Today in the Garden

[Risker]

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,224 groups with 4,326,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

http://www.freecycle.org/

[cedarblue]

here's a good site with loads of different types of tomato seeds if anyone is interested.

http://www.readytogrow.co.uk/index.htm

[cedarblue]

i found this inspiring - i know they have that californian sunshine but still.....

[YOUTUBE]mCPEBM5ol0Q[/YOUTUBE]

[veganbikerboy]

I spent this afternoon pruning my fruit trees (), i'd never done it before, so i hope i havent killed them.

I bought 'the fruit expert' book, and it seemed that the trees have not been pruned properly for many years, although they fruited well last season, they had lots of crossed branches and were too dense etc.. I hope they will improve after todays masacre

[cedarblue]

pruning can be scary - well done for doing it - i'm sure it'll help the trees

[whalespace]

Today I made it to allotment .
I dug around...remembered what I was doing... excavated some salsify, scorzonera, and sunchokes. Got my shirt off to catch some rays [valid reason] .
I noticed a three foot wide patch of white and crumbling nettles, in the middle of a semi rampant stand of healthy little nippers [you know the type, tiny leaves but needle spines]. I suspect Mr. Weedkiller, ex upstanding site representative, and one of my plot neighbours ....; I have not used poisons on my plot since I got it [seven years ago].
Stirred my sack of roots with a broom in a barrow load of water....gosh that is so easy.
...put my shirt back on...midges [valid reason].

[Ginger]

One thing I won't be doing on my allotment is getting my shirt off

[cedarblue]

no fear...brrrrrr.

i ordered my tomato, pepper & chilli seeds online today from a company with a really great range and lovely names!

tomatoes;
Black Tula
White Wonder
Amish Salad
Striped Roman
Orange Banana

I've also bought some seeds for;
rocket
runner beans
onion sets
3 diff types of spuds
yellow courgettes

orange calendula
antirrhinums (sp?)

most other things i have seeds left over from last year.

roll on the easter hols, time for me to begin potting! woohoo

[Ginger]

Spent a fortune (£60) at the garden centre today. Loads of seed potatoes, onion sets, tomato, sweetcorn, chilli, pepper, beetroot, radish & sweetpea seeds. Lots of dahlia and lilly bulbs (1/2 price).
Popped to the allotment on the way home - not as bad as we thought

[bryzee86]

I wish I had an allotment

[cedarblue]

apply for one bry!

anyone grow fruit trees as cordons or espalier?

[Roxy]

Yesterday, I went with my mum-in-law to the garden centre. We both only have balconies, so we have pot plant gardens

She very kindly bought me some plants to get me started for the spring - 3 primulas (2 pink and 1 yellow) and another flowering plant (pink) that I've forgotten the name of. And a pot of assorted flowering bulbs that are coming up in purples Hopefully I'll have a chance to pot them over the next few days. At the moment they're allowed outside during the day, but I'm bringing them in at night while it's still a bit cool.

[cedarblue]

i remember you posting your pink plants from previous years roxy!

[Aradia]

I've just sown masses of tomato seeds ... about 7 or 8 varieties. Also beetroot, brocolli, Brussel sprouts, artichoke, celeriac and broad beans (in old loo rolls!), I've set three varieties of potatoes to chit.

I'm soooo not ready for Spring!!

[Heartsease]

Aaaargh....I think I'd better get started. Are you using vegan compost?

[Risker]

What's vegan compost? Or what's not vegan about normal compost if that's a better question.

[Heartsease]

Blood and bone. Euurgh. You can be sure the slaughterhouses get some money for that.

http://veganorganic.net/

[Risker]

Just bought a big bag of it, hope it's ok!

[Heartsease]

Did you get the Earth Cycle one?

For anyone else who is interested I found this one at:

http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalo...oducts_id=2221

I think I might order this one myself.

[Risker]

Nope, morrisons, cost me about £3

[Heartsease]

Nope, morrisons, cost me about £3

Ah well.

[Aradia]

Aaaargh....I think I'd better get started. Are you using vegan compost?

I makes me own

[Aradia]

Did you get the Earth Cycle one?

For anyone else who is interested I found this one at:

http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalo...oducts_id=2221

I think I might order this one myself.

Holy shit, that's expensive!!!!

How many are you going to buy? Are you rich? can I come and live with you if so??

[whalespace]

I wish I had an allotment

I asked for mine just a few years before "Groundforce" etc. found its way onto terrestrial t.v.. I got half a plot for just finding an old gardener's house!

Now the waiting list is 69 +; apply and prepare.... A walk around the allotments can be very interesting whether you have your own plot or not....see what you can find.

[cedarblue]

i have a few butternut squash seeds and brussell sprout and dwarf kale seeds that i'm not using this year. i'm happy to share them around if anyone would like some.

pm me with your addressess if you want some.

[Ginger]

Bryzee, what about going along to your local allotment and seeing if anyone fancies sharing? I know it's not the same as having your own plot but better than nothing while you wait. Lots of people take them on then find it's a bit much for them.
Do you have any outdoor space where you live? I used to grow a suprising amount in pots and tubs etc.

[cedarblue]

does anyone have coal fires? i was wondering if i could put the coal/wood ash on my compost heap? or is it just wood fires you can do that with. any ideas?

[Aradia]

don't use coal ash anywhere on your garden, it's toxic and will damage yer plants.

[cedarblue]

thank'ee

[whalespace]

don't use coal ash anywhere on your garden, it's toxic and will damage yer plants.

Kind of incidentally... I heard that in some places coal contains trace amounts of radioactive elements [Thorium in particular], which is of course concentrated when all of the carbon has blown off in carbon dioxide.
That is aside from all of the really toxic stuff including arsenic, selenium (far too much), and mercury.
Charcoal rocks[is great]...carbon is released when wood rots, charcoal is 'fixed' until it is burned [generally].
Make charcoal in the rain to keep the smoke down...or employ a large barrel bellows arrangement to bubble the smoke through water.

[cedarblue]

yesterday i dug out a small pond in my border near the veg area for a wildlife pond. hoping frogs will earn their board by eating the slugs. it just needs lining when the weather is better and i have sourced lady near my who has 15 pairs of mating frogs in her pond who is going to give me some frogspawn.

when i was digging the hole, a macabre thought occurred to me - the hole was strangely cat-grave-shaped. **shudders** i gave my catties a good stroke after that.

[Mzee]

Hi, cedarblue.
Is your pond really that small? I don't think you'd get frogs breeding in something cat-size... Mine is bigger, but I still do not get any frogs.

Mosquitoes breed quite successfully! I've actually had 2 dragonflies breed - I saw the larval skins on the top of reed stems - the dragonfly larvae were presumably eating the mosquito larvae, whose parents had been drinking my blood! So where am I in the food chain..?

Yesterday I was propping up my purple sprouting broccoli in preparation for last night's storm. There was still some damage, so I've eaten the damaged bits for dinner this evening!

[veganbikerboy]

I did a bit of pond maintenance yesterday I have spawn in there already; I also get dragonflies, but i found the larvae eat the frogspawn and/or tadpoles

not too sure what to do with my 'wildflower' area, it was very sucessful last year, i let everything naturally go to seed. I have roughly cleared away the dead plants from last year and have lightly raked the surface, it stiill looks a little scruffy, i am hoping things will have self seeded??? should i chuck on some new seeds just in case??

[Mzee]

vbb, you'll probably be OK with self-seeding. If you have any new seeds, it wouldn't do any harm to sow them as well.

All the flowers in my garden are 'wild' i.e. they are British natives, but most of them are from plants that I bought or seeds that I collected or bought. I do tend to thin them out rather than let them take over - some of the ones I like (e.g. teasel, wild garlic) are a bit too vigorous! Even the wild strawberry got a bit rampant after a couple of years!

The best-behaved is the Cheddar pink, which is a Somerset native, beautiful and fragrant, flowering 12 months of the year. However, it keeps to the 'rockery' area I have enriched with limestone from the Cheddar area.

[cedarblue]

Hi, cedarblue.
Is your pond really that small? I don't think you'd get frogs breeding in something cat-size... Mine is bigger, but I still do not get any frogs.

you'd have thought that wouldn't you but i'm giving it a go, can't hurt. am collecting some spawn later. a friend of mine just sunk a washing up bowl in the ground and she had some frogs take up residence in it. even if the frogs don't come or stay, newts will use it and other water life and it'll be drinking water for critters too.
i just love pond life, could look at it for hours!

i guess i need a bit of weed or pond plant in it too, it can't be spreadable though - there's no room!!

[Risker]

Actually I think it could hurt, if you're putting spawn into it and it's not a suitable environment to live you're condemning them to death.

[Enchantress]

Apparently conservationists are advising against moving frog spawn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7282649.stm

[snivelingchild]

I'm about to put some old rotting wood garbage over a plot in the sidelot for a few weeks, in preparation for making my first bed.

I've been reading on the importance of digging deep, and building raised beds with wide rows, but my friend who's and organic gardener and agriculture major actually said that digging deep can unbalance the nutrient balance in the soil, so to only dig shallowly and focus on a raised bed. Any thoughts?

I'm going to start with some heirloom tomatoes and eggplant, but I'm also going to start on growing plants for vegetable dyes, for dying homemade clothing and organic cotton yarn.

I'd really like to put in a couple of fruit trees this spring. (The ultimate plan is two wide rows in the back, with tomatoes on a vertical grower to the side, 2 fruit trees in front of this, and then another row in front. There's also a small bed in front of the house for herbs that I'm planting soon.) I'm thinking pink lady apples and some plums. Any ideas on the best time/way to plant fruit trees?

[cedarblue]

i wholeheartedly agree about not double digging, raised beds is the way to go imo if you want to grow veg.

open root fruit trees are best to plant but ones in pots are ok too. make sure they are staked well and supported or grow them supported by wire against a wall or fence and if space is an issue grow them as cordon or espallier shape. thats what i want to do. good luck sniv!

i used all the homemade compost and the land is now ready for ordering of polytunnel.

[veganbikerboy]

I agree, I operate a 'no-dig' system with my veg; it is best for the soil strata, drainage and nutrients in the soil

[Mzee]

Welcome to this thread, Sniv, and welcome to gardening! It's so satisfying growing your own food - and you know what's gone into it!

I'd disagree with the others to a point. I too operate a no-dig system. However, when I first moved in the whole garden was just grass. It was a "brown field site" before the house was built, which was a long time before anyone had come up with that term. There was just 100mm of (really compacted) soil over a layer of stones, broken glass and rusty nails.
Perennial weeds had worked their roots into this layer, so you couldn't just pull them out.

If your piece of land is anything like this, I'd recommend what I did (which gardening books would describe as a form of "double digging"), as I now have a garden of raised beds which produces a decent crop of vegetables.

I skimmed off the turf and stacked it in a corner, green side down. I then took off the top soil and put that in another corner. I then dug the subsoil/stones/rubbish/weed roots over with a fork, removing as many pieces of weed root and rubbish as I could. The larger stones I put to one side. By loosening up the subsoil I was improving drainage and making it possible for crops to get their roots down to find water in dry weather.

I marked out the position of the beds, with narrow paths between them and then laid the turfs on the beds (still upside down) and chopped them into smaller pieces with a spade so they would rot down better. I had some rotted compost (never enough!), which I sprinkled over the broken-up turfs. Then I put the top soil back and raked the beds level, with sides sloping down to the paths.

I put the stones I'd removed around the sides of the garden. I dug out a small wildlife pond in a sunny spot at the end of the garden. The soil & stones from this also went to the sides of the garden so I had raised banks. These had no compost, so the soil here was well-drained with low fertility. These were planted with native species, providing food & shelter for beneficial insects, etc.

So It was a lot of work in the first year! However, I now have fertile vegetable beds which I can reach from the paths, so the soil never gets compacted and I never dig (apart from harvesting root crops) and I enjoy welcoming wildlife.

The pond (planted with native water plants, surrounded with native bog plants) has no fish, of course. Birds love coming to it to drink and bathe (and to pick up mud to line their nests!)

[cedarblue]

cool mzee!

this is the second year for our raised beds and apart from adding our own compost ( i agree with you, there's never enough) and lightly mixing it in, absolutely no digging required or done.

absolutely no fish in the pond either!

[Aradia]

Yay, my first tomato seeds are up! whoo hoo.

I always thing they're not going to germinate as they take quite a bit longer than a lot of other seeds.... but they always show in the end.

Some of my other seedlings have got really leggy though don't you just hate it when that happens!

[Aradia]

cool mzee!

this is the second year for our raised beds and apart from adding our own compost ( i agree with you, there's never enough) and lightly mixing it in, absolutely no digging required or done.

absolutely no fish in the pond either!

I would love raised beds, they are so much easier to maintain and weeds, and they look really nice too. I get weak with envy when I watch Gardeners' World and see their lovely raised beds!

But it's too hot here.. the plants would frazzle.

[snivelingchild]

Thanks for the advice Mzee. My land is actually pretty loose soil-wise. It used to be a garden, and now just has grass and wild flowers. It is fenced off from the rest of the yard. It's a separate section big enough to fit a trailer! I never go into it except to mow the grass, so it is relatively undisturbed.

We get lots and lots of rain here, so it gets tons of water, but drains really quickly. One gardening book I've read suggests digging as deep as you can, based on the premise that roots need loose soil really far down to grow big, but I think this is mainly for soil that has been compacted through other things.

One more question? What is everyone's favorite path material? (straw, etc.) Or do you have none?

[Mzee]

Your garden site sounds perfect for no-dig, Sniv - you're so lucky! My paths are mostly second-hand bricks - easy to brush off so I don't bring too much of the garden into the house on my feet!

[Aradia]

One more question? What is everyone's favorite path material? (straw, etc.) Or do you have none?

For a veggie patch ... hardcore everytime. Paving slabs etc. Other things might look pretty, but come the winter will turn into a quagmire.

I recycled a concrete cattle hardstanding (I live on an old farm) ... got it smashed up and then chose large stepping stone size pieces to lay as paths.

[cedarblue]

wow you planted seed and their coming up already aradia? you are well ahead of the game. do you grow anything inside a greenhouse or is it all outside?

[rantipole]

Hey everyone,

I'm so excited! Last summer, my boyfriend and I finally moved into a place that has enough land for me to have a garden. I've ordered some seeds, bought starter trays, and have the plans all in mind. This weekend, I'm going to pick up some tools and straw for mulch. I've been composting since we moved in last summer. So far, I've got seeds that I'll plant next week:

Nasturtium
Cilantro
Basil
Delicata Squash
African Marigold
Sweet Corn
Green Bean
Morning Glory (a deliciously purple heirloom variety)
Moonflower
Mizuna Mustard
Yellow Tomato
Poblano Pepper

I'm also going to plant rosemary in the big box in front of our house which is now the home to weeds and a dead juniper.

I hope everyone has a happy and productive gardening year!

Cheers,
rant

[Aradia]

wow you planted seed and their coming up already aradia? you are well ahead of the game. do you grow anything inside a greenhouse or is it all outside?

Usually all outside, although I'm growing some in a polytunnel this year. All of my seeds are inside the house though. I'll pot them on and will plant them out when the risk of frost has gone.

My tomatoes got hit by blight last year, so I'm growing some under cover as well this year to prevent that.

I'm putting lettuce in the polytunnel soon, and radish ... I can't wait for my first home-grown salad of the year.