The compost heap - off topic thread

looksee

I was going to revive the previous OT thread, but it was 10 years old, so I thought maybe a new one?

Anyway, take a look at these beauties and tell us would you be tempted...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GXLDVWL/ref=psdc_3749091_t2_B07D365XN4

they honestly are so far off topic that they are can only be compared with those dyed chrysanths you see in the supermarket.

Spoiler...

they are not evening primrose, they are primroses which is a different animal, and they are not blue they are photoshopped. You can even see a bit of the covered over copyright mark on one of them!

uck51js9zml2yt

Speaking of compost heaps
I made the cheapest one ever

4 white pallets screwed together to form a square.
Great for the grass cuttings. Had to stop my wife thinking about putting it out on the field to be baled with the silage

Day Lewin

Ah, the old pallet compost bin: serviceable, excellent.

Also really handy that you can remove the lowest slat when it eventually comes time to scrape out the finished compost, you can get at it from underneath.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

looksee wrote: »

I was going to revive the previous OT thread, but it was 10 years old, so I thought maybe a new one?

Anyway, take a look at these beauties and tell us would you be tempted...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GXLDVWL/ref=psdc_3749091_t2_B07D365XN4

they honestly are so far off topic that they are can only be compared with those dyed chrysanths you see in the supermarket.

Spoiler...

they are not evening primrose, they are primroses which is a different animal, and they are not blue they are photoshopped. You can even see a bit of the covered over copyright mark on one of them!

They say they're rare though. They'll be even more rare judging by the reviews and the lack if germination.

Getting to sit in the garden more this year for some reason - maybe I've finally before more efficient in the garden.

Great compost from the bins this year too. I'm nearly running out of places to put it.


Spuds are good this year and good crops of peas too. Onions coming nicely and massive courgettes.

Mrs S in experimenting with courgette and apple soup recipes,

New Home

I have seen those in real life (polyanthus primula), and yes, they can be blue and they can also be a purply shade of blue (not all of them would have the white line around the petals). I've never seen them sold as seeds, though, only as full plants imported straight from Holland.


https://www.google.com/search?&biw=1920&bih=938&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=IEkfXaPjNbuEhbIP5pyv2AU&q=blue+polyanthus+white+edges&oq=blue+polyanthus+white+edges&gs_l=img.3...10048.13253..13833...1.0..0.48.382.10......0....1..gws-wiz-img.3Cf1txMYD80

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Anybody thinned apples yet? There wasn't a massive set of fruit but still enough to warrant thinning out, because we didn't have any June drop.

finla

Zachary Billions Coffee wrote: »

Anybody thinned apples yet? There wasn't a massive set of fruit but still enough to warrant thinning out, because we didn't have any June drop.

No, very poor crop this year on all three of my apple trees. Never seen so many aphids on everything!

magicbastarder

yes, loads on my james grieve and belvedere house trees (only one of each).
i really need to prune the james grieve, it's like an overloaded fishing rod.

standardg60

New Home wrote: »

I have seen those in real life (polyanthus primula), and yes, they can be blue and they can also be a purply shade of blue (not all of them would have the white line around the petals). I've never seen them sold as seeds, though, only as full plants imported straight from Holland.


https://www.google.com/search?&biw=1920&bih=938&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=IEkfXaPjNbuEhbIP5pyv2AU&q=blue+polyanthus+white+edges&oq=blue+polyanthus+white+edges&gs_l=img.3...10048.13253..13833...1.0..0.48.382.10......0....1..gws-wiz-img.3Cf1txMYD80

The pic is of primula but the seeds are oenothera which is a completely different plant!

Harry Palmr

Are plastic pots the bane of your life (and shed)? Why plastic is still allowed to be used is starting to bug me, there are alternatives but it seems hardly anyone uses them. Sure having some for potting on is handy but over a couple of years you could easily have scores that are surplus to requirement.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

I don't know about any of you but there seems to be a never ending list of jobs in the garden at the moment. Grass cutting hasn't slowed at all this year and needs doing twice a week. Hedges are throwing out tremendous growth and need almost constant attention. Deadheading of flowers is a daily chore. Strawberries are throwing out very vigorous runners galore, which need planting on or removing. Vegetables are constantly in need of harvesting and weeding is never ending. Many shrubs and trees seem to have spread an awful lot and need remedial work to keep them in order. It's all go all day every day this summer.

Or am I just getting too old?

New Home

And you're not even making jam or pickles or preserving tomatoes and vegetables or making cordials, etc? Lazy, lazy, lazy! :pac:

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

New Home wrote: »

And you're not even making jam or pickles or preserving tomatoes and vegetables or making cordials, etc? Lazy, lazy, lazy! :pac:

No, Mrs S is in the middle of all that. But who has to crop the ingredients and clean the fruit?

magicbastarder

we've been neglecting the garden this last week. i'm sure the jobs will catch up on us.

Harry Palmr

The weeds have gone mad this summer that's for sure, perfect conditions alas.

uck51js9zml2yt

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The weeds have gone mad this summer that's for sure, perfect conditions alas.

Wife spent 4 hours Sunday and s few later in the week weeding.

smacl

Leah Drab Eyeliner wrote: »

Wife spent 4 hours Sunday and s few later in the week weeding.

Thing I like most about gardening is getting outdoors for some light exercise in pleasant surroundings for a few hours with visible results for the effort. More past-time than chore but I've not been doing nearly enough of it recently (and my garden is a veritable postage stamp in comparison to yours).

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Isn't the year flying by? It dawned on me tonight that is time already to sow wallflowers, Forget-me-not and Sweet William for spring flowering.

Any other seasonal jobs come to mind?

magicbastarder

not sure if i'll do it this weekend, but there's an evergreen shrub in the front garden which i want to chop back hard now that it's finished flowering. it's turned into a big amorphous blob, about six foot in diameter.
the reason i will chop it back now rather than in the winter is because i want to put a small pond near it in the front garden, and need to shift the liner out of the garage, and get the damn thing dug when the weather is reasonable.

Harry Palmr

The birds in my back garden should be auditioning for Hitchcock so destructive are they. Everything bar the leeks is now under chicken wire.

smacl

Zachary Billions Coffee wrote: »

Any other seasonal jobs come to mind?

Just scratted and pressed a couple of buckets of windfalls for the first batch of cider for the year. Laborious enough job but satisfying at the same time. Couple of dozen bottles worth which should be good for early November. Plums are ripe too and need harvesting as does the rhubarb.

magicbastarder

I once had an apple and rhubarb cider which was lovely, you could combine the two?

smacl

magicbastarder wrote: »

I once had an apple and rhubarb cider which was lovely, you could combine the two?

Was actually thinking that. Just finished off the last of the rhubarb wine made earlier in the year which was delish. The only problem with it is that the rhubarb is a delicate enough flavour that easily gets drowned out. Made rhubarb and ginger beer last year that ended up pretty much as ginger beer.

magicbastarder

how do you process your apples?
i use a centrifugal fruit juicer for mine; it's reasonably efficient at recovering the juice, but by god, it's tedious work.

smacl

magicbastarder wrote: »

how do you process your apples?
i use a centrifugal fruit juicer for mine; it's reasonably efficient at recovering the juice, but by god, it's tedious work.

Had one and it produced great results before it finally clapped out, but as you say, loads of work. I use a bucket scratter these days and press. The scratter is just about ok without being brilliant but I don't have a big enough crop to justify a more serious piece of kit.

Garlinge

Re excess plastic pots. I donate to friend who does a charity 'open day' of her garden and pots up plants for sale also.

Zzippy

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The birds in my back garden should be auditioning for Hitchcock so destructive are they. Everything bar the leeks is now under chicken wire.

Same here. We have a load of crows and magpies hanging around like bored teenagers. My apple crop is suffering...

smacl

Zzippy wrote: »

Same here. We have a load of crows and magpies hanging around like bored teenagers. My apple crop is suffering...

We've a shop next door with a deli-counter and the seagulls and crows are always there in the morning making a racket. The big black back gulls really are the thugs of local bird population and make a horrendous mess given half a chance.

Harry Palmr

I bought one of those pencil shaped tool sharpeners in Lidl, which look like nothing to be honest but a few swipes and my couldn't cut through butter shears have been transformed into a brand new condition and all for about €2.50.

magicbastarder

are they some sort of ceramic? ikea sell a ceramic bar knife sharpener which we use in the kitchen a lot, had not thought of using it on the shears.
though you have to periodically scrub it down with a scourer and jif, to remove the steel buildup on it which reduces its effectiveness.

magicbastarder

anyway, lots and lots of deadheading and chopping back in the garden today, a job which has been on the to-do list for weeks. quite a marked amount of mildew on many plants, but that's partly due to me not having done the above tasks till now.

it just seems the last few summers have been so much more humid than before.

New Home

magicbastarder wrote: »

are they some sort of ceramic? ikea sell a ceramic bar knife sharpener which we use in the kitchen a lot, had not thought of using it on the shears.
though you have to periodically scrub it down with a scourer and jif, to remove the steel buildup on it which reduces its effectiveness.

If they're like the ones I got, they're diamond files, and I agree, they're incredibly effective.

magicbastarder

this is the ikea one we have - more for frequent light use than actually reshaping a blade. i've a slow wet stone grinder (bought for sharpening woodturning gouges) i use when i need to go a bit more heavy duty:

https://www.ikea.com/ie/en/p/flaksa-ceramic-sharpener-black-30167003/

smacl

I've an oil stone and a couple of slip stones for curved blades which work well enough. Something quite satisfying about sharpening blades.

magicbastarder

a new way of hedge trimming:

https://twitter.com/tariqrauf/status/1174403429810212866

New Home

Good God, that's terrifying... what could possibly go wrong? A saw made of giant rotating blades, a helicopter, and live electricity cables... That's something ACME would come up with...

looksee

You were saying you wanted a rockery...

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/seoul-fake-mountain-photographer/index.html

Graces7

smacl wrote: »

Thing I like most about gardening is getting outdoors for some light exercise in pleasant surroundings for a few hours with visible results for the effort. More past-time than chore but I've not been doing nearly enough of it recently (and my garden is a veritable postage stamp in comparison to yours).[/QUOTE

That is what gardening is really about; you have learned the great secret! A pleasure not a penance! A cheer not a chore

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Chrysanthemum, Roses, Marigolds etc still flowering and many summer perennials not fully died back yet. It seems to be a long season this year.

scarepanda

We're planning on moving at some stage soon, house purchase has been really slow. Anyhow there's some blueberry and rose bushes and some rhubarb that I would really like to take with us. When's the best time to move them? My plan is to move them into buckets as soon as it's ok to dig them up because we currently have no timeline with regards to moving.

magicbastarder

rhubarb should be easy this time of year, just lift the crowns.

scarepanda

Will rhubarb be ok in a bucket for a few months? Is there anything in particular I need to do with it? Presumably moving it now, it will need a couple of years to settle in its new spot whenever that happens?

looksee

If you put anything in buckets it will drown. Get some big plant-pots or make holes in the buckets. I have roses stashed in turned back feed bags with a bit of a slit in the bottom for 18 months now, doing fine (I ran out of large pots ) You can move any of them now, roses are very forgiving, don't know anything about blueberries.

scarepanda

Oh there's holes in all the buckets already. I used to have other stuff in them before, I've just never had to dig up anything to put in a bucket before, so it's timing I'm most worried about in that regard. The rhubarb is the one I'd be the most unfamiliar with.

macraignil

scarepanda wrote: »

Oh there's holes in all the buckets already. I used to have other stuff in them before, I've just never had to dig up anything to put in a bucket before, so it's timing I'm most worried about in that regard. The rhubarb is the one I'd be the most unfamiliar with.

You can dig up rhubarb from now up until February but it does have a very big root system so it may be difficult to dig up an old well developed crown. I had to give up on one last winter as I was fairly likely to break my garden fork if I tried to move the whole thing. In the end I just used a spade to slice off pieces of the crown with some root and at least one leaf bud and these went on to form new plants and the old crown went on to produce just as much shoots as it usually does. My approach would be to just slice it up with a spade from the start if it is likely not to fit in a bucket. If you are dividing it into smaller bits the new plants should be left unharvested for the first year in their new position so they can mature enough to give good harvests further down the line. If you let it warm up when it is dug up it will probably start to grow shoots and there is a whole industry based on forced rhubarb growing in this way. Here is a link to a video clip I made when I divided mine in February. I have heard of rhubarb failing to settle when it was planted after it had started to grow leaves.

smacl

Ok, so I know that apples don't grow true from seed and fruit trees should be grafted on to suitable stock, but biting through a rather tasty Pink Lady last week I noticed a couple of the seed were sprouting. How long do you reckon before I get a crop from the latest additions to the orchard?

scarepanda

Thanks macraignil! There's two plants and only in their current place since Feb/march 2018. How would I know if it's ok to split what I have currently? And also, even if I don't split the plants, should they still be left for a couple of seasons to settle in?

macraignil

scarepanda wrote: »

Thanks macraignil! There's two plants and only in their current place since Feb/march 2018. How would I know if it's ok to split what I have currently? And also, even if I don't split the plants, should they still be left for a couple of seasons to settle in?

The best way to know if the plants are OK to split is to see how many leaf buds are on the rhubarb crown. The important thing is that each piece you want to grow from has its own leaf bud as well as some root. I found digging in from the outside meant I hit the big roots and they broke off easily and with no leaf bud these pieces were much less likely to successfully make a new plant.


Your plants were in their position less time than the one I was dividing last winter so you might be OK not dividing it but I just found it easier to manage the smaller pieces. I have read that rhubarb in its first year from planting should not be harvested and I would be inclined to give it one year to recover from the move even if it is not divided but if you just were careful not to harvest too much in the first year I think it should still settle in OK. If it has settled in better though it could start yielding better further down the line. Some of the divided pieces I gave to my parents (as they had let their rhubarb get overgrown) were growing well and they harvested some against my advice and it still was growing OK recently so I think they will have gotten away with not giving it the full year to settle in. It depends how much rhubarb you use but my thinking is that if you are digging it up anyway you are as well dividing it when it is out of the ground even if you just give away some of the pieces to people you know who might like to grow some.

Thud

smacl wrote: »

Ok, so I know that apples don't grow true from seed and fruit trees should be grafted on to suitable stock, but biting through a rather tasty Pink Lady last week I noticed a couple of the seed were sprouting. How long do you reckon before I get a crop from the latest additions to the orchard?

there's a guy called SkillCult on youtube with a lot of videos about apple cultivation, he mentions in one of his videos that the non edible/cooker apples from seed is a bit of an old wives tale and you can often get a good eating apple tree from the seeds. it takes a long time to prove wrong and is in "Big Apple's" interest for people to believe it so they will buy trees

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

smacl wrote: »

Ok, so I know that apples don't grow true from seed and fruit trees should be grafted on to suitable stock, but biting through a rather tasty Pink Lady last week I noticed a couple of the seed were sprouting. How long do you reckon before I get a crop from the latest additions to the orchard?

It just may not come true to the parent apple but may be better - it's how we get new types. It'll be about 8 years to fruiting.

magicbastarder

i tried it a few times, about ten years ago (growing an apple from seed), but all my efforts seemed incredibly susceptible to mildew.