EADD Gardening Club: Ploughing FUBAR's infertile Fields

[tambourine-man]

^ Sounds about right regarding the corn. I think we're sticking to growing baby corn this year! :D

Oh, and check out what I just caught in my garden (while taking a picture for the fridge thread)...

...some fat cunt squirrel nicking my strawberries.

 

[effie]

Haha that certainly is a fat squirrel!

My garden's loving all the rain, everything seems to have grown loads over the past few days. Potato plants are looking quite jungle-esque :D

 

[VAC]

Oh, and check out what I just caught in my garden (while taking a picture for the fridge thread)...

...some fat cunt squirrel nicking my strawberries.

This made me fucking howl!

 

[ollieideal]

i transplanted a coupleof my baby poppies n they have taken ,it's my first time so it's a learning curve but ,yeah i'm well proud

 

[brimz]

i transplanted a coupleof my baby poppies n they have taken ,it's my first time so it's a learning curve but ,yeah i'm well proud

Good stuff , i transplanted em very early cos their not 2 happy bout it , but its been fine n they are nice n healthy with big strong roots.
i treat my plants like humans kinda , makes it easier in aweird way.

 

[effie]

My plants coming along well despite a lot of neglect lately.. Mint, lily, lemon thyme, herb trough (parsley, oregano and basil), tomatoes, potatoes, chillis and assorted flowers. Got 3 courgette plants too but they aren't in the pic

Second pic is my potato plants, they've gone mental!

my plants.. Got a few tiny green tomatoes already, yay!

 

[badandwicked]

My plants coming along well despite a lot of neglect lately.. Mint, lily, lemon thyme, herb trough (parsley, oregano and basil), tomatoes, potatoes, chillis and assorted flowers. Got 3 courgette plants too but they aren't in the pic

Second pic is my potato plants, they've gone mental!

my plants.. Got a few tiny green tomatoes already, yay!

Aw lovely pics Effie! Looks a real sunny spot. I think container gardening is a lot harder than in bare soil, fair play to you. When your pots flower they're ready, you can rummage around under the soil and have a grope to check You can harvest like that too rather than pull the whole plant up but don't expect many decent sized off each plant, I think its only 4 or 5. Post pics of them boiled on a plate covered in butter

 

[badandwicked]

hee hee little fuck. We have one that lurks by the cherry tree and the second they ripen he puts in 12 hours shifts to get the tree cleared in about a day What the hell does he do with them all, maybe make clafoutis...

 

[Jabberwocky]

well, this is probably my first post in gardening club.....

i have 2 questions.

firstly, i gave up on having plants because they get eaten to death by slugs. then forgot this and now my thyme is nearly dead as all its leaves have been eaten. i know i need to buy slug pellets but in the mean time is surrounding the pot with table salt (ever cover them with salt as a kid??) just a psychological fix or will it help as long as it doesn't rain?

secondly, my mum always uses new compost for everything she plants. she has a car to transport it though, and i don't. is reusing it really bad, i mean i know if its a cake of roots thats no good but otherwise is it ok?

loving the garden pics......

 

[jancrow]

Hail. Slugs and snails are averse to copper. I think some sort of electrolytic reaction takes place when they touch the stuff but I'm verrrrry sloooowwwww today so can't access the information.

Gardening centres sell copper tape which you can stick around the bases of pots to keep them at bay, or you can go ghetto and strip a small length of speaker wire for the copper core and place a thick loop of that round the base of the plant's stem to stop them climbing. They're surprisingly agile if slow climbers so you may need to create quite a thick barrier. A ring of overlapping 2ps like fishscales around the base of the plant works too but again create a thick barrier, an inch or more is necessary.

Salt on the soil is not advised as most plants don't like salty soil. In fact there are areas of Asia, in Russia I think, where the soils are still poor after the Mongols rampaged through, fucked everyone up then ploughed salt into the soil (which was immensely expensive and time consuming) as a massive fuck you to the original inhabitants of the land. We've burned down your village, now we're going to go out of our way to ensure than nobody can ever grow any crops here ever again. Hearts and minds. Oh, and salt needs to be refreshed when it rains which is of course when slugs and snails are at their most active.

Reusing soil is OK unless the previous plants were diseased or infested with pests but it will obviously provide much less in the way of nutrients which can be corrected to some degree with fertilizers or by enriching with compost. It's not ideal but as long as you're prepared to keep a close eye on the plants you might get away with it. It depends how valuable the plants are to you. You can get compost from amazon these days though so if you want to play it safe and give your plants the best possible start I'd order some of that.

 

[tiggerific]

If you're freezing tender herbs you can stop them getting freezer burn by wrapping them in tinfoil. Although tbh this hasn't ever really worked for me.

I normally use ice cube trays and freeze with water it seems to stop freezer burn.

Oh and I am now on I think the 12 avocado seed that has refused to grow. Get the next four ready to eat, will try again.
I know a couple of people here gave me a link and tips, so far not good but determined to get one, at this rate though I can see me buying it in

 

[Jabberwocky]

thanks jancrow.

i have just bought some slug pellets for the time being. i want those bastards dead!!!! but also my cat is really stupid, like the number of times i've seen feathers about but no dead, not even mostly eaten, bird. i.e. she lost a fight with her natural prey, is ridiculous, so something she wont eat like copper sounds awesome. i put the salt on the flags round the pot rather than the pot itself cos i know soil needs the right balance etc. plus i suspect they come from under the flags so a little salt down there wont do any harm.

i put a good dose of plant food and some new compost in with my plants, will that be enough? though annoyingly i did notice a few insects in one, and one of the pots isn't showing any shoots yet, so i'll take note of that.

the one that was getting eaten was thyme. he was looking so healthy since i replanted him but i'm not sure he'll survive now.

thanks again for your advice. i really know nothing about this stuff but spend too much on coriander and parsley to not grow it now!! i was really surprised that the coriander seeds turned out to be the same as coriander seeds from cooking. thats how alien all this is to me!!!

 

[effie]

Aw lovely pics Effie! Looks a real sunny spot. I think container gardening is a lot harder than in bare soil, fair play to you. When your pots flower they're ready, you can rummage around under the soil and have a grope to check You can harvest like that too rather than pull the whole plant up but don't expect many decent sized off each plant, I think its only 4 or 5. Post pics of them boiled on a plate covered in butter

Thanks B&W! My potato plants aren't looking so great now, they all keeled over due to being too top heavy and pounded by rain I think - just went to give them some more compost and support and found about 10 new potaoes accidentally! Only one plant has flowered yet as far as I have noticed, but the potatoes from that one are teeny-tiny where as the ones from the others are bigger. They are all supposed to be ready at different stages, can't remember which is which though..

I presume once you've picked a potato out of the soil you can't just put it back so it grows bigger as you've severed the contact from the main plant? Hehe daft q I know but I really don't have a clue what I am doing here...

Is it okay to leave the rest undisturbed for a while? They won't start to rot or go bad (or turn into little plants themselves!) or anything? Some were tiny so def need more time to grow I think. I don't want to harvest loads at once or get them before they are ready but I'm really not sure what to do for the best never having grown tatties before.. will have some for tea tonight (yum!) and will store the rest but ideally I'd like to pick them and cook them on the same day later in the month/next month.

Second possibly silly question - am concerned about pollination of my toms and chillis. My open air terrace thing is on the 3rd floor with a biggish wall and houses all around - we get the occasional insect and have seen one bee but that's it. Do I need to try to pollinate them myself? Will there be enough insects really despite me not spying many? I am out for quite a lot of the day..

Got quite a few of tomatoes on their way, woo! Sadly I forgot to prune the extra branches so won't get a huge yield but as am living on my own at the mo I don't mind at all.

Got a lil courgette on its way too I have 3 plants in total but the others are still flowering and no sign of courgettes yet. Am cheering on the one I have!

gardening, has got me out and about today and I feel so much better for it.. repotted a chilli that was in far too small a pot, sorted out the falling-over potato plants and generally sorted out the rest

(sorry for the long post...)

 

[koneko]

2012 EADD Garden Season Opens!

mailmonkey

Got me broad beans in yesterday! lovely sunny day. Season for gardening begins now. Soon as broad beans in, season's off.

The guru has spoken - time to get this thread back up and running!



Not sure what to be planting up for 2012 - had a mixed bag last year with some pretty bad storms destroying a lot of plants and trees. Had little success with the veg i put in, didn't even get one tattie, minuscule courgettes lots of kale though. Had better luck with my flowers and patio pots, great triffid sized sweetpeas, masses of poppies and wild flowers.

Definitely be planting more salad and veg things, try my hand at peas and of course herbs they being easy peasy

Got sandy soil here and we're on a hill beside the sea so it's pretty exposed - planting recommendations welcome.

 

[Danny Weed]

I have no idea what I will be growing outside this year. The ground is frozen solid here most days so I have plenty time to plan it out.

 

[brimz]

Yeah know is the time for planning your stuff Danny.

Do you have anything that you particulary want to grow?

I noticed that they have already started selling those little kits for growing Chilis n similar in Sainsburys already.
I have a Homebase within 2 mins of my flat !!

i don't have a garden these days but my Ma has a nice one n will let me use some of hers also i will get down with the shared alotment i was with last year.

 

[Danny Weed]

Got no idea what I want to grow, I just go to the garden centre and have a look normally. I am not into growing vegetables, I haven't got a big enough space for it to be worth while. I just like some plants in the front garden to brighten the place up, I am surrounded by loads of horrible back streets so it makes a change to see a bit of greenery.

 

[koneko]

^
You cannae beat some colour with annual bedding plants Danny, but buying them every year can mount up £££s - worth looking at longer term perennials too, especially things that give a bit of structure and winter vegetation colour. You can also mix in some pretty type veg things into flower beds, get the best of both worlds then - seen some lovely ornamental like cabbages and whatnot.

Brimz - can you do window boxes where you are now?

I'd really like to change our garden structurally, it's very old, lots of mature shrubs and trees and could do with altering it to suit us and making it easier to look after, it really is too big and a lot of work. However, I feel this won't be our "last" house so not willing to do that. That thought makes me quite sad actually.

 

[brimz]

Brimz - can you do window boxes where you are now?

Nowt

Although they have been putting up trees n various shrubs around the place .
I think by the time tis finished their will be loads of greenery it's right by the river

 

[Mailmonkey]

The guru has spoken - time to get this thread back up and running!



Not sure what to be planting up for 2012 - had a mixed bag last year with some pretty bad storms destroying a lot of plants and trees. Had little success with the veg i put in, didn't even get one tattie, minuscule courgettes lots of kale though. Had better luck with my flowers and patio pots, great triffid sized sweetpeas, masses of poppies and wild flowers.

Definitely be planting more salad and veg things, try my hand at peas and of course herbs they being easy peasy

Got sandy soil here and we're on a hill beside the sea so it's pretty exposed - planting recommendations welcome.

lol @ the guru :D

tatties are a waste of space imo, unless you got loads of land you might as well buy your spuds...

Kate have you thought about asparagus? That loves a sandy soil..I know climate generally not perfect, but you are south/west facing? Might be okay...you won't be able to harvest any for eating for first two years, but after that it'll crop for 20 odd years, I had a row of it at me old house, and as far as I know it still going strong, I snuck down there a couple years ago and pinched a few spears, terrible I know....

It grows really attractive long ornamental fronds after the picking season too. Can be a great windbreak on a breezy plot.

Peas Kate, go for something like the Alderman I think, the taller varieties...you'll need to add some support for them, byut they are great croppers.

EDIT>>>>wherever 've had a veg plot or allotment, it's been a case of trial and error...some plots do well with some veg but not others,even in the same region/climatic area...just grow a few diffferent things, then keep growing what does well...I wouldn't bother persevering with something that produces dismally, unless the weather was totally unseasonal and was a bad season for that particular crop.