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One more attempt at spamming this ride this coming Sunday 10 Apr. We'll be stopping off at Myddleton House gardens for a wander around. Plenty to see there. We'll also be going to Forty Hall which has a little walled garden, vineyard and farm animals.
There's an excellent garden centre/nursery too across the road from Forty Hall.
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A friend just gave us a massive Crown Prince and I’d like to save and plant the seeds.
Was it homegrown and non F1 hybrid? Most stuff you buy in the shops are F1 hybrids and will grow a big plant but are sterile and won’t set any fruit. If it’s a non hybrid then it will grow fruit but will need a lot of space and feeding and as @not4sale says the fruit may be a cross with any squash, pumpkins, courgette, melon etc in the vicinity of the original plant.
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I’m giving serious consideration to turning my lawn into a wild flower meadow; front and back. I’ve always wanted an amazing lawn with stripes and I’ve never been about to achieve it. So wild flower meadow ticks a lot of boxes.
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Whatever you grow in a raised bed with the worst environmentally unfriendly timber treatment that has been concocted by science will have less chemical contaminants than anything you buy from a retailer.
Forget plastic liners, water will get between the liner and the timber whatever you do. Timber rots, only the thickness of the timber will delay the process.
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@Light_EDDed We just got into this, what you want is a cornflower / field meadow, your soil is almost certainly too rich for wildflower which is all about poor soil
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I swear a wild flower meadow is harder to grow than a bowling green lawn.
For the back, assuming you currently have a squarish lawn with boarders around the edge if, I would sow some wild seed mix along the edge of the boarder and lawn, then leave a foot or two next to the beds uncut, then another foot cut high. Then buy those wild flower matting strips and put a row across the last quarter of the garden two deep and let the grass grow beyond. That way you should get a line of flowers which gives the illusion of them continuing.
My best suggestion if you actually want a want a wild lawn is to totally rip yours up and start again. Preferably hiring someone. People sell wild lawn turf. Definitely do this for the front, trying to do it yourself will just leave you with a derelict looking garden for a year until you give up and mow it.
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In a way it is so strange, to me, that a wild flower meadow that is "acceptable" the pretty photogenic ones are so hard to get started.
When if you just dig over your "proper" lawn and let nature take its course, you should get wild flowering grasses, buttercups, sorrels (it depends on the soil / area what you get) and wildlife aplenty.
I found many caterpillars hiding under long unmoved wild grass in the new place (I moved them of course under grass) and the back is full of buttercups, midges (the local bat has to eat...), angle shades moths, butterflies, red soldier beetles etc.
Then you can adjust as time goes on, I will remove some sorrel (that stuff spreads!!! but the deep roots also help the soil) and put loosestrife in. But my backgarden lawn definitely isn't "gardening magazine" ready. In that sense it's a very human prettified view of a flowering lawn.
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I know right.
A lot of it comes down to an under appreciation of how incredible grass is as a plant. It's the first thing to grow after fires. It just needs the smallest pile of dust build up in a grout line, or against a wall to grow from. It spreads everywhere.
That's what you're up against.
These new big wild meadows are sown onto ploughed fields and take something like 5yrs to really get going.
I'm glad the bit I've tried in vain to wild is now going to be something completely different.
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A lot of it comes down to an under appreciation of how incredible grass is as a plant. It's the first thing to grow after fires. It just needs the smallest pile of dust build up in a grout line, or against a wall to grow from. It spreads everywhere.
And yet somehow in my garden, I could barely get it to grow for 5 years.
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grow them up a trellis (which is my plan this year)
I did try this once but these trailing cucurbits have a natural propensity to not fight gravity and would much rather roam where ever they like .
I had to keep training and tying them up as they grew and then you have the weight of the fruit to support later on.
Heres some low maintenance squash ...
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Have you considered AstroTurf? /s
You do obviously need light. My folks have had great success on the north side of their lawn using one of those low growing clovery plants. As the light increases north to south the grass outperforms it until its back to being a grass lawn.
Idk how it would stand up to kids. Our formerly prize-winning* lawn is looking a lot less lush nowadays.
*very much down to the previous owners, not us.
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rhowe
Tonts
Light_EDDed
dangeek
apc
ColinTheBald
tmevans
hugo7
JWestland
not4sale
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Does anyone know anything about gardening?
Posted by
@carson
Squash are notoriously promiscuous so if your Crown Prince was grown around other squash plants you may not get a true Crown Prince but some sort of hybrid ... worth a go though.
And dry the seeds first as rhowe says .