How does your garden grow?

Members adventures in the Vegetable Patch all year round
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Spreckly
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Spreckly »

Our garden centre which is a garden centre in every sense of the word, no fancy goods, and plants growing in quite bleak conditions, do not sell aconites. I queried this a couple of weeks since, and was told that they are very difficult to grow. Ours have certainly struggled.
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

Did a bit more weeding of the fruit plot yesterday - it was a nice day sandwiched between 2 dreary wet evenings (hail on Monday driving to dancing, deep puddles in Knutsford after choir yesterday).
Still not bought seed spuds or replaced my bean wigwam that blew over before the beans were quite finished.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

I had to go into Tarporley today so I looked into our hardware shop. A treasure trove sells everything you could want. I have got a bag of King Edwards (they don't sell those loose after one year when there were a lot of rotten ones in the sack). The Earlies are in sacks and weighed out so I bought 4 Sharps Express - there were a few in the bottom of the sack, too late for Arran Pilot, they always go first.
Now I really will have to clear all that grass off the veg patch.
I have a big flowerpot (over a foot high - maybe 18") so wondered whether to plant the Sharps in that.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

Slow going with the weeding, but it was really nice yesterday so I started on the spud patch, some soil riddled into the big pot and a bucket full of compost from the compost heap mixed in. I'll plant the Early spuds in that and top up as they shoot.
The plum trees (specially Czar which ripens early) are coming into flower. Bees do your stuff - it's spring (till winter comes back).
The soft fruit bushes are nicely in leaf.
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Freeranger
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Freeranger »

This is probably a very late, very unwelcome question, Mo, but if you're growing spuds, to you need to weed all the veg patch?
Can you do a trench/row for the spuds and then earth up and hoe out the now loose weeds? Or is this where theory and practice diverge?
Spreckly - was given an aconite plant dug from someone's garden, thought I'd killed it so emptied the pot in the garden, and have just noticed a few of them in that spot this year. They're in a border on a south facing wall and under a shrub.
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

Loose weeds? You've not seen my veg patch. I have now got 2 rows in, maybe the rest will all fit into 1 row, when I get the thatch of grass either weeded or moved.
I've been lightly pruning the plum trees too - just trimming the dead bits really, they say you should do it when they aren't dormant to minimise disease (forget which).
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
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lancashire lass
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by lancashire lass »

Mo wrote:I've been lightly pruning the plum trees too - just trimming the dead bits really, they say you should do it when they aren't dormant to minimise disease (forget which).


Silver Leaf ^b:

Silver leaf is a fungal disease caused by Chondrostereum purpureum. It infects through wounds, mainly caused by pruning. Leaf silvering occurs during summer and fruiting bodies form from late summer.


The most commonly affected trees are plums, apples, apricots, almonds, cherries and relatives, hawthorns, roses and poplars. Rhododendron and Laburnum are also attacked, though in neither of these does the silvering symptom develop in the leaves.


Since the fungus produces most of its infectious spores in autumn and winter, ideally carry out routine pruning of susceptible plants in summer. Not only are there fewer spores at this season but pruning wounds, the main point of entry for the spores, heal more quickly.
Freeranger
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Freeranger »

Loose weeds? You've not seen my veg patch.


{rofwl} I know that feeling!
But I had hoped that it was the way I was going to make progress with mine, so that's a disappointment!
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

It probably depends on the kind of weed. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
I'm strip weeding mine, planting as I go. I've got a lot of tussocky grass, some deep rooted dandelions plus a few docks and thistles, couch grass, nettles.
You are supposed to have a rotation, but now that I've given up on peas, brassicas and salad my rotation is spuds and fallow. My friend at choir is complaining about a weed with little white flowers - I'm not sure if she means chickweed or bittercress. That needs soil that is much better cultivated - it would never stand a chance in my patch.
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Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

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I don't really understand why the peas did so well when I used to plant them 40+ years ago. All I did was put holly leaves in the trench to deter mice, add a few sticks for them to climb on and they'd be away. Now they just show their noses above ground and something pulls them up. So I've given up.
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Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

In ground that was well dug the previous autumn

Lovely idea from all the gardening books.
Somehow I'm always playing catch-up.
In the autumn I have a large orchard of apples to pick (and prune after that, or sometime I do bits of it while I'm up the step-ladder picking).
Then it gets too cold and dark and miserable, and I'm not tempted outside.
Plus I really don't have the stamina to do much at a time (LL amazes me). I'm an old woman (though I don't like to admit it).
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

Noticed this morning that the Wisteria is out (maybe that doesn't belong in GYO but never mind, it's nice to look out of the window at it)
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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lancashire lass
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by lancashire lass »

Mo wrote:
Plus I really don't have the stamina to do much at a time (LL amazes me). I'm an old woman (though I don't like to admit it).


{hug} ... perhaps down to clever post updates as I really only manage to do "big" jobs when I have time off work - last year's garden rescue (and the pond build the year before / the chicken run builds a few years back) only really happened when I was on annual leave, but when back to work would come to a grinding halt except for a bit done on a Sunday if I felt up to it. For every day I pushed myself over and above normal I needed a day to recover which is difficult to do when in full time employment. A reminder that I had to give up my allotment plot because I couldn't cope any longer with that strategy and to be honest, I am aware that every year it gets more difficult as I get older. With that in mind, my garden has fewer maintenance jobs (like having no lawn, putting weed suppressant down and mulching to reduce weeding, the idea of creating a "wildlife pond" at the bottom of the garden) and if I could, would also dearly love to get rid of that privet hedge for a fence instead!
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Mo
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Mo »

One green leaf showing from in the tub where I put 4 early spuds. I sprinkled soil on it quick before the frost got it.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
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Freeranger
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Re: How does your garden grow?

Post by Freeranger »

{rofwl} If only we could do that with all the weeds as well!
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