Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Trugs are great but surprisingly hard to ride with. I’m sure if my partner wasn’t so short it’d tuck under the saddle better but the curved underside makes it tricky to stabilise.
We were given ours for Xmas last year.
Luckily the allotment isn’t a long ride as the handle ends up being stuck betwixt her cheeks 😅

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This isn't strictly gardening but it is bike and plant related. A colleague arranged for one of these to be put around the bike storage on their road. Apparently it involved quite a few letters to their local council, to get approval.

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Had a nice day at Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival with my mum. I expected it to be a bit more show garden and a bit less sales stalls.

Saw some cool stuff though, and liked the way the stands gave you more of a feel of what can be achieved than a garden centre.

Watched Joe Swift ghve a talk on garden design over lunch which was interesting.

How did the chair thing pan out?

Only used once while having a coffee as seats weren't too hard to get.

But yeah it worked pretty well. Happy with the purchase. Still more of a thing to pack in the car that carry.

Shooting sticks were well represented.

Nice glad it wasn’t unsuccessful.

Does anyone grow their own basil from seed? If so what's your success rate like and how do you grow it?

I seem to be continuely failing. I asked my mum, but she said she cba and just buys pots and then splits it up.

I plant basil seeds in the base of our tomatoes and they have a pretty good hit rate. They take a little while to germinate but once they get going, they’re off. TBH buying a super market pot and splitting into three or four is a good method too - I have a metal planter tray that sits in the utility with basil like this all year round on a demolish / replant cycle.

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Sounds like maybe I should start them inside. And from what you've said I should possibly be looking at richer soil too. I always thought they needed poor soil.

Tbh I'm disappointed overall with my herb hit rate this year. In particular beefsteak / shiso red which my eldest was super excited by and would have looked great in my new bed.

this is such a good idea, yoink

Yeah, I've never had any luck direct sowing, same with coriander.

Stuff which has grown well in our seed bed this year is lettuce (few different types), mizuni, rocket & parsley. We keep the woody herbs permanently in large pots - sage, rosemary, mint, oregano and thyme.

@jackbepablo I think I read somewhere it helps keep the pests down because of the scent, either way it's a win.

Nice, definitely gonna get on that, we have a lot of tom plants this year. though theyre only just flowering, sigh.

Our seed bed/salad planter has been pretty decent though, similar story to yours. Got chard and cavolo nero in there for baby leaves as well, though they're not delivering as well as the rocket which is totally rampant. Nasturtiums originally for ground cover whiles seeds germinated and now taking over, as per.

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garden is obv shit, but i have ambitious plans that really start kicking in on friday when the new fence panels show up

lovely!

Idk if it's your think or if you have a B&M accessible, but our B&M has these for a tenner.

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I was stupid and didn’t get enough ‘before’ photos of the front when we moved in. So here’s GMaps followed by the progress shots.

First it was get the conifer etc down, and chip it, then a big pause for a month or so until we got the contractors back.

Lots of green was growing on the wasteland through all the gravel. Weeds galore. So much gravel.

They dug out as many as possible and sorted the rest with a stump-grinder.

They did the stumps out front, down side of the house, and the bigger stumps along the sides in the back garden.

Then today we raked it over a bit, and tried to make sense of the area.

Torrential rain paused play. Then some crazy-paving rubble from someone nearby to get the beginnings of the wall. This will be no more than a couple of feet high. The first bit laid dry without cement to get a visual idea until we have more rubble.

Then, not to let the momentum die. B&Q had rolls of turf for £3 each. Bargain. Cheaper than getting topsoil and grass seed by a long way.

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The little wall begins. Plus turf.

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It was insane just how deep-rooted the established overgrown front and side had been.

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Impressive stuff.

Fucking snails/slugs.

Got around to planting up the spare salvias from that bundle deal and the two smallest (and quite interesting) ones have been eaten up. I've now put a cover tape covered pot over them with some copper mesh for good measure.

Stupid of me for not growing them up bigger in pots first. But I wanted to tidy up a seating area which had a sort of ugly wire stand thingy.

Forgot to take a before pic, but if you imagine chipped paint and a tonne of random shit that needed to go to the dump that's pretty much it.

Still needs a bit of finessing(sp?), but getting back to where it should be.

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Yes slugs and snails really bad this year and mice but my wife says that is my fault for feeding the birds.
I have tried everything with snails and slugs, nematoades beer traps, picking them off at midnight with touch in hand but there is just too many of them.

I had a few pots of stuff I’d salvaged from the molluscunts that managed to bounce back, planted them back out, oh it’s torrential rain again and they’ve been eaten. Fuuuuuu

I've mainly gone all in with the pellets and evening manual dispatch. Generally I put them in the compost, but quite a few evenings have been more ✂️✂️✂️ than 🪣

Happy page 531 gardeners

Slugs and snails have been making light work of everything so far.