Does anyone know anything about gardening?

You could build some raised beds around the edges and grow stuff in them. Use gravel or wood chips instead of a lawn.

Really it comes down to how much time and effort you want to put into it. Removing the tarmac (is it really tarmac or concrete?) is labour intensive and probably require getting a contractor in to do it. But it'll help drainage enormously and significantly lessen any risk of flash flooding.

I'm assuming you want the kids to be able to play in it? I'd remove the tarmac if so.

Yeah, I like the space - There's lots of potential, the garden also extends behind the 2 garages to the left, but wouldn't get masses of light, so I'm thinking further storage/BBQ area. Unfortunately this became a dumping ground for the past 20 years it seems and is work in progress to clear.

The garage - Yeah we'll be keeping it as it's storing a LOT of our crap. It's had a hard life after intensive ivy growth and a lack of maintenance. That was hard work to remove. As you noted, I need to repair the wall a little and think about replacing the asbestos roof...

@Andyp My partner and I have agreed on raised beds, at least around the back and right-hand edges, so that we can lay something down for access to the side-garage door. Your thoughts on mitigating flash-flooding are a good idea and an another reason to go with a lawn, as well as for the kids.

Ballpark ££ for digging up the tarmac/concrete?

A bit of googling recommended digging a test hole to see what's underneath - if the tarmac was laid over lots of hardcore, it may be a pain to remove all the hardcore too. Also, it's ambiguous if asphalt requires special disposal or not. I'd start ringing around.

At least it looks like you can get a small digger back there so it might be quick to do.

Good call, some of it is crumbling away at the edges, so I'll take this back a bit and see what's underneath.

Artificial grass drains very well. We dug up our lawn, which was regularly muddy and waterlogged, and replaced it with 50mm of compacted stone dust and some Namgrass on top. Now it drains perfectly and went through all the ridiculous thunderstorms in June with no trouble at all. You could lay it on top of the concrete, with a shockpad underneath, but that wouldn't help with the drainage. If you remove the concrete you wouldn't have to remove the hardcore underneath, just level it up with MOT Type 1 and compact, then 50mm of compacted stone dust (type 1 dust/grano dust) and put the artificial grass on top.

If you want a low maintenance lawn put down wildflower turf. It only needs cutting once a year. You do have to water it every day for the first two weeks but after that it's very low maintenance.

If there is hardcore underneath you could also put some low fertility top soil down on top of that and then lay wildflower turf on top. It doesn't need lots of soil and actually does better on crap soil (if it's too fertile the grasses take over and there goes your wild flowers).

Unlike artificial grass it will provide a haven for insects and retain water which will help with drainage. Few man-made things really drain well, they mostly increase the speed of surface run off, which is bad. But I think artificial grass is an abomination...

This is brilliant. Totally stealing it. We have a raised bed for veg and our garden is full of slugs, they totally destroyed our courgettes.

Our other raised bed (for herbs) has copper around the edge so no problems there.

Any thoughts on my carrot sitch? Wondering whether they are far enough along for the time of the year, they are autumn kings.

Should I thin them out a bit now or should I wait, do I even need to? Ta

Can't upload the pic apparently

It'll be too big. Shrink it using some form of software.

Email it to yourself, should get the option to compress the image before you hit send.

I've just discovered these growing on the potatoe plants left by the previous owners.

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Don't eat them. They're poisonous.

Potato / tomato / nightshade - same fam. Definitely don't eat! But do eat the spuds, when the tops keel over or before if you start to notice blight.

Does anyone have any aphid removal tips?

We have a rather lovely pineapple broom tree in our garden which Dropout kindly gave us.

It's done very well and is much bigger than it was, but in the last week or so it's been hit by a bad blackfly infestation. It turns out that - rather disgustingly - the ants in our garden are farming the aphids for their honeydew, which I didn't even know was a thing. Ew.

I don't want to use nasty chemicals so have been blasting them off with a high pressure hose, but that doesn't get rid of the baby ones stuck under the leaves and in the flowers. So I've just ordered some horticultural liquid soap (natural stuff) which I plan to water down then spray on the aphids.

Apparently this will destroy their natural waxy coatings and they will dehydrate and die. Will this work? Any other tips?

ride out to a common somewhere and collect some ladybirds

I was about to say, I have seen none this year. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

I'm also not sure what happens with ladybirds when ants are protecting the aphids. I wouldn't want any ladybirds getting hurt.

Not a problem apparently:
http://www.pbase.com/antjes/lady_bug

If anyone sees any ladybugs please hit me up.

Anyone know about growing these?

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Although it's unsightly I tend to leave them to it. But I only seem to get them on my runner bean leaves and not any flowers.
I also destroy any ant nests I find. I know it's not very friendly but when they take over the world you'll regret not doing it too.

I don't really mind unsightly but am worried about them damaging the tree. It's pretty robust but apparently aphids could weaken it and give it diseases. The flowers are nice to look at though and there are a lot fewer of them since the aphids moved in.

I have no idea where the ants are nesting or I would! We put down wildflower turf about three and a half weeks ago which is doing very well but I suspect they may be living in that somewhere, in which case I'll never find them...

I think you can also use soap flakes as a cleaner (i.e. wool wash) if you have any of that to hand? Heard that from @hoefla maybe she can advise on if it worked

I don't know how effective it is but yes mild soap solution seems to be the thing. What I find fairly effective is to just go around squishing the things with your fingers. It's not very pleasant and bruises the leaves a bit but the bugs are soft. Then spray down with soap solution. They breed incredibly fast and you won't get them all in one go but do it every few days for a bit and it massively improves the situation. I haven't seen many ladybirds this year either :(

Don't eat them. They're poisonous.

Oh.

I genuinely thought they were tomatoes and everyone else who'd earlier in the year said they were potatoes was mistaken.

soap solution seems to be the thing.

Yes that's what I'd do (or have done with the bay tree). I thought spraying soap diluted in water was a pretty standard solution.