2023 Gardening Thread

I planted a Winter Beauty clematis in the ground against a post on the north east side of the house and it has grown vigorously and was a lovely show of flowers for the past couple of months since Christmas, they are just dying off now. I have several other clematis in the same border, a pink montana is doing well but hasn't been big enough to produce flowers yet, they are only in 12 months. One particular honeysuckle is also doing very well and had lots of flower last summer, the others have not been in long enough to know yet, though seem to be happy. With the exception of Golden Showers which did reasonably well, the roses didn't do much.

Was planning on putting a new polytunnell up on Saturday and planting sugarsnaps, radishes, lettuce and pak Choi in my outdoor planters…

Should I put it all off until this cold spell and risk of snow has abated?

Ours just landed today

It seems too good to be true. Have you checked what are the “ingredients “?

For instance, I see the Fast Grow Seaweed fertiliser is actually a blend of chicken manure and seaweed but I can’t find the ratio.

Used coffee grounds, what do you make of that as a fertilizer

Anyone plant their spuds yet? Thinking of putting a few down this weekend

They had a range of tomato plants in Lidl today. (I was buying rhododendrons).

Clean your clippers and cut again just above where you cut before, clean up rubbish and keep clippers clean. You can bake compost in foil in the oven for half an hour (max) at 180 degrees C to sterilize it.

Or, contact the place you got them, send a pic of the one with a gall and tell them what happened. Hopefully they will replace them (though of course there is every chance they will be infected too). Were the dahlias separate tubers or were they packed in threes etc? They could easily have infected each other before you took the snippers to them.

I am far from being a dahlia expert, but I would dump the infected one - you will replace it eventually - and plant the others and hope for the best. If they come up affected remove and dump them. I have no idea about the wet, it seems a bit unlikely tbh. But I am guessing, I don't really know.

I thought about Jayes fluid and checked it up to come up with this gem:

Can Jeyes Fluid be used to sterilise the soil? Regrettably, as this product is now subject to Ministry regulations, we are unable at present, to confirm recommendations other than those printed on the latest can. Since EC Regulations in 2003, the product is no longer effective at sterilising soil.

Lol, it stopped working in 2003. However if you dispose of an affected tuber a dose of jayes fluid on the place it was planted might be no harm. Since it claims to kill almost all bacteria its not something you would throw around indiscriminately, most bacteria are harmless to good.

I wouldn’t be using those suppliers again. Something as obvious as gall should have been noticed.when dispatching the plants. Were they imported or is it an Irish supplier. We are so careless of importing every kind of disease and bug.

Keep an eye on the developing plants and discard any that show signs of haphazard growth. You have effectively quarantined them in the pots.

I think you have been extremely unlucky, I’ve never come across dahlia gall in over forty years of growing them.

They’ll be fine in the greenhouse and will benefit from more light. Just be sure to cover them at night if the outside temperature falls below 4 degrees. It might be as well to cover for the first few nights to harden them off.

As the picture above shows, I'm attempting to grow a load of heather on this slope. The recent rain has semi buried a few in mini mudslides :(

Is it worth digging them up and replanting when weather improves? Some are in since last autumn and others since last week (I got a bit carried away with trying to get stuff done over Easter break last week and didn't look at the forecast)

Any other heather advice welcome. We have a huge sloped bank on three sides surrounding the house that I want to cover in different coloured heather. Thanks

Grow the courgettes from seed. They germinate quickly with a little heat and will grow fast enough if kept warm until established.

I'd leave them be, I find heather temperamental but if they take they fly. Some of them will probably die, replace them. If you get more dying than living it may be that your site is not suitable for whatever reason. They tend not to do much in the first two seasons then really get going. I'd put some bark mulch on there. Its a fairly steep slope so it may slip but persevere, eventually it will stay where you put it.

Its always difficult to tell how steep a slope is in a photograph, and I agree it might just slip down. I have wood chip on a sloping bed and it stays there fine, though I think it is not as steep as yours. Certainly the very top of the bank there is very steep. Why not try some in a strip and see how it goes, if it will stay in place it is excellent for improving the soil and helping to keep down weeds (it won't eliminate them, but it does help).

By the autumn you should have a good idea whether the present lot are going to survive, even if they have not grown much, and you might get different results in a different bed, I'd say it would be worth a try.

Weird thing about the courgettes. i just gave away 8 starts, had too many, kept 6. Should do fine bar the usual weather unpredicabilty, wiped me out late last may, fortunately could find some starts.

And again, the Kuri squash I grew last year, which included some with solid yellow leaves, are started and actually doing better than the courgettes. But at least one looks like it'll have yellow leaves.

FWIW, the yellow-leafed one I left alone, did fine. Plenty of large, delicious fruit. All these are from an original bought a few years ago from Supervalue. No idea about the sourcing.