious consideration to growing tomatoes on our rather sunny balcony in grow bags...

May have to wait til next Autumn now though. I'll be off back hime in a month, and it'd be a shame to leae everything to die over summer!

My tip for the board is: the earth dug out by moles (mole hills) makes excellent potting compost. I carry a bag and a small trowel with me whenever I go out into the countryside.

I've just spent 3 hours digging out the old rockery. It was very hard work on account of the wet clay soil. The type that sticks to the fork when you dig it
It is now planted with some minature "fir trees", all different greens, and also some rockery plants.
I feel very good, but my back is killing me. Off to the bathroom for a soak.
Bev.

I'm going to grow some carrots in compost in an old washing up bowl. I've done it before - you just have to eat them when they're really small.

Then there are the marigolds to start off, and sunflowers so that the hamster has fresh sunflower seeds in the autumn.

I always use yogurt pots to supplement my little supply of proper pots - they are perfectly ok and you can just throw them away afterwards rather than having to give them a wash to put away for the winter.

My "rockery" is the side of the road! I decided to stop fighting the desire of plants to establish themselves in tiny cracks in the pavement, the concrete drain covers, and the boundary wall, and have been industriously popping various succulents and other garden toughies into every crevice - when the neighbour waters her pot plants (there's ahuge collection on her car pad, which is why she parks in front of my letter box instead ) soil washes along the road frontage of my house, making it extra easy to establish my "rockery".

At least clay soils are terribly nutritious - hope your conifers and greens are suitably grateful, Bev, and if they look askance, tell them they'll be shipped off to Japan and jammed into a crack in a wall!

Any suggestions for earth encrusted nails and hands that swell and stiffen after hand weeding?

A hot soak in some water with sweet smelling oils added.
BEFORE gardening, drag your nails along a bar of soap, so they are full of soap. Stops the dirt and easy to wash out after. It's what nurses did in the olden days, before gloves
Bev

Thanks - I'll try it

It's flaming raining hard, and I can't get in the garden again
Bev.

Wear gardening gloves

I put the tomatoes and chillis outside last saturday- they seem to be doing OK.