At least you can walk out and leave a garden centre when you’ve unloaded your wallet at the till, online gardening is the killer. I swore I wasn’t going to buy anything new this year……. a few glasses of wine later and I bought 4 David Austin roses last week and now I’m planning to remodel a whole section of the garden so that they a ‘fit in’ to the scheme. The joys of gardening 😂
I actually saw some french lavender that had been shaped into like a bonsai tree, i.e. one central stem about 2cm thick and about 30 cm tall and then a ball of lavender foliage and flowers on top.
It was like this only bigger (and also meant for outdoors):
It looks lovely, but how difficult would it be to maintain in this style? Presumably you would have to prune the foliage that will naturally try grow downward down the stem, but would this central stem continue to grow up, or in reality are you going to just end up with a lavender bush in a few years?
this evening's exertions. just shaping and placing for now, hopefully will get them set down properly over the weekend. they're the base for a low wall (seating height) which will be made of a natural stone, yet to be decided.
we once left ikea with less than we arrived with, let alone managing to leave ikea without having bought a thing which is the real challenge.
I saw those recently too and thought how nice they looked. Lavender does not grow on old wood so the stem should stay clear, and so long as you trim it after flowering to keep the shape it should not be a problem. It probably will get bigger and I imagine would become a bit more elongated than round but you should be able to keep it clipped to shape.
You mean you left one of the kids behind?
Yea these ones were more elongated than round too.
Think I might pick a few of these up. They'd be lovely in pots.
Bought a battery powered tiller last week from littlewoods.
Works a treat for a, shallow till.
I'd say thats grafted,
I have a rosemary like it .
Not a gardening expert unfortunately, what would the implications of it being grafted be?
None, really. Slight chance that it may put up shoots from the bottom that you remove. Otherwise it doesn't make a difference from a practical point of view. I'd say there is a good chance CCC is correct, It didn't occur to me.
Also not an expert,
Its basically a lavender growing on top of a stick.
Its a really interesting way of controlling how a plant grows, you can have 2 apples trees the same but look very different depending on the root stock.
On another note, Anyone ever tried air layering to make new trees from mature ones ? Its a way of tricking a tree to put roots out on a branch & then you cut the branch off and plant it. Leaving the original tree unharmed .
I've a very mature cherry and a mature eucalyptus I'm going to try it on.
I need to find somewhere selling bags of sphagnum moss.
I can supply large amounts for free.
The only snag is that you have to remove it from my lawn.
😊
Try pet shops. I think they sell it for terrariums.
Was out in the garden this evening clearing some beds of weeds before I spread some horse manure on them.
Not sure what you call it, dug out about a hands depth of soil out of my bay tree standards x 3, (potted) lifted the poor things up because they seemed to sink 1/2 a metre over the past few years, added some layers of compost and seaweed and gave a modest haircut. They are already look better and healthier 24 hours later. Was absolutely wrecked as it’s one of the hardest garden things I’ve done in a while.
Also pricked out my zinnias, wild cornflower blues, cosmos and evening primrose and thinned some British basil and potted into some coir pots.
Will be doing same tomorrow with some musk mallow & bee balm…Seed growing has been going good for me this year.
I got a new greenhouse a couple months ago. Finally got it built 2 weeks ago and this weekend I've spent time putting in a veg bed for tomatoes. I got the inside tomatoes planted today as well as some lettuce I'm hoping will get going quickly.
I mulched under my new hedge. This one half of it.
Sat down after a busy day pottering lazily about the garden. Got a few odd jobs finished for the summer, planted up honeysuckle cuttings that I took and potted on from cuttings I took 2 years ago. Planted 2 roses and 2 hydrangea Annabelles.
The last of the birds have sang their evening’s epilogue, stillness, a full moon and the gentle rumble of the nearby ocean for company. Nothing more blissful to cap off the evening!
Planted out some yacon starts last night. Need to move out the Chinese Artichokes and oca this week.
Harvested my first courgettes of the year
Planted 4 clones of my existing tomato plants, should make for an extended harvest period!
We have only managed to plant out our tomato plants today. I have yet to stake our peas. My heart does not seem to be in it this year for some reason. Maybe it is the travel bug biting. I seem to be spending more time researching travel and gardens to visit, than working on my own garden.
Our giant red poppies are flowering all over the place. Really lovely, but today's heavy rain might knock their heads off.
Do you mind me asking where you got the yacon, I only had a quick look online but wasn't easy to come by
Gardens for life in roscommon. Check out Martins FB group.
Can anybody explain what the (fld) stands for under sowing period instructions?
Never seen it in that context - I would guess they mean field, as in sow outside in July but indoors in March. If that is what it means then it is a convoluted way of expressing it. Where did the seeds come from, do they have a website that might be more specific? Easiest thing is to just google someone else's instructions for sowing echinacea.
Thank you
Anybody have much experience with growing chillis?
Have several plants in the conservatory grown from seed since late March. Still only about 5 inches tall.
They’re known to be slow growers but one can’t help but compare them with the now 2m tall tomatoes covered in ripening fruit or the already hugely prolific courgettes.
I’ll be starting germination in January next year!
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057424198/chillies and https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057956898/2019-chilli-thread
I knew there was a massive thread about chillies somewhere, that first link seems to be it.
You might be better creating a new thread titled chillies (that one is a bit out of date now, or you could continue it) rather than this thread that you are in.
Edit, the second thread, 'chilli thread' is more up to date, perhaps post in that?
I don't know exactly what it means but it probably refers to the first year. It normally only flowers from the second year onwards. I showed some last year and had a couple of flowers just before the frost but I have good strong plants this year.