The compost heap - off topic thread

smacl

Zachary Billions Coffee wrote: »

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.

Official boards apple tasting set for Autumn 2027 so

Harry Palmr

Bump, could this be stickied? We might need a place to have a moan if the restrictions stay in place for an extended period.

Anyway, compost how are you all fixed? I was going to go out and buy a couple of big bags and that moment has been lost, I was in Lidl and they had none and the section where they keep it was empty as in everything was moved or just sold and not replaced so I'm wondering how I'm going to get some for when I need it.

magicbastarder

all sorted here. got three bags of manure (the commercial stuff, i think from westland) last week before everything closed up, and also got a bit of compost from the two compost bins. spent an hour or two today sieving the garden compost, and mixing it with the topsoil from the spoil heap generated by digging a garden pond in about october last year.

kylith

Hit two bags last week with the intention of getting more, cos I reckon i’m Gonna need a lot. That’s me scuppered unless Lidl start stocking it again.

Harry Palmr

I do have a compost heap - ancient grass cuttings etc but it's now home to an annual crop of Crocosmia so I'm not disturbing it. For starting off the oriental salah leaves I'll just skim a bit off the potato bed.

magicbastarder

huh, my compost heap is where my crocosmia go to live too. and when i say live, i actually mean die.

Day Lewin

Harry Palmr wrote: »

I do have a compost heap - ancient grass cuttings etc but it's now home to an annual crop of Crocosmia so I'm not disturbing it. For starting off the oriental salah leaves I'll just skim a bit off the potato bed.

Believe me, the Crocosmia won't suffer from being disturbed. Tough as old leather, that lot.

Day Lewin

I opened up my winter compost during the week and found the Tumbler doing well but a bit dry and incompletely broken down (I've been adding and turning it weekly)

The Dalek proved to be absolutely full of nests of wriggling red worms, - perfect!
Half-cooked compost in most of it: as usual, there is a base layer of ready-to-use, and a top layer of recent additions, un-rotted.

I turned them both out and stacked the half-cooked by layers in a simple bunker of concrete blocks, covered with a layer of grass clippings, a watering of urea, (diluted male pee!) and then a plastic sheet weighted down with stones: that will be just right in a month or two.

The Dalek is re-started with a spadeful of old compost and some shredded paper. Roll on the summer!

Harry Palmr

I've just done a google and yes it's a thing, they like slumming it in the mucky corner.

fryup

i live in a rural area and recently there's a fekin pot belly pig coming in to my garden and digging up the lawn :mad:

i've phoned the neighbours and no one knows where he's come from....i take it someone on lockdown has stopped feeding it or released it

Harry Palmr

Kill Cook Eat.

New Home

kylith wrote: »

Hit two bags last week with the intention of getting more, cos I reckon i’m Gonna need a lot. That’s me scuppered unless Lidl start stocking it again.

For just a sec I thought I was in AH... That post would have meant something entirely different in there....

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Kill Cook Eat.

:eek::(

Day Lewin

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Kill Cook Eat.

You're looking at Swine 'Flu at the very least

looksee

Well the swine would be a bit sick alright. My first thought was bacon!

looksee

I ordered some stuff from Future Forests, and they closed the next day! They said they will deliver what has been ordered but then they are not even doing mail order. Then I realised that without some form of protection all my new trees would be rabbit food, so frantic search on line and I have found a farming site that delivers, so I have managed to order some chicken wire to protect the baby trees.

uck51js9zml2yt

Had my garden ploughed yesterday and he'll be back to rotavate it this week.
My local sheep farmer was up to spread fertilizer on the field he's renting off me and spread a bit on the garden.
He's to drop me a few trailers of manure.
I also got a delivery of wood chips last week from a local tree surgeon.

secman

Spent the whole weekend in the garden as cycling was off the agenda
Normally a 3/4 acre site can be hard work to maintain over a weekend but was so glad of it. Cut back a boundary hedge which are really trees but cut back hard every spring. Shredded the cuttings and mixed with layers of grass in the compost bins with plenty of chicken manure and doses of urine..good agitators.. and also all the veg peels too.

Bins full to the brim now, but every weekend they will noticeably drop in volume as it begins to cook. This is my 6th year to do it, great satisfaction when they are ready for the beds, best of stuff and plants love it.

RonanC

Are there any Irish gardening shops doing deliveries of seeds/plants/etc at the moment?

uck51js9zml2yt

RonanC wrote: »

Are there any Irish gardening shops doing deliveries of seeds/plants/etc at the moment?

quickcrop.ie will be back online on friday. They are doing a catch-up for now.

scarepanda

RonanC wrote: »

Are there any Irish gardening shops doing deliveries of seeds/plants/etc at the moment?

I got a delivery from seedaholic last week. They are Galway based. They only do seeds though.

finla

I got a delivery from gardenshop.ie last week.

magicbastarder

my wife ordered from mr. middleton last week, and strangely got a notification that the items will be delivered today. we're not holding our breath.

magicbastarder

whaddya know, it just arrived. might have been put in the system before the lockdown though.

Harry Palmr

God knows what might be the outlook but something that might need to be done is a two day shop window for Nurseries and DIY places under strict guidance obviously. The local growers are going to be put out of business if this goes on very long.

magicbastarder

yeah, the BBC is carrying a story that millions of plants might end up being binned.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52098436

looksee

Ah the immense satisfaction of succeeding in putting up a greenhouse/polytunnel with a couple of false starts - in mitigation in one place the instructions were vague and in another they were plain wrong. Anyway we finally figured it out. I reckon if we get a season out of it we will be lucky. It might help us decide if we want a 'proper' greenhouse though. Its a Topline, Proplus gardening Premium Polytunnel greenhouse. If this is premium I wouldn't want to be stuck with a standard one!

When life gets back to normal I will try and get some waterproof Mammoth transparent tape and seal the seams, it also needs a bit more flap on the bottom to dig in, I think I could do that with duck/duct tape and polythene from the inside.

New Home

Pics, please!

looksee

Ok, pics tomorrow! It doesn't look very pretty at the moment as the ground is all dug up and scruffy around it, but we did find a couple of old tables/ structures to provided seed shelf areas. And I stapled the small flap at the bottom onto strips of timber (with tape to stop it tearing the plastic) then buried and weighted down the timber strip, so I don't think it will unfold itself from the bottom.

looksee

looksee wrote: »

Its a Topline, Proplus gardening Premium Polytunnel greenhouse. If this is premium I wouldn't want to be stuck with a standard one!

Looks fairly flimsy alright!
We started with a plastic covered one from Argos.
It survived many storms but it was bolted to the ground and to a wall.
I think we got 2 years out of it .
The cat used to sharpen her claws on it too :rolleyes:

I started with one of these types of polytunnel too. The most I got from one was 2 years....and that was taking it down over winter too.
It still did a decent job though. I used short lengths of rebar and bent them over to create pegs from them. I used these to secure it into the ground.

The frame is still used to cover my brassica plants. I bought nettting to keep out butterflies and it sits perfectly over the frame

Harry Palmr

Lidl have compost in, three 50ltr bags snaffled up with the morning shop.

GreeBo

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Lidl have compost in, three 50ltr bags snaffled up with the morning shop.

I thought they werent allowed to sell it....maybe if its part of a much larger food shop they are ok with it.

Harry Palmr

Dunno but they have all the plants and flowers etc in stock as usual.

looksee

So, the greenhouse. Today was a bit breezy, not a gale just March/April breezy (and we are on the side of a mountain, pretty much). So the greenhouse filled out like a balloon and managed to shed the row of mighty rocks down one side. So we tied and pinned it all back down again, then found a monolith that we put inside and roped the frame to as the entire frame was lifting. We then faffed about putting all kinds of greenhousy things into it then went in for lunch.

When we came back out one side of the cover had dealt with the limitations by simply ripping out the numerous staples, the timber was still tied to the frame but the side was ablowin' in the wind.

So we decided to find another spot for it. Even though we have an acre of garden there are serious limitations on where it could be put for all kinds of complicated layout and exposure reasons. There is one spot though that gets sun and would be rather more sheltered. Only problem was there is a very large heap of large rocks (there are heaps of large rocks all around the place) right where we want to put it. So an energetic afternoon followed shifting rocks. If the weather is calm tomorrow we will do a wholesale removal of the structure. If you don't hear from me again its because we are sailing skyward hanging onto an inflated greenhouse.

New Home

Pics! :pac:

magicbastarder

i have a bag of lawn feed which has instructions on the side on how to apply using the manufacturer's own spreaders.
one of the spreaders they make is called the 'evergreen wizz year round spreader'.
i was thinking, i have one of those already.

RonanC

Can anyone recommend a decent broadcast spreader please? I have a drop spreader that leaves lines after I fertilise despite by best efforts at two passes.

Thanks

Harry Palmr

Rain! It's raining, amazing how quickly it greens and perks up everything. I'd complain but it's actually really needed and will be replaced by sunny conditions from Monday.

SouthWesterly

Grass in the field was crunchy under foot yesterday. Today it rained

fryup

how often are you cutting the grass during this lockdown?? every week? every second day?

Harry Palmr

Back garden not at all, prefer to let the wildflowers get thier moment in the sun.
Fronts when needed.

magicbastarder

Be careful out there, folks!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/08/brian-may-hospitalised-gardening-injury-tears-buttock-muscles

New Home

*Insert obligatory "pain in the arse" joke.*

smacl

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?

So a little less than six months on and my seedlings are saplings. Thinking of trying to keep them potted to see if the root restriction will keep them small as I'm struggling for space in the garden. Was planning on passing them on to a friend with a tree farm but grown kind of fond of them.

New Home

To paraphrase... "You're gonna need a bigger pot".

smacl

New Home wrote: »

To paraphrase... "You're gonna need a bigger pot".

Yes indeed, temporary solution for lock down based on what I had to hand. Will see what I can find once the garden centres are open again.

Harry Palmr

I had a apple graft in a 20 litre pot for three years, it didn't die and it didn't thrive it just existed. As it was only a technical exercise that I had no intention of planting (no space, cooker, only have the one) I kept it far longer than than I should have so binned it on Friday and freed up a pot.

magicbastarder

nigel, monty don's dog, is now chasing tennis balls in doggy heaven.

New Home

magicbastarder wrote: »

nigel, monty don's dog, is now chasing tennis balls in doggy heaven.

:(:(:(:(

Harry Palmr

Ah jasus that'll be a day of national mourning across the water.