Does anyone know anything about gardening?

I bet your fingers and forearms were killing after lifting all those bricks, amazing work buddy.

+1 for restricting the root growth, however you don't have to totally restrict it. If you sink a "box" of vertical paving slabs into the garden and cover the bottom of the hole in a thick layer of rubble you can re-plant it in that. Alternatively an old washing machine drum apparently works well.

box caterpillars

If it's specific to them then that's great as they're an invader.

Nice work. Think I'd skip side glass, so it is roofed. Fwiw my Dad temporarily removes side panes from his when it gets too hot on sunny days.

cheers, seems to make sense

feedback rather than criticism but it also could be pruned a bit better

That's really helpful.

The last pruning was done with mini-H in a sling and quite rushed. Since then I've been struggling to find a guide on pruning them. It can grow a fair bit, so mainly I don't want to be a dick neighbour.

Nice pier and beam house. Where in the US are you?

Thanks. Very old house from 1900.

I don't think it's a pier and beam house, as it has a foundation and a basement.

I've lived all over the major cities east to west coast but find myself in Iowa City these years. Pleasant place.

Gonna stop mucking the garden thread now.

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How easy is the lemon grass to grow?

I had a really old stalk in the fridge, looked awful... I trimmed it back to get rid of all the dried out leaves and to expose a bit of tender root, chucked it in a glass of water for a week til it sprouted then threw it in a pot... I haven't done anything to it, not even watered it!

In short, very easy!

e. if you cut out one in three of those stems to within 6 inches of the ground

Having a look at it this morning, and what I think will be tricky is dealing with the front ones without ending up with an aethticaly worse situation than now - ie displaying more bare branches.

Not sure if this photo conveys it.

I'm wondering about taking some of the front ones down to ~4ft where new growth is showing, then following your advice on the other bits.

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Obviously all of this has to be balanced against my OH's feelings on cutting it back.

What I'm less sure about this year is the forsythia. I quite like where it's at in terms of the old branch architecture - but am happy for it to go bigger. But then I obviously want loads of flowers again.

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You can do it in stages. What you will be surprised about is how quickly the new growth comes up. So yeah perhaps prune one in 5 or 6 this year and then the same again next year.

My rose, which I gave an absolutely savage pruning last year, has just put the teeniest little bit of new growth out of the remaining stump. Bit of a relief as I thought I had gone too hard and murdered it, which - given that it was a present from my mum to commemorate my grandma - was causing me some guilt. To make matters worse, I was weeding around the base of it and twatted it with a trowel. Fortunately managed to just miss the new bit of growth. Not sure that rose ownership is my strong point.

when I trim our roses, I try to kill them. never works. It's a hardy, pretentious plant.

If ours is anything to go by I think you can be pretty savage with it and it'll bounce right back. Can probably cut up to a third of it away and it won't bat an eyelid.

nice house

I'm after some plant suggestion please.
I have a south facing wall in the garden. I'd like to grow something up it to cover it up.
My wife would like something ever-green and bushy. I'd like something with flowers and a nice scent in the summer.
The wall is about 6m long and 2.5m high so could be a few different plants.
What do you think?

Full sun?

Passion flower?

Have finally got round to creating raised veg beds but using some of Charles Dowding’s no dig principles.

From building work I had some used shutter ply sheets and left over timber so made two frames.

Lined the bottoms with cardboard - was meant to take to recycling before lockdown but never did.

Had left over top soil so 3/4 filled the beds with topsoil and then covered with cardboard. Next was a mixture of household compost and leaf much, and the last in or so covered with mushroom compost from a local mushroom cultivator.

One bed planted with seeds, the other with seedlings from a local garden centre and from seedlings donated by neighbours.

Frame for taller plants from hazel i coppiced yesterday.

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Nice.

Charles Dowding’s no dig principles.

For others benefit, his no dig book is free on z-lib / b-ok.cc, as is another interesting read for folks getting started growing veg at home:

https://b-ok.cc/book/3322749/e441b0

&

https://b-ok.cc/book/2529732/2dda0f

Another job completed yesterday.

My shed is rotten in the rear panel because it's sitting on earth which has built up around the base over the years.

This has led to mice getting in and whilst I've never seen any in there I don't particularly want them nesting

Rear panel below

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Mouse droppings

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Temporary fix last year to block up the hole

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The space at the rear of the shed is quite limited and given I know there are rodents about as well as a bumblebee which appears to be nesting at the rear too I didn't want to spend the day scrabbling around on my hands and knees so the easiest solution was to take the rear off.

It was only six bolts that required undoing

I only told you to blow the bloody doors off

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Removed

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