Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Bulbs bought at Hampton Court last year, planted in the autumn, not sure when exactly - September or October I guess. They were from "The garlic farm". A mix of varieties but "early purple" has done well. We've got 5 elephant garlic as well. One's in the picture, the other 4 are in the ground still so I'm hoping they keep growing bigger.

Onions went in around the same time as sets (little bulbs). I think they're some Japanese variety. We tried the year before and the results were disastrous - garlic want great either.

I think the onions and some of the garlic could've stayed in longer but the garlic was looking a bit iffy after all the rain recently and I want the space for tomatoes and aubergines anyway. We've still got a few onions in the ground.

I planted some sets in late Jan and they seem to be doing okay; will probably lift in another week or two

:hand:

Inspired by a socially distanced visit to our best friends garden which is so nice they actually open it for garden societies to visit we decided to increase the size of our main border via the simple expedient of removing the circa 30 year old path.
Man those 610 x 610 old school slabs with the mortar still stuck to the bottom are heavy. Probably shouldn't have chosen the hottest week of the year to do this.
Does anyone near Epsom want some hardcore?
Can't upload multiple pics from this phone so here it is in many posts.
The original path

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Further up the garden, broken slabs

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Lifting the slabs up was relatively straightforward

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But they were too heavy to lift into the barrow without doing myself an injury so I used a trolley to move them off the lawn

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Anyone for pizza?

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A quick rake over and it looks like the path was never there.
The wife is pleased as she now has loads more space to plant more perennials

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Does anyone near Epsom want some hardcore?

Gumtree is good for shifting slabs/hardcore etc.

cheers, will post there.

I did it over the course of a week with a fork - 10 minutes every time I went into the garden.

Boring work though.

Positive results or a waste of time?

It was part of a general overhaul of the lawn, including overseeding & planting clover.

I'd like to think it was worth the effort.

Bindweed, how do I get rid of it?

Nuke from orbit.

Via a battle of wills. It will keep coming back until you weaken it enough that it’ll die. This means repeatedly cutting it back to the ground as frequently as you can.

Weedkiller might help, but you run the risk of killing other plants if you do.

mine comes back every year and no matter how much i dig it out, returns. I think it grows from tiny chunks.

It is quite easy to spot and deal with though, at least.

One thing you might do is put canes down for it to twirl up, then when its twirled up nicely, you can more easily kill it with horrible chemicals .

But if you notice it on the reg, just pull it out when you spot it. If it's enough to stop it from claiming the entire garden...then hey, that's a success.

Roundup Bindweed gel. Used every day. For months.

+1 to the battle of wills. There's tons of the stuff round here. The bits in my garden, I pull as much as I can when I see it. Been doing this for the last few years and actually not seen any this year when it's clearly still affecting all the neighbours.

I also noticed in hindsight, after getting the knotweed treated, that it too can be weakened over time. There was a small clump that I did not know was JKW at the time so was just pulling it. That came back smaller and smaller over the next couple of years and when I did get the proper people in to treat it, that clump died and disappeared nearly overnight. Now going on two years with no re-growth anywhere. The treatment did kill everything within about a foot radius, but that other stuff has grown back. So you could use chemicals to knock out the bind weed too if you didn't mind a dead patch for a while.

First attempt at sunflowers. Not a great return on the investment as I haven’t ended up with an endless flow of sunflowers a la France. But these two look great and I’ll definitely be giving it another go next year.

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No flowers on ours yet, but they are getting to be quite tall

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As others have said, pull on sight.

Chemicals should be last resort.

Dig out the roots when you find it. If you can’t get at the roots then get as much as you can. Look under slabs etc. It wonders around on the surface under them.
Oh the satisfaction of finding a root motherload. Pretty sure I dug 30 foot of root out earlier in the spring. And it’s still coming back.
To make my life easier I’ve dug out 2 bamboo balls earlier this week for a new veg patch. Apparently it can take up to 3 years to get rid of it completely. Oh joy.
This is new veg patch though. It now has boards around it, a netting frame nearly complete and a net on the way.
Other than onions what can I plant so late?

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I know I've mentioned it before but these SunBelievable's Brown Eyed Girl sunflowers have been really excellent and I'll definately be buying again. Most of my other fairly expensive mix pack failed to germinate, including some pretty cool redy orange ones, which is a real shame.

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