Does anyone know anything about gardening?

If you know you're not going to run into any rock or large stones driving them in, and have a way of driving them in (sacrificial post and sledgehammer, or borrow/rent a post driver - a post level on your sacrificial post as you drive them in will help give you a more plumb post - you probably won't need a sacrificial post if you are buying long and cutting down, but driving in a post above your head is difficult), then have at it. If you have rocky ground, you'll end up digging anyway, in which case you'll find it hard to pack the earth back in around those firmly enough for them to last and will need to go with post crete any way. If you do end up digging, I used a manual auger and a post hole digger (the big tweezer like scoop things) and it was much easier than I feared. A 36" crowbar helped to loosen any rocks. Some wood preserver on at least the sunken/buried part (especially around ground level) will go a long way. Bonus points for post savers too.

Looks like some sort of mildew thing, let me see if I can find the spray that cleared it up on my japonica.

Thank you very much!

This was it

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You've reminded me to do my roses at the front.

Unfortunately my bay doesn't seem to have made it. If anyone wants to pick up a massive plastic pot with holes in it from Borehamwood. Let me know.

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Amazing - thank you!

clearly has made it...

Do you think?

I'll grab some more photos - maybe these give a better indication. But essentially all new growth quickly starts to turn brown, dries and dies. Larger branches continue to die, albeit with some shoots sporadically emerging.

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hmm, not sure what's causing the leaves to go brown like that. they are very hardy though, i'd say it has every chance of surviving.

How old is the brown? Ours looked like that from frost damage last winter, but the regrowth is fine.

post hole digger (the big tweezer like scoop things)

One of these and some postcrete worked a treat for me. 8' concrete posts with 2' underground. I couldn't imagine digging a sensible hole with a regular spade

Climbing roses.... I've planted one near a fence, and I'm planning to run three or four rows of screw-in eyelets so that I can train three or four horizontal branches of roses along. My question is this; what do I do with extra branches? Trim them down to the base, and stop new ones coming? Only alternative seems to be training them all into three or four bunched rows, or just letting extra branches do their own thing messily.

If it's a climber rather than a rambler, I think you take it down to just the horizontals you want when you prune in autumn/spring.

Maybe a month.

It definitely got frost damage the winter before last. But now it seems to perpetually occur.

I have quite a few other jobs still to do, so it's low on the list, but I think it has to go. We were thinking we could repot it and put it on the patio, but it won't really fit anywhere, it's too big for the alley garden and the no space in the front either. I was hoping to pass it on rather than binning.

I’ve been fighting what I thought was a battle against slugs and snails. Just now I’ve seen a squirrel eating my Lupins like a fucking salad!

https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/1bgf2qd/squirrels_destroyed_my_lupine_in_a_week/

We have a fox that has decided that the raised beds with straw mulch are actually the ideal custom fox bed. But it is at least deterring the squirrels which had previously munched a lot of the early brassicas in the beds

Any idea what this is? It’s spring up in my garden and I’ve no idea where it’s come from.

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Looks like a currant

Little pricks. I can’t believe it

Recently noticed this hole in the patio. Seems quite big, can get a whole key into it quite easily. What’s the best way to fix? Fill with builders sand? Other?

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I'd probably use kiln dried sand after there have been a couple of dry days. It'll pour in almost like water.

I'll defer to Colin's expertise.

My folks mulberry tree didn't grow any shoots last year because squirrels ate them all.

Even at the end of summer it looked liked it had just been pruned.

I took a photo yesterday after my last cut before No Mow May and wondered what the before and after (or at least, before and current) now looks like.

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Yep, thanks kiln dried looks like a better bet… you think wait for two dry days though. Not sure I’ve got the patience!