Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Charles Dowding says he chucks bindweed on the compost.
And also believes in man-made clouds and no man-made climate change

I like Charles Dowding but he does this thing that really grinds my gears.

Whenever he talks he inserts a little laugh here and there.

I mean, cloud seeding is a thing.

You need a decent hotbin to compost bindweed, which I suspect he does, or let it die and dry out.

Absolutely fucking livid. I bought two ligularia przewalskii for my bog garden. Both instantly eaten as soon as the leaves emerged.

Over the past months I've brought one of them back through diligent inspection, collection, pellets, copper tapped plant pot.

Checked on it this morning and it's been ravaged.

To make it worse I listened to a give slugs a chance peice on R4 this morning. Interesting like much of life it's only a few fuckers (5 iirc) that ruin it for the rest of them (40 species)

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Obvs could have also been a small mamal.

Or a wild mamil

We’ve lost countless salvias, cat mint and they’ve even started on our hydrangeas.

Our lawn was more slugs than lawn the other day.

It's always infuriating, but when it's particular plants that you really want - rather than say lettuce that you can grow again quickly.

These are meant to grow up to 2m so quite a big visual loss of what I'd planned.

Probably got close to 1000 cinnabar moth caterpillars in the garden atm, we leave them the ragwort plus it's a pretty flower. The dry spell must have been good for crickets as walking across the garden feels like roleplaying Godzilla, with the screaming crowds fleeing every step 🤣

Apparently I mean grasshoppers. I got them mixed up.

I'm seeing a lot of crickets as well. Probably seen a couple in my life vs a couple in the last month.

Very hard to get off! Had one stuck to my tshirt the other day and another on a bit of wood I was trying to get in the green waste bin. Disproportionately hard to relocate them.

I pruned my Deutzia the other evening. A bad pruning, followed by sporadic pruning over the years have left it looking a bit fucked up.

Hoping that by getting on it this year and next I can sort it out, even though I've left it quite late. Also quite hard to restrain myself to only removing ⅓.

I definitely need to start putting certain events like this and rhubarb in my diary.

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You leave ragwort in? Around here, there's huge campaigns to pull it out and get rid of it as it can cause liver failure in grazing animals.

I'm so appreciative of this and the allotment thread. Makes me feel ok about losing two entire batches of peas and broccoli to the slugs, and has prompted me to go and pull out some bindweed in a hedge.
Obviously bindweed is the devil's work, but I will say this:
It gives me hope that the plants will reclaim all the concrete etc very quickly, post-humanity
And it is extremely satisfying to pull out of a silver birch and wisteria

The cinnabar moths absolutely decimate the plant to bare stem, and I'm not neighbouring any pasture.

Sounds like your food chain is more efficient than ours ;)

plants will reclaim all the concrete etc very quickly, post-humanity

detroit 👋

Fake news

https://www.ragwortfacts.com/

It gives me hope that the plants will reclaim all the concrete etc very quickly, post-humanity

The front of our house where we cut the overly large conifer/etc was gravel and stone and stumps. Within a month it was a lush green mass of weeds. None of those weeds were present when the area was shadowed and sucked dry by the hedges.

Considering the weeds popping up along the wall in the garden, I think nature will do one on us and I welcome it (once I’m composting the earth with my body).

In other news. Two of the spindly flowerless roses I cut to a bare 6” twig in the back garden 3 months ago have rewarded us these. Plus this little red boi I have sorely missed.

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How would I work out what the size of the smallest container I could move my bay tree into is?

(not fussed if it is tall, just after the narrowest dimension)

Trunk circumference 35cm
Height (inc pot) 160cm
Width 120cm (could trim to 90cm)

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Fake-ish news I guess. I live opposite a pasture used for hay and have been asked by the farmer to keep an eye out for it, so for the sake of neighbourly relations I'll keep pulling it out.

Oh fair enough. I look silly now.

We've had some too. Camouflage surprisingly well on strawberries.

Pansies still in pots. Need to build a planter in-situ.

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That’s what I did with some leftover wood from our loft rafters

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We are viewing a house today which is on the lane where Charles Dowding lives.

He is local in Allhampton/Ditcheat