The FastDay Forum

Anybody know what this is. It's big, and growing in my front border ...

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Drat! Still not showing

Haven't popped in here for ages, glad all your gardens are coming along nicely.

I have had a terrible slug infestation, my poor sunflower babies and the hostas have been eaten alive!! This weekend I have taken revenge and built 5 x beer traps for them to drown themselves in. My first haul after 48 hours was 15 ENORMOUS slugs, 12 baby slug and 6 snails...They are on the bird table now and there is no slime on my plants today!!

In other garden news my potted blueberry plant is heaving with flowers so hopefully will be a great crop later and the roses are shooting up. I am trying the herbs outside during the day and then bringing back in at night.

Weeding is taking up most of my time this week as this warm wet weather is bringing them all out. Can't wait until the rain stops and I can get out again!!

[wildmissus]

Sometime neighbours have their benefits - this is his stunning Californian Lilac.

I was just thinking that looks like a ceanotus but I have googled it and they are the same thing. Learnt something new today.

looks beautiful @wildmissus. The photo didn't show until I clicked on it.

Buddy @spanner, snail/slug eating pesters. 20 years ago I gave a Tesco bag to my lovely 6 year old daughter Blaise. Fill yer bags said I, a penny a snail and take them to the local parkland conservation area. A modern day Dick Whittington story. The kiddie winks loved it and it worked. 20 years on the slugs are back - so I'm on it again finding a little Dick W (any gender) to lead the way. Back to Le Jardin. XX

We've been reading the Rosie project - well I give you the Rhodie project. When we moved into this house 21 years ago there was a large purple rhododendron in this spot. After a few years I noticed that it had a few pink flowers every year. Eventually it dawned on me it was a pink rhododendron where the root stock had taken hold. About 6 years ago when it flowered I cut off all the purple branches. I was left with about 4 spindly branches each with a pink flower. I have been pruning it to promote growth lower down and this year voila : a pink rhododendron. The purple one still comes up but I cut it back

Started pruning the roses today. The warm weather we've had in Melbourne means that most of them are still blooming . I did five this morning, choosing the ones that had stopped flowering or only had the odd bloom but still now have a vase of roses for my efforts. I promised myself that this year I'd do them more gradually so I don't end up with aching muscles but it's so hard to stop once you start.

All I've had to do today, between heavy rainstorms, is to stake up the lupins, the oriental poppies and the last of the aqualigias, as they all got a bit battered last night in the thunderstorm.

I grow the fattest cloves of garlic this side of the hemisphere and I still have too many that I can manage.

Winter solstice was yesterday and I'm planting them in the hail on a fast day today and tomorrow. Don't ya just love fast days for this kind of thing.

I'd love to know how to marinate them, anyone got a favourite recipe for doing this?

I dont want to mince them, cause I dont have a meat mincer, and was aware I cant really blend them, turns into a messy foam, apparently, but if anyone has processes garlic in a blender and its fine, I'm all ears.

I have liked marinated garlic that I've bought, but would love to use up my gluttony of too much garlic, otherwise these little gems are going to end up as little spongy horrid things.

Their time will be up before I can eat the all.

I think next year, I will ask small grocers if they want to buy some of my garlic.

How nice to see little bits of your gardens! I envy those of you who can grow vegetables. We bought a house in the country 11years ago, thinking I could do a lot of gardening. Come to find out, the lot is sitting on a shelf of solid rock. In some places the soil is only 3 or 4 inches deep. In others, perhaps 6 or 7. It's on a hill and most of it is in the shade. And we have deer, dozens of them, that love nothing better than to snack on freshly bloomed tulips or phlox stalks.

Fortunately I had never gardened and had no gardening friends, so I didn't know how bad it was. I spent the first fall digging hundreds of stones out of what little soil we have, bags of dirt and compost,and bought lots of the cheapest, very small perennials they sold at the garden centers. Back then we had several wonderful ones that sold plants you usually only can find in mail order catalogs.

Over time I have found out what can live in my thin soil and withstand our voracious Japanese beetles. Everything tends to be dwarfed, but quite a lot of it flowers. Tall phox love my garden and over the years the three varieties I started with have hybridized into dozens of different colors and patterns. They are short but very prolific. Being munched by the deer in June seems to make them flower more in August.

The dianthus pinks I bought, labeled as annuals, didn't read the label and come back every year. Day lilies, iris, columbines, daisies, funny little short crocosmia, coreopsis, mums. There is something blooming at all times and I finally have a lovely garden that fulfils my need for color, even if my dream of armfuls of cutting flowers remains just a dream.

I gave up on veggies, alas. Deer, rabbits, and racoons got to anything I planted before I did.

I have to race the birds to my ripe blueberries, they won last year - I got 3!! - but there's a bumper crop this year so hoping, as always, for the best :0)

I have a patch of the small wild blueberries up the hill, the kind sold as Maine blueberries. They grow very close to the ground and are fun to hunt for. I only get a few handfuls, but still!

There are also wild raspberries and blackberries back there too. Unfortunately the best ones are close to a drainage ditch that runs along the road, so every few years, just after they start to bear, the town comes by with a brush hog machine and chops them all down.

Winter has finally arrived in Sydney with a very cold wind out there. they say gale force in the next few hours but i think it wont happen

Anyway last wekeend I started the Broadbean and Snow Pea patch. and cleared a spot for a 4th batch of potatoes.

Just waiting for the last of my total pumpkin crop of 7 to finish up so i can clear more beds for more beans and peas and have room for the spring garden. Thinking about trying full size tomatoes again after watching an extraordinary gardener on Gardening Australia (love that show). I don't mind the "mini tomatoes" but nothing like a big juicy sweet tasting full size tomato

Any varieties i should try in Sydney? I should get some seeds as start them indoors like I did once upon a time

I'd be out rose pruning if it wasn't blowing a gale. Went out for coffee at the local shopping plaza instead where they were mopping up leaks. Power went out 6 times whilst I was there. Horrid day!