Amateur gardeners thread

ive recently taken a keen interest in gardening but i have to say its all gone a little wrong and most things have died

so i thought i know ill do a thread on the forum for others as well as myself to get tips and hints and stuff so feel free to post about your gardens flowers ect ect

Hi when you say died do you mean shrivelled up and died or just disappeared?

There's been a lot of rain but its also been very hot and new plants need an awful lot of water whilst their roots are still very shallow.

If plants have been there one day and not the next then they have been eaten - i had a fab row of lettuce but then a few days later resalised that i only had three left - eaten to nothing. Strangely the slug only ate one brand of lettuce but the catterpillar has eaten holes through the other variety.

Bought a mini greenhouse to plant melons and cucumbers in - they are coming on a treat, my tomatoes were all beheaded when the mini greenhouse took off during the bad winds a few weeks ago but some seem to have survived.

If you have a composter dig this into the land before planting crops, should help them grow a bit better - if you don't have a composter you can often get them for a few quid from the council or a company called Blackwall sell them cheaply.

peas and beans coming along nicely, strawberries were lovely and just starting to plant winter crops in pots in the mini greenhouse.

I've had a bit of a disapponting year really because i was late getting stuff in but next year should be better - saying that its still early in the season so...

babs

I love gardening and at the moment, my fetish is my pond and the fish that live in there.

I buy tons of plants all through the year and always lose the plastic name tag that comes with the pot so I have lots of flowers all over the place and I have no idea what theyre called.

That doesnt stop me though, I even grabbed a handful of poppy heads when I left Sheffield in 2002 and I make sure that I take seeds wherever I go. I make sure the poppys are well watered and cared for and over the years theyve been cross pollinated with poppies form here and are now a bright red where they were once purple.

I have a huge garden which has just been flattened and so all the new beds need plants - i am bad at planting plants from seed for some reason although i will work on this next year 'cause it will cost thousands to plant everywhere if i buy individual bought plants.

I have just had the veg patch built - had it raised and dh has built me a retaining wall out of the chimney that we had taken down - it's about 30 foot by 18 foot so i have a good space for veggies and fruits. Next year i will have all 8 fruit and veg beds organised and some fruit trees planted - its a lot of hard work but very rewarding and an education for the kids - oh and after a bit of glass to make a cold frame for the melons 'cause i don't think that they will reach maturity in the mini greenhouse - would love a proper greenhouse.

Was given lots of plants by a friend but i am gutted because all the wonderful irises that she gave me haven't flowered, i have a lovely set of leaves though:(

Anyway for this year i am working at getting all the different areas prepared and then early next year i can concentrate on filling spaces, for a graden so big i was surprised that it had so little growing in it - lots of the purple geraniums and some sort of yellow plant and a few very mature roses but apart from that not a lot else - very disappointing.

I have some poppies but they are orange and very small - i'd love some of the HUGE red ones. I also bought some plants online and i am so disappointed with those, they refuse to grow as they should - my neighboour has the same plants in the same position yet his are huge and lovely and mine are small and weedy - then again i have the yellow plants which grow like triffids in my garden but are far smaller in everyone elses - i'm not good with flowering plants.

i love it all though - i am working organic so maybe the neighbours are using miracle grow or something.

i'd love a pond for tadpoles and frogs and water plants but i have a small child so not a good option just yet - we get to walk to the stream though and paddle with nets so they aren't deprived.

Ooo and just planted my herb garden, looks to be doing well apart from corriander - so its all coming together well.

yep a keen gardener here - hence the screen name.

babs

That sounds exciting.

Theres nothing better than a new patch of land that can be moulded into what you want it to be, is there?

My garden is tiny and the topsoil was only about in inch deep when I started on it back in 2003.

Under the soil were huge lumps of concrete and breeze blocks and half bricks- I later learned that the garden was where all the rubble was dumped when they were building the area.

Now, one garden composter, a lot of digging and a hell of a lot of blood, sweat and tears later the garden looks almost decent.

Heres a pic of part of the garden taken a few weeks ago, the pond, which now has a current for the fish is, I discovered today, infested with horse leeches, the eggs of which came in on some plants I was given.

when i said died i mean they dried / shriveled up and gone all droppy

ill get some photos but mines still a work in progrees have still loads of hard landscaping to be done

dried / shriveled up and gone all droppy

JT should see a Doc about that!

Ooooo jabber, those red hot pokers are to die for - i must do a list of all the stuff i want in my garden and actually do some planning, i think thats where i go wrong i just chick stuff in without thinking about it all - i want lupins and did plant some but they didn't grow.

Cute pond!

My garden is also full of stone - we have actually removed several huge mounds of earth that made hills and then evened out other areas and hidden tons of debris, mainly bricks and stone - this area is to be grassed though so isn't a problem - i understand the hours of sweat and blood though. It was terribly overgrown when we bought the house - i spent the first winter removing miles and miles of ivy - far too much to take to the tip so we filled the skips with it then shoved the rubble on top - tried burning it but the smoke upset the neighbours.

I think it will be another year before we have it looking good and maybe another two before we have it finished, still when i look back at what it was like i can't believe that we have done so much - i don't have photos on this putter and i wouldn't know how to post one anyway 'cause i am useless but will do if i can work out how to transport piccies -

have always wanted a beutiful cottage garden and so looking forwards to having it the way i want it - we have been lucky too 'cause we have been able to use hundreds of stone boulders that were up and down, as well as the chimney and some lovely old stone sets that we found when we demolished the back part of the house in the garden - oh and the old slates that we removed from the roof and some reclaimed ones that we bought to replace are left over so i get to break them up this weekend to make the front path - i have managed to restore the front garden to what i think it would have looked like when the house was built - still need some more plants - lots more plants in the front but hopefully it will look really nice and should be the first area that we finish.

I think that i have a lot to learn though.

thanks for the picture - i love looking at gardens,

babs

Katy definately sounds like lack of water then.

We have had major landscaping done and decided to hire in a man and his digger for a few days - well more than a few days really to do it all - twill still be a long time till its finished though - i'll get some before pictures and then take some now pictures and then if i am still about in a few years some after pictures.

babs

I've got catterpillars as big as fingers in my garden. They managed to eat half of my lawn in a couple of days. It's like baging my head against a wall trying to control them. I have to put pesticide down every couple of days, which then stops the new seed from comming up. End result sore head.

Nice garden jab.

Catterpillars eating grass?

Thats a new one to me.

Id throw bird seed down to attract the birds, surely theyd love a nice fat catterpillar.