Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Anyone else got stupid daffodils throwing up greenery?

Good work.
The only time I've seen those raised beds with upright posts was an allotment neighbour a few years ago - presumably for crop protection at a later stage ?

Indeed. Those White Cabbage Butterflies are the bane of my life. I've lost every crop of Kale to them. So tooling up in the most organic way I can.

Bulbs going in this weekend.

1 Attachment

Oof, love an Allium.

£2.75 from Homebase (maybe RIP)

Our local Tesco had Allium bulbs in on offer 2 boxes for £5.

What's happening to homebase?!

I now also have 6 Hydrangeas.
Went to Signature Hydrangeas in Marden as I was given a voucher by my partner for my birthday. It's an amazing place with hundreds upon hundreds of different varieties and tens of thousands of plants. Great for the Hydrangea lover in your life.
It's not your usual Hydrangea Macrophylla. It's a Hydrangea Serrata (Blueberry Cheesecake). More delicate leaves than your standard Hydrangea with lovely Lacecap flowers.
When did I become that guy who gains pleasure from Hydrangeas?!?
Going to take some cuttings from some of the plants next year for forum swaps.

1 Attachment

The Australians fucked it. 42 stores to close. Rescue package voted in by creditors I think. Think ours will be OK.

Wilko are doing a kilo of tulips £4, that's as cheap as I've seen. About 30 bulbs.

Keep hold of them. You never know....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Won't somebody think of the goslings!

Is now good for all bulbs or wait until it gets a bit colder? I have crocuses, softneck garlic and grape hyacinths to go in.

love an Allium

Yea, they're like little fireworks! Love them too..

So I removed two Leylandii from the front garden a few weeks back. I didn't really like them and they crowded the path.
Anyway I want to create a bed with plants parallel to the path. I planted the first plant yesterday but in the process of digging the hole and planting, removed all of this rubble (stones / china/ glass etc) in the process. Felt like my own version of time team. No wonder the lawn is lacklustre. I guess in the 30's when the property was built, a very limited amount of topsoil was put directly on top of this to level everything off.
Anyway, I'd like to have a nice lawn and garden out the front. To get serious about it, suppose I'm going to need to dig trenches and remove all this right and backfill with a bulk load of topsoil?
Anyone else done this?

1 Attachment

Absolutely ridiculous amount of broken ceramic and glass in my garden. The strange thing is that it spans a wide amount of time - some of it is pre-30s (house built late 20s) but plenty is more recent too. Too much to be accidental. I have less rubble than that so there's plenty of soil left. Making beds just dig up and sieve. I'm prone to doing things piecemeal, so mostly I just pick it out as and when...

Yep,
mine was more the waste from solid fuel burning. Why it wasn't just put in the dustbin is beyond me. Also a couple of caches of broken glass, as if a hole had been dug to hold an entire (domestic) broken window. I sieved the soil, retained the rounded pebbles for use as stone mulch in pots. Smaller stones were used to toughen the paths between raised beds. Luckily this was some time ago when the local authority recycling centre still took hard core so all the unusable stuff was disposed of free of charge.

suppose I'm going to need to dig trenches and remove all this right and backfill with a bulk load of topsoil?

Anyone else done this?

Yea I've done this before; our backyard used to be 90% debris, with a bit of exhausted soil and some weeds on top. Now it's a little rainforest.
: ]
We removed the top 30cm of an area of about 20m².
We threw away all the rubbish and kept the stones, basically, used them as drainage later.
We got some cubic metres of dung from a local petting zoo, mixed this with a bit of the old soil and a lot of newly bought proper organic all-purpose soil, also a bit of special soils in some areas (for tomatoes, for example). Also about 100KG of organic cat litter, as a friend of mine insisted this would be absolutely necessary.

tl;dr - it was a shit load of work, but it was really really worth it!
: ]

soil improving is absolutely the way to go!

the garden is getting fuller. there are fewer bare patches, and there are fewer bare weeks. I am weeding much less, and don't really need to add new plants any more. I like it.
but - when is the right time for things like turning soil over and adding compost, if there is always something there? (or in the ground, or about to emerge)
I feel like I am gardening with very superficial knowledge, without a plan, and missing some basic fundamentals. (which is quite a strange feeling as I always considered myself moderately green-fingered since childhood. )
also considering whether it's prudent to start growing food, something I've never had any interest in... (and seems like a lot of work)

no daffs, but grape hyacinths and garlic are both shooting up

Some nice early autumn colours at the moment in the garden:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnwTlmrlNrA/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=13fu8g355osbc
and
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnwm2bRFWqn/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=jpay5q5augvc

nice! is clematis supposed to be flowering now? I didn't realise it was so late.