How Does Your Garden Grow?

[DAPPH]

Mine used to be nice to sit out of a sunny day but now there's stuff all over it like swings, Rocking chairs, Tables etc but all of them are filled with Bonsai trees now!, Also, the grass is almost non existent and there are no leaves on the hedges, I hate winter!!

It's more like this now but with Bonsai trees trees everywhere! (Minus the grass and hedge foliage at the moment!!)

John

Do you belong to a bonsai club? My lass is a member of Dragon Bonsai ( she's not the dragon ) it's a club in South Wales .

I turned some parts of my compost heap over this afternoon, and it's a bit compost-y at the bottom so might not be quite such a waste of space as I thought. I also watered it a bit, to try to help. Let's see what happens. I've been trying to drop the level in the water butts so I can put an overflow pipe in one of them, and this is better than just pouring it down the drain. I'll have to see if I can empty it to put plastic down at some point, maybe if it rots down a bit.

Don't over do the watering . Use a thick rod bar etc. to poke deep holes in the compost and put a pint or so of water in down these holes .once a month . The moisture and oxygen drawn in down th holes carries on feed ing the beneficial moulds & bacteria that breakdown the compostable matter into plant food .. make it too wet and it will drain out the valuable nutrients out the bottom as a stinking dark tea colour with a trace of natural fruit & vegetable oil ( & fats ) sometimes .

I have compost bins on 6 inch thick concrete slabs with a couple of feet walkway all round . Once a bin is free of normal coloured un rotted down matter , as it's part rotted / composted , I take the bin body off and fork the heap into the adjacent bin , re-lid it and let it rot as well as giving it bit of aggro in the top foot or so once a fortnight from my garden claw .

Then it's start the empty bin off again .

Once the second stage bin has been turned in the top foot for four or five months this then gets decanted into my garden trailer then put in one of five other " Finished " compost bins ready for use ..... using the oldest stuff ( 5 to7 yr old stuff ) first
In some places you can get base trays for the Dalek bins off the local authorities as well as the bins themselves . IIRC they can also be found on eBay . Cement mixer stand trays are about £20 and might fit

 

[johnny7]

Do you belong to a bonsai club? My lass is a member of Dragon Bonsai ( she's not the dragon ) it's a club in South Wales .

Don't over do the watering . Use a thick rod bar etc. to poke deep holes in the compost and put a pint or so of water in down these holes .once a month . The moisture and oxygen drawn in down th holes carries on feeding the beneficial moulds & bacteria that breakdown the compostable matter into plant food .. make it too wet and it will drain out the valuable nutrients out the bottom as a stinking dark tea colour with a trace of natural fruit & vegetable oil ( & fats ) sometimes .

I have compost bins on 6 inch thick concrete slabs with a couple of feet walkway all round . Once a bin is free of normal coloured un rotted down matter , as it's part rotted / composted , I take the bin body off and fork the heap into the adjacent bin , re-lid it and let it rot as well as giving it bit of aggro in the top foot or so once a fortnight from my garden claw .

Then it's start the empty bin off again .

Once the second stage bin has been turned in the top foot for four or five months this then gets decanted into my garden trailer then put in one of five other " Finished " compost bins ready for use ..... using the oldest stuff ( 5 to7 yr old stuff ) first
In some places you can get base trays for the Dalek bins off the local authorities as well as the bins themselves . IIRC they can also be found on eBay . Cement mixer stand trays are about £20 and might fit

Hi DAPPH

Ys, I've been a member of South Yorkshire Bonsai Society since around 1999

Thanks for the advice.


John

 

[Greeves246]

First heavy rain of the year might force a rethink and moving

 

[DAPPH]

Put another two lifts on each raised bed and wear wellies ..Happy new year .

 

[RichardM]

Harvested the last carrot from my little patch yesterday and noticed the spring onions are starting to show through.

 

[DAPPH]

Still got loads of carrots in my no soil , manmade growth medium raised beds ...

Will carrot fly have got them , will slugs have had a slugfest .. stay tuned for next weeks thrilling installment , with pictures .......... as any decent ones will be lifted , cleaned and pressure canned in pint jars .

 

[Keith 66]

I gave up trying to grow carrots, carrot sawfly defoliated them every time i have tried, as for slugs we have lots of the poxy things.
Garlic is coming up Solent wight & Kingsland varieties. Schezhaun pepper shrub/tree is starting to show buds, we planted it two years ago & its started to take off, planted as a little potted stick about 10" high last year it hit 3ft. It is covered in the most dreadful thorns of any tree i ever saw. How long until it fruits or even if it does is anyones guess. They are fully hardy down to minus 20 so should be ok!

 

[DAPPH]

I'm having saw fly problems too even using Flyaway carrot seed in ground that has not had carrots grown in it for four years .
This year I hope to have a bucket or two of pure wood ash from my pal who has a log burner . Old timers used to pop a decent pinch of fine wood ash along every inch of sown carrot seed " sown at 1/2 " deep @ 10 plus oC )
Very dry soil appears to help the carrot fly survive .
I suspect the alkaline wood ash kills their eggs & grubs .

 

[Seadog]

Plant garlic next to the carrots.

 

[DAPPH]

Plant garlic next to the carrots.

Then you can have garlic maggots in the carrot beds as well ???????

 

[Greeves246]

Anyone grow rhubarb?

Meet the Yorkshire rhubarb growers whose crop is eaten in Miami

Nine farmers who remain in the Rhubarb Triangle send their produce to Paris and New York.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[DAPPH]

Did till three years ago .. so much crop beside date & rhubarb jam , wine and frozen for later use , half a dozen rhubarb crumble pies . Dug the crowns out and put them right way up in rotting veg matter on the rear garden bank that slopes down to wood land . The five crowns may have managed to take root & thrive ..will find out come spring .

Reason for removing the crowns ..... it was the third time I'd done a three year split crowns move to clean un-grown by rhubarb ground . This last time the crowns were getting on for 18 inches high by 18 or so wide .. too much heavy work for an old disabled fella like me these days.

 

[Greeves246]

Rhubarb crumble soon.

Seen nine frogs in the Pond today

 

[gaz1]

id have split that rhubarb into 4

as 4 plants will take up the whole of the bed with there leaves 2 plants are bad enough

but i like rhubarb often and gooseberrys go well with rhubarb as well

 

[bigegg]

id have split that rhubarb into 4

as 4 plants will take up the whole of the bed with there leaves 2 plants are bad enough

but i like rhubarb often and gooseberrys go well with rhubarb as well

Yerbut, you live pretty close to the "rhubarb triangle" - if it's anything like here in south Leeds, one bit of root will take over the entire garden.
Other parts of the country, it won't even grow - just dies off in days.

 

[OJCar]

Other parts of the country, it won't even grow - just dies off in days.

Better tell that to my rhubarb !

 

[redlig]

Rhubarb crumble soon.
View attachment 487247

Seen nine frogs in the Pond today
View attachment 487248

Voyeur !

 

[bigegg]

Better tell that to my rhubarb !
View attachment 487254

I get that amount of growth in - literally - about a fortnight of summer after digging most of it out, leaving a couple of inches of root by accident.

It's practically an invasive weed here.

 

[4String.]

The Head of Common Sense has just texted to let me know that both the rhubarb and the gooseberries are showing signs of life.

As it's taken 5 years of hard work and a lot of homemade compost to get anything to grow I'm deliriously happy but a bit sad as we're looking at selling the house and buying a bungalow. I still miss the farmhouse we bought on Sunk Island, out near Spurn Point. The garden, which originated from the East Yorkshire coast and took a few millennia to find it's way up the River Humber, was incredibly fertile. Onions the size of footballs, carrots the size of horses' winkles, goosegobs as big as golf balls, it was a stunningly productive place to grow anything and everything.

 

[OJCar]

I get that amount of growth in - literally - about a fortnight of summer after digging most of it out, leaving a couple of inches of root by accident.

It's practically an invasive weed here.

That photo was taken this afternoon, next month it will putting out stalks about a metre long in a week.