The FastDay Forum

Julianna!!!!!!! That honey looks glorious. In fact all of your photos are very inspirational. I should have taken photo's of my first year so I could see if I actually improve. However I still cant figure out how to post pictures (it says my img is on). Help anyone?

I've been gardening for years lol. Mostly shrubs and trees etc but this year I have grown tomatoes and strawberries. And there is a chili plant living on my window sill now that autumn is here.
I am a bit scared of trying vegetables although courgettes have grown quite well but the lack of sun makes it very hard.
My pride and joy is a vine with lovely grapes that I use to make wine. I have made blackberry wine for years and give that to friends when I can bear to part with it. Going to try white wine with the grapes this year as I harvested about 8kgs!
Gardening is difficult with a NE facing garden and dogs so my lawn is not very pretty.
Obviously having a horse I have access to manure whenever I like to put in my compost bins and once in a while I can bag up rotted stuff from where the Yard Owner heaps it around the fields.
Can I squeeze in the shed too? lol x

Can I join too? Our garden is mainly herbaceous borders - I love flowers. I have got to the point if I buy anything new it has to be one in one out. I am also a sucker for free or bargain plants. Take cuttings, split perennials, collect seed which means I have a lot of 'spares' down the side of the potting shed.
I have recently got into fruit as well - I have black, red and white currants, gooseberries, blueberries ( in pots), rhubarb. We also have a mulberry tree which is fabulous and a quince which is yet to produce fruit.
This year I bought some beetroot seedlings and they have proved very easy and seemed to have thrived on neglect. Warm freshly boiled beetroot is delicious.I don't really have the discipline for other veg.

Lil - anywhere near me (Wigston)?

Loughborough - not too far

@silverdarling. Those plants look almost tropical. How do you do that in Northumberland?

@rawkaren - really mostly trial and error over time - there is a lot of stuff that just died off! But I have lovely japanese anemones, hydrangea, penstemon, geums (including some rare ones) and the primula vialii you see in the picture ... Primulas seem to do well, as well as old fashioned cowslips in spring, as there is a part that is quite wet. And cottage style geraniums, lavender, as well as some sedums in a dry bit. Really I just plonk stuff in and it all looks a bit chaotic, and am not so good at weeding it all needs a bit of sorting out re dividing plants, so will have to get on with it before it gets too cold ...

Me, me, me!

I'm a frustrated gardener, well I have a lovely one full of flowers, but I want to turn it into a veg patch and hubby has veto'd it. So I just have herbs, two chilli plants (loads of baby chilli's this year) and lettuce that I plant wherever there is a gap in the bedding.

The lettuce started off life early in the spring as one of the supermarkets 'living salad' packs that I just split up and planted wherever there was a gap. It worked out really well as there were 3 varieties of lettuce including a red one, so the fresh greens have looked good with the deeper reds.

Flower wise I have every bit of fence wired up to take clematis and a passion flower growing up and over my shed. When we moved in 3 years ago, one van full of moving stuff was plants. As it was late September I split all the perrennials in the old garden and brought loads with me. The flower beds were dug before the first lick of paint went on the walls.

One of my main problems is that I am useless at remembering the names of plants. So I could well be doing a lot of 'you know the dark green plant with white flowers' type of conversations.

I am hoping to start the autumn tidy up and bulb planting this week. Today I am pulling that last of the chilli's off the bushes and will probably preserve them in oil. Its a shame they couldn't have sunshine a bit longer to ripen the green ones up, but frost is predicted for later in the week and I don't want to lose the lot.

[carorees]

Well, OH is the gardener really, while I like to sit in it and admire it (and offer OH helpful advice ).

We have a vegetable patch which is expanding into the lawn a little bit each year , a small orchard of apple, pear and plum trees, a herb bed which always seems to be out of control and some chickens to supply manure (and eggs of course).

It seems that, as we had such a poor harvest of produce last year, the plants are producing double this year . Yesterday was the first day since getting back from our holidays in early August that I haven't had runner beans with my meal. Still have loads of courgettes...I discovered 6 biguns lurking under leaves yesterday! Courgette soup, courgette cake, steamed courgettes, baked courgettes, grilled courgettes...one (or more) of these have been on the menu every day since August and unlike the runner beans it looks like we won't be running out any time soon!

We've run out of space to store apples and we'll never manage to eat all the pears before they go off.

Plus everyone else we know seems to be overloaded with produce so we can't even give it away!!!

PS Courgette and chocolate cake topped with pears in the oven as I type!

[Betsysgr8]

Betsy how do you can your tomatoes, have you got a machine and if so, is it worth it? We use loads but I still end up buying tins and tins.

No machine, I've been canning since I was 10 years old (though I still call Mom for advice every canning season, lol), jams, pickles, relish, fruit, beans, tomatoes, if it grew we canned or froze it, lol. I don't have the words to describe HOW to do it and since it can be bit dangerous during the process and you have to make sure the jars are sterilized and the finished product properly sealed, it is best to learn with a person experienced in canning. When I was a teenager, my mom was taking care of her mother for months at a time, so my Dad helped me with the canning, that was a bonding experience I will cherish forever.

My sister has a 'canning machine' and I suppose it comes with an instruction manual, that might be the best way for a beginner to learn.

[Betsysgr8]

Caroline, I hear you with the zucchini, I was putting it in every meal for months! Last year I only had 2 plants but you'd think that it was 10! I think I just used up the last of the zucchini I shredded and froze but I still have spaghetti squash in the freezer from 2 years ago.

Juliana that honey looks fabulous and shouldn't be looked at on a fast day. Wish I lived near you. I'd love to have bees. Maybe when we get to our forever home.

That's sweet Madmois. "Forever home" will be a lovely place with a beautiful garden

Julianna!!!!!!! That honey looks glorious. In fact all of your photos are very inspirational. I should have taken photo's of my first year so I could see if I actually improve. However I still cant figure out how to post pictures (it says my img is on). Help anyone?

Rawkaren.

The honey seems to really be appreciated by some people. Its like im giving them "liquid" or comb "gold"

If any flower comes out even if its the 500th passionfruit flower ive seen, i sometimes just photograph it. just an amazing thing the beauty of nature.

We have 6 new quail we are picking up for our flock on Saturday .. so excited.

now for the image uploading.

not sure if i know what you mean about img is on but if its when you click img

you get something that looks like [ img ][ /img ]

so in between the ] and the [ you put in the url (web address) of the image you have uploaded to somewhere. it might be in facebook, it might be in flick or some other place you normally upload photos too. so you copy and past the url usually with an ending like .jpg into there.

and when you post it should show up. dont do what i did once and if you have a really big photo (say over 600 pixels wide) it only shows a bit of it. so i dont have to worry sometimes i just put in url addresses and let people click. then i dont have to bother resizing the picture.

this forum i dont think lets you actually upload a photo from your computer but i may be wrong. ive posted quail pics on backyardchickens.com forum and it has a definite photo upload tool.

[Betsysgr8]

To upload a pic from you computer, click on 'full editor' then scroll down just a bit and you'll see 2 tabs, the 2nd one is 'Upload attachment' click and it will say file name, click 'browse' and find your pic then click 'Add the file' Submit and you are done.

Wow. Such a great group and variety of skills and plants!

@Madmois I found this site to be helpful for canning. It's important to add the lemon juice to get the acidity up so they don't spoil.http://www.pickyourown.org/canning_tomatoes.htm

@rawkaren Growing ginger is really easy. I bought some fresh at the market, soaked it in water, then planted in a pot about a couple of inches deep. Plan around 12" diameter for 1 plant. You can see the "eyes" on the ginger. You can cut the piece you bought to smaller pieces containing an eye. I found a lot of good info on You Tube. Summers are too short here to put them in the ground. The foliage is quite tropical looking and smells great.

@spanner We put some garlic in 2 years ago and had pretty good success. This year we are trying some more variety. I ordered from Keene due to choice and price. They recommended soaking the cloves. See Insurance Policy for Garlic Growers in the link.
http://www.keeneorganics.com/growing_ga ... structions

I had been learning from this site which organizes the info well.
http://www.filareefarm.com/

@Juliana.Rivers Can I come live with you? Amazing stuff. Is there a trick to getting passion flower to bloom? I have a vine in a pot which looks healthy but no blooms.

To upload a pic from you computer, click on 'full editor' then scroll down just a bit and you'll see 2 tabs, the 2nd one is 'Upload attachment' click and it will say file name, click 'browse' and find your pic then click 'Add the file' Submit and you are done.

thats good to know.

when it said attachment i didnt know it meant pic doh

do you have to resize down first or does it do it for you.