Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Sun sail shades. Talk to me.

Is there anything I need to know or look out for?

I have 2 brick walls I can fix it to. The long side would have to stretch around 7m.

Cheers

1 Attachment

Think about the angle of the sun at the time you'll want most to use it and where you want the shade to be.

You may need to put the sail in quite a different location to that which you think.

Cheers.

I've sort of done this just now by holding up my parasol - which tried to escape down the garden.

It made me quickly realised that a 3 side/triangle/right angle probably won't work. Which is a shame as aesthetically I was hoping for a triangle. Plus it means buying a pole.

Thinking a wooden pole would be better looking, cheaper and more easily fixable/modifiable. Planning on fixing it to this raised planter.

2 Attachments

I know everyones gonna be all, postcrete this and hole-digger that, but I want it up by Saturday and have capacity to drill holes and screw things, but not to go and buy cement and fuck about with that nonsense.

So my plan is a small hole and some form of bracketry.

Lots of leverage there, I predict it’ll detach the bricks. I’ve used those metal post socket things in the past but they are very difficult to fit to keep the post plumb. Perhaps as a short term fix a brolly stand filled with sand/water?

Buy a cantilever parasol and base? We got one off Facebook marketplace (pre-heatwave) and it's pretty versatile.

We shall see I guess.

Those sandbag things look fucking brilliant. Saved.

Would covering over the root area of a 5m Acer tree with a weed membrane thing and gravel kill it?

Technically maybe only half of the roots as the tree sits right next to a wall. We were going to make a gravel walkway between raised beds and thought it’d look nice going flush to the tree but obviously don’t want to kill it. And don’t know anything about gardening.

1 Attachment

Mine grows perfectly happily directly next to a concrete patio.

Bolt down post shoe

👍

I read this about cutting slugs in half and thought I’d try it just now… Don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t all the guts spilling out from either half 🤮

Yeah it's a bit shit, but you've just got to roll with it.

The other option is to get a tub and collect them all up and pop them in the green waste bin.

I just lob them over the back fence

+1
“Lob” is such a great word .
I can imagine it flying slomo through the night air in a perfect arc

I heard (on GQT) that slugs and snails can track back over a certain distance, can't remember how far now, so lob them far. Though I can't imagine having much sense of where I'd come from if I was thrown a couple hundred times my body length.

I went through a phase last year of collecting as many as I could find each morning and lobbing them straight into the hotbin.
I've gone for the more Zen approach this year of not removing any and don't think the garden is any the worse for it.

They did an experiment on some TV show where they painted the shells of snails from different corners of the garden and overnight put them some distance away (I can't remember what) but the next day they were all back to their relevant corners.

Oh really, that's interesting. I thought dedicatedly killing/binning them of an evening made a noticeable difference but it's just too much effort to maintain.

About 3 weeks ago I put around 20 plus slugs in a jar with a clamp top. 2 weeks later they’d turned into a rancid juice that made me gag when I emptied it

I had a major war on slugs a few years ago.

The fastest (non-choppy and non-chemical) way I found to dispatch them is water with a squirt of washing up liquid in it. Plain water is no good, they seem to be unaffected and slowly climb out again. Beer traps sort-of-work but you get an unspeakable slug/beer soup, and it also attracts more because they eat their dead.

Washing up liquid water takes them out in a few seconds. It's still gross because they sort of bloat and leak, but at least it's over quickly and you can dispose of the hideous mess.

Ime what you want to do is dedicate a week to it. Go out every evening before bed with a head torch and a container.

Collect them all up and dispose of however you wish. I think the green waste bin is the most humane. And chopping all of them up is a bit messy and hard with the little ones.

By the end of the week you'll notice there are few left. After that you can just do an evening a week with sharp

How do you get them to go in to the soapy water?

You can buy nematodes that kill slugs, I've never tried this.

All the groundbeetles here eat slugs too, perhaps stimulating ground beetles also helps with control?

There's plenty for them to munch on in the railway line over the fence.

"Call me when you've finished the Russian vine"