Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Here is the link to my mini basil farm instructable:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Hydroponic-Basil-Farm/

The cutting has grown 1cm overnight ;)

I'm going to stick to legit "farming" but there are plenty of links out there if you want to grow other produce...

Anyone use/used a Hand Push Lawn Mower for their lawn? Recommendations sought...

2015 will be the year of the neat and stripey lawn (I'm told).

Everyone over the age of, say, 45 will have used one! If you want stripes you must have a roller at the rear and the only current one I can find with said roller is the Webb H12R-A at £80.

Time to prune those apples and pears folks...

My coffee plant, after a very ropey start, thrived through the summer.

It is now back indoors, and looking very sorry for itself again - leaves are wilting, rubbery rather than waxy, some are going brown.

What does it want?

Summer?

Don't we all, however I couldn't find that at the garden centre.

never grown one, but i'd look at tips from here and here

It might be unhappy with the humidity levels in your house, especially since you've got a fire. How is it potted? You can try repotting it in fast-draining fertiliser with rocks or smashed terracotta pieces at the bottom if you didn't try that last year. I'd also keep it in a reliably humid part of the house if you have such a place, but if not then you could try one of those mini greenhouse things to control the moisture levels a bit better. That'd have the bonus of keeping it a bit warmer, too.

We've spent four years or so trying to create the least humid flat in London.

^ Mine are looking a bit ropey as well due, I think, to having the heat on in the house but I generally just up the watering. They don't need to be too humid, just not completely dried out.

We've spent four years or so trying to create the least humid flat in London.

And now your tropical plant hates you. O tempora! O mores!

Fair weather bump. Lovely warm day today. Managed to clear a bit of the vegetable patch and plant some broad beans.

first mow of the season, just topped it gentle like

Ditto, feeling virtuous and slightly smug. Planted out the strawberry plants that came as a freebie from a landscaping client, roll on June!

aye ;)

strawberry patch fertilised over the winter, same with asparagus. Left the veg plot alone though and will probably just dig over for this year (selling due to d.i.v.o.r.c.e.)

Been there, done that, only miss the acre or so of garden that went with it......

I have inherited a very large, very overgrown garden. The bottom is a nightmare snarl of brambles, holly, random bricks and blocks, hacked-down trees, ivy, trees that have been choked to death by ivy, etc etc.

The job of tidying it up is too big for me to do, so obviously I'm wasting time fannying about with inconsequentialities instead. Which leads me to my question: can anyone identify this woody-stemmed twining thing? It's so aggressive it's helping the ivy take down an entire tree and has even managed to choke out some brambles.

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That looks very much like Japanese Knotweed to me.

100% this unfortunately

yep :(

If you know nothing about it then the RHS have a good page on it (am on my phone and it doesn't like the RHS website).

It's highly invasive, horrible stuff that will take a few years of work to eradicate. Glyphosate is the best weed killer to use, but the waste is a controlled waste so needs to be disposed of at a licensed landfill site. You can burnt it onsite though.

You think? It's definitely a twiner/climber, there aren't any upright canes like knotweed has - though maybe it's the wrong time of year for that. The leaves don't seem pointy enough for knotweed either, and the stems are of the peeling woody type instead of the smooth type that I associate with knotweed.

That said, I've never actually seen japanese knotweed in the real world, and everything I know about its appearance comes from google, so I'm maybe not the best judge. This would seem to be the best option in any case:

You may need to consider burning down your house too just to be sure.

Nuke it from orbit

That's the only way to be sure.