Does anyone know anything about gardening?

ha!

strong start for the bog garden.

The "gorilla garden" as my sister called it's finished:

3 Attachments

i didn't take all the plants out, I messed up the goddamn photo order.

Middle photo was 3 weeks ago so you can see how that purple plant in front of the concrete pillar on the left has shot up.

Love that!

^^ definitely brightened this up!

Does anyone know what size diameter rebar I need to make sturdy sunflower stakes and those Monty Don floppy flower holder things?

Will 10mm be enough?

That’s wicked.
Barely anything I planted in autumn has flowered yet, I’m really hoping this week’s weather will make it all go

Too much. Think we used 8mm.

Maybe we should do sunflowers again this year. I just used some bamboo stakes for these. The plants seemed pretty sturdy once they got going.

Cheers

They don't stake the sunflowers when they're growing in a field, just sayin'. We use Bamboo for ours when they're getting started.
We had a Titan sunflower which was about 8' tall in the front garden with a main seed head the size of a 650c wheel and a bunch of other flowerheads. People kept stopping to take photos with it.
They can be vulnerable to slugs and snails early on, so be sure to grow quite a few.

Right but I'm not growing them in a field where they'll be surrounded by other supportive sunflowers providing solidarity against the winds of life 😘

My garden can be a bit of a wind tunnel and I'd like to grow some in a bed in front of the patio with my Argentinian verbena. Late summer these massive gusts appear from nowhere which have previously snapped established sunflowers.

But also, yeah fuck slugs! I've often grown them in cut down pvc tubing wrapped in copper wire.

I've mentioned the NGS before, but it's getting towards the time of year there are a lot open.

This one is a stunner up near Welwyn Garden City. 6 acres of posh.
https://ngs.org.uk/gardens/the-manor-house-ayot-st-lawrence-al6/
Massive cake tent and pop-up garden centre

There are some group openings coming up too

Sun 2 June - De Beauvoir
Sat 8 June - Spitalfields (been, it's great)
Sun 9 June - London Fields (been, it's great) and Dulwich

NGS

What is this?

National gardening society?
No grow sisterhood?
Neighbourhood garden scheme?

NGS

National Garden Scheme. https://ngs.org.uk

Is it time to plant sunflowers? I always forget

Mine are just coming up inside in starter/yoghurt pots.

I better get some started

Went to the Horniman gardens at the weekend, excited to see it develop over the summer again.

Yes. Ours are 6" tall already!

I want to put up a small, self-made slotted fence above a low wall (roofing battens screwed onto posts. My neighbour has done it and it looks excellent and is mega cheap). I don't want to mess about with postcrete or concrete, are the fence spikes too good to be true?
https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Bolt-System-750mm-Support-Spike-for-Posts---75-x-75mm/p/218587

Are the posts going to be attached to the wall too? If so, I think you'd get away with those.

As a slotted fence allows more wind through, it shouldn't be as flimsy as full panels, so personally I think you'd be fine.

I'd like something like this on the decking as a small pond. Is there anywhere I should be looking for a cheaper/better alternative?

https://mcveighparker.com/livestock-water-trough

I had one for a few years in my old house. Be aware it will freeze solid in winter. I also had pump problems at times (needed for filtration ) and ended up with empty tanks. Sit your pump on bricks so you can't completely drain it down when there are issues

I have four clematis all planted a couple of months ago in a raised bed. All the leaves now look like this - any idea what is causing it? Anything I can do to fix it? Thank you!

1 Attachment