Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Love the poppies on this thread..

Our poppies have been and gone I think

Helped out a neighbour recently, she wanted rid of a few large pots. I have planted pear tree, severely cut back and a gooseberry bush in my garden this week. I also rescued a wisteria and an apple tree both pot bound for planting out later this year. My fear about wisteria are its roots if it goes in the ground next to neighbours extension, so it'll stay in its pot for the time being. i'd love to build a pergola against the house for the wisteria, but that needs to wait until the first floor extension is up..

in the meantime and during my furlough, I am creating a herbaceous border here with a riot of bright hot colours including canna tropicana, crocosmia lucifer, castor oil plants, foxtail lilies, bishop of llandaff dahlias and ornamental grass of bronze, pink and green blades called pennisetum setaceum ‘fireworks’. The raised area at the rear of my garden will be levelled redundant flagpole/post coming out made ready for weed sheeting, gravel a few paving slabs across the back for compost bin / incinerator, the gabion wall in front of that.

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Has anyone tried sowing wildflowers into their lawn? My lawn is a bit of a mess after a winter of wet and neglect and a dry spring. Despite much overseeding and patching up it's still pretty thin and patchy. Decided I'm not a fan of golf club lawns anyway and to give some mini-meadow action a try. Hoping the wild flower seed I ordered turns up while we're enjoying the rain so I can get it it sowed. Anyone else tried this?

Anyone else tried this?

Yes. To no effect. So curious too.

At the end of our garden where I try and leave the grass long. I sewed them onto cut grass. The grass grew. Nothing else did.

I'm wondering if making "bombs" a la guerilla gardening would work better.

I have marauding kids so my lawn is a) fucked and b) frequently trampled, so I tried adding wildflower seeds to the less traffic-heavy areas. The area where I just chucked the seed down nothing grew. I tried another bald patch where I put the seed down and followed up with a light covering of compost, and that area now has a bunch of little flowers on the go. If I was to do it again I think I would give the lawn a good mow first (as allergic as I am to mowing, both literally and metaphorically), before seeding and composting.

I think the advise is to take it back to soil when planting wildflowers, otherwise they'll never be able to compete with established grass.

I've attempted a mini-meadow several times outside my shed, and it never worked until last year

You need to get the grass roots out to give the wildflowers a chance to establish, so be prepared to lift up some chunks of turf

Process pictured below, where I've cut the grass down to stubble, and then removed the grass roots in a semi-circular strip. Then churned the earth over before sowing the seeds

The first year I got lots of small poppies, and this year the daisies and cow parsley are everywhere

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very nice. Yeah maybe a few dedicated meadow areas is a better idea that trying to create a whole lawn of it.

The whole of our garden is gravelled over so I bought a wildflower seed mat. I moved an area of gravel, laid the mat down and covered with soil. It has only just started to sprout but hopefully it'll look good eventually.

I think it's Bob Flowerdew on GQT who often suggests a few techniques for making non-lawns into lawns.

A couple that have stayed with me:

• keep the edges / boarders neat and sharp
  
• have access routes - usually round the edge
  
• "step" those paths so you get a graduated more natural look
  

Are you meant to plant yellow rattle into the grass as well as it out-competes the grass allowing the wild flowers to grow?

Client: Can you repair my decking and steps?

Me: No.

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Really no, but I can rebuild it from scratch....

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Back on the wild flowers /meadow chat.

What's the best time of year to sew them? Just wondering if it's too late?

bit of filler and a new coat of wood stain, surely?

i had the same response yesterday when i asked someone to re-felt my shed roof. was fully justified.

Yellow Rattle helps in the establishment of wildflower meadows as it semi-parasitic upon the roots of vigorous grasses;
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/yellow-rattle

Your best best is probably white clover where there's heavy footfall, but you'll want to mow the flowers so the kids aren't walking over bees all the time, will improve the spread as well and as a legume it will fix nitrogen from the air and improve the soil quality. Throwing a few wildflowers in the borders will probably work, but otherwise they'll just get trampled/picked.

Not sure about wildflowers but if you leave the grass to grow for 4-5 weeks all these different flower suddenly start to pop up (most considered weeds, but we got some tiny violets and pea like flowers too)

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F****** deer ate three of my tomato plants.

Couldn’t resist any longer.

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Productive day, hopefully build the shed tomorrow.

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Them shed base mesh things any good? Cleaner at work was bigging them up.