The FastDay Forum

Just finished a little light digging this morning - have done nearly all front garden since yesterday lunchtime ( *buffs (broken) nails*) - gotta strike while the sun's out in UK

Doesn't look much at the mo, but removed loads of creeping jenny, dandelion rosettes and random grass etc filled garden bin right up ... (And hopefully got some NEAT in, which will show on my (negligible) Easter challenge chart next week )

I am going to have to try and train one of the lads in delicate digging as my plans for getting the garden tidy before I have my operation on Tuesday have been scuppered by pain.
The Dandilions are gorgeous, the saturated ground doesn't seem to have hurt them and the crocuses did all eventually come up and gave a wonderful splash of colour under my bird feeder. I still have some splashes of purple there but I don't expect them to still be showing this time next week. The stalks of the grape hyacinths are up so the next splash of purple should come from them. The tulips are showing good leaf strength so the soaking didn't affect them either. I have good buds on all my clematis bar one that doesn't seem to have survived the winter, but it may regrow from the root ball, I'm not giving up on it yet.
I managed to pick up some rough sawn planks and some slabs last week. So the plans for extending the patio can now go ahead. I still want to build a cob pizza oven into the retaining wall, but need some stone for the base of that. There is a quarry about 3 miles from our house, a trip over there to see if they will sell me a small one ton load of scraps nice and cheap is on the cards. I will just have to wait till the daffodils have died down before I start on that project.

The retaining wall will be something like this... http://www.instructables.com/id/Retaini ... lway-Ties/

With a central pizza oven like this... http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/origi ... bbdd10.jpg

This is all my own work. It was an unusable steep slope to start with. I hand dug it all out and used the soil to fill out a depression in a different part of the garden. All of the rocks for the retaining wall came from the ground I dug. It was once a stream bed so there was plenty of stone. All in all there was about 7 cubic metres of soil and rock shifted. I do like drystone walling, its a very therapeutic form of building. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/29977153740100540/

I suddenly woke up and realize it's hard time to get seeds to sow....must be that the snow went away and the sun shines that did it...

Like "forever" I have got me seeds from T&M and some time Mr F, but in the long round (like 13yrs or so) it get too boring to get the same range of tomatoes, chilies and cuces etc for the greenhouse. Soooo - any advice of a fun, interesting place to shop seeds with a quick turnaround? If this keeps up I just have to go out and clean out all the dead plats from last year;) and hope my grape wine and bougainvillea has survived.

At the market on Thursday someone was selling sweet pea seedlings at £1.10 a pot or £3 for 3. Decided it was easier that growing them from seed myself. There looked to be about 6 plants in each pot so I bought 3. I don't want to put them in till the daffs are finished to decided to pot them on to prevent their roots getting too tangled. I have just potted up 42 plants and one seed that was just beginning to sprout!

I tend to go a bit mad with sweetpeas as I love their scent. I did get some everlasting sweetpeas one year and was heartbrokenly disappointed as they are scentless. The sweetpeas overrun the clematis which I don't really want, so I'm dithering about getting any this year.

I had some of the everlasting sweetpeas on the front of the house under the kitchen window. Everyone said how great they looked but they were so rampant it was difficult to support them We have tried to take them out but they are extrememly deep rooted and difficult to get rid of - I just keep cutting them down. I just put the annuals in now but of course it has to be done every year

Oh my, I was wondering if there was a gardening corner. Well timed @Juliana.Rivers ! Many thanks It's years since I grew veggies - but I will not miss the window this year! I began today - purchasing and swapping - not doing, that's next weekend. I'll look forward to reading the thread this evening.

So I now have

potato herb, toms and miscellaneous grow bags
Seeds, potato, rocket, fennel, dill, baby aubergine, cucumber and lots of herbs
garlic with chives seeds(apparently if you plant garlic and chives in a mix it keeps the pests at bay)
Plant wise I have I have stocked up on Californian poppy seeds (they died out last year after 20 years), red gladioli bulbs, red anemone bulbs, mixed aquilegia, red poppy flanders, and purple climbing petunia seeds.

I'm also seeding my sunflowers from the outrageously giant crop last year.

Once I get the above going next weekend I'll move on to get chicory, courgettes, spring onions, rhubarb and more leaves a going.

A friend is coming over next weekend to help, but I may lose her to Abu Dhabi shortly...........fortunately her brother is a landscape gardener ..... though I don't know him well, YET!

A very excited Lizbean,

Happy spring time UK. Lizbeanx
@spanner buddy bring it on!

I have cavolo Nero, golden chard, wasabi and purple sprouting broccoli! Will post pics

cant wait to see more pics here. im always fascinated by pics of peoples blooming garden

for the Aussies here did anyone see the Gardening Australia 25th anniversary program on the weekend. So good to see clips the earlier shows.

Love this program.

if you missed it you can get it here

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/garden ... 305V001S00

oh and that Peter Cundall that was and still is so passsionate about gardening


I remember a radio interview of his life, where he spoke of escaping Nacism. Fascinating story.

pretty sure its this one
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... ll/3420882

this is Peter's wiki article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cundall

Count me in to please - I have an allotment but being in the middle of England only start planting veg in late March early April - have planted garlic and Jerusalem artichokes at the moment, onions shallots and beetroot this week - would love to here tips etc from other forum members
Thanks

all this talk to daffodils and sweet peas and getting vegies started! Of course we are at the other end of the season here. I am wondering what to do with tomatoes and hoping it's not too late for my corn to ripen. I have been so distracted lately, the garden has suffered. Still, now's the time to get busy with some autumn planting for a winter garden. Last year I planted snow peas in April and had such fantastic snow peas in the spring - earlier than everyone else. When you plant them here in Spring - which is the recommended time, the ground is too cold and wet and germination is difficult. If I plant in April, they germinate well and grow slowly over the winter. I did an experiment last year and it was a spectacular success. I will also plant some brassicas. Cauli, brocolli and cabbage.

I gave up on proper gardening in Okinawa because the mosquitos love me too much. But I always have some pots on the go. I went out on the weekend to give them some food, and discovered that all sorts of things I thought were long dead had sprung back to life. This includes one pot where I had already planted something else. oops. Only the herbs are doing poorly, so I'll have to start from scratch with those...

... I'm also seeding my sunflowers from the outrageously giant crop last year....

Hmmm. Just a thought but for many sunflowers (like a GreyStripe hybrid?) replanting from last year's crop is a mistake. They'll grow, but with very tiny flower heads and seeds.

Similar issues exist for cantelope seeds planted near squash. They'll look good the next year but have absolutely no flavor.

Been there, done that.

Winter goodies! Purple sprouting broccoli, cavolo nero and golden chard. My wasabi plant is also coming along very nicely.

Karen - looks like your OH has been looking after them well!