The Potting Shed - come on in, the kettle's on!

Dustykitten

Had a lovely 4 hours in the garden today doing a general spring tidy up. Must have grubbed out at least 200 violets, this year I shall conquer them! There are ladybirds everywhere from overwintering so hopefully greenfly will not be a problem this year, I've never seen so many at this time. A few bees were about too.

Got a fair amount of leaf debris out of the wildlife pond. Weeds are germinating fast and I agree the soil is very warm to touch in places. The only seeds I've planted are a few sweet peas. We are away for 2 weeks at Easter time so I don't want to sow most things until after then.

boultdj

Thriftkitten wrote: »

Just an update as I have been away for a week or 2, The birds are now coming to the feeding station, mainly blackbirds and magpies, but I don't care, any bird will do.... Just to sit and watch them enjoying it and knowing they will take some home to their young is satisfying.
I did germinate some aubretia and trailing lobelia which have popped up whilst we were away, they were put in about a month ago, I also did sweet peas, but none of them seem to of worked, not sure what I did wrong as they had the same start as the lobelia and aubretia in a little germination covered tray, hmmm will have to google it or if anyone knows how to start them from seeds, I'd be greatful

Glad the bird's are starting to come and if you'v still got some sweetpea seed's there's still time to plant,just, and a tip given to me was soak the seed's overnight before planting.hth.

Thriftkitten

boultdj wrote: »

Glad the bird's are starting to come and if you'v still got some sweetpea seed's there's still time to plant,just, and a tip given to me was soak the seed's overnight before planting.hth.

Thanks very much will have another go x

Lotus-eater

Dustykitten wrote: »

There are ladybirds everywhere from overwintering so hopefully greenfly will not be a problem this year, I've never seen so many at this time

I found the same today, it's very early though I think, I hope some severe frosts don't kill off the ones awakened early, that could be a disaster.

All my tomatoes and chillies are now sown. i'm looking about for places to start off my french marigolds grown as companion plants. Lettuce need to be sown and the onion sets planted out.

I dug up my dahlia tubers today and potted them up, as they are in the wrong place this year. They almost all survived due to the mild winter, only a couple of very small ones lost.

It's all go now!

Dustykitten

Good news on your dahlias lotus-eater. I left all mine in situ this year where as usually I life them. I was a bit tired of them so thought I'd see if they survive or not - time will tell.

aliasojo

Lotus-eater wrote: »

All my tomatoes and chillies are now sown. i'm looking about for places to start off my french marigolds grown as companion plants. Lettuce need to be sown and the onion sets planted out.

Mine too. In fact I passed the propagator this morning and I have a tiny tiny wee green tomato plant shoot poking it's head through the compost.

Amazing how happy that made me. :rotfl:My lettuce seeds have all germinated too. I'll need to get on with sorting the raised beds out asap.

I bought marigold seeds too but had forgotten about them so will now go and hunt them down. Thanks for the reminder.

tim_n

Good morning, I have to say I'd seen the thread around, but just never got round to reading it until today.

Last year I bought a bungalow with my wife with a 60ft x 30ftish garden. We used to have an allotment plot but it really suffered because it was a measly 10 minutes away and of an evening or morning when you've got to drive to work and coming home dark it just wasn't getting the attention.

We gave it up after we'd moved in and transported anything we could back to the house - mostly fruit bushes, strawberries and rhubarb (and a grape vine which was going to produce fruit for the first year ever which promptly seemed to drop dead, but it's coming back to life now...)

We got two rescue cats - I know everyone likes wildlife here, but imagine having a set of ruthless wildlife experts who bring it to your door step? Yes they're murderous b*****ds but they're good at keeping the mice population down, something we've suffered from before - they ate the entirety of my heritage seed collection last year The only downside is I get a lot of slow worms in and they do tend to drop their tails

We've build four huge raised beds, installed what will hopefully be a sustainable level of water collection so we don't resort to mains water at any point (we're brimming with water - about 4,000litres at the moment, I'm actually having to drain it into the household drain because the garden is so wet I can't dump it anywhere. I end up walking and coming back in 2" taller through the clay.

We've planted a range of stuff over the last couple of weeks, lots of salad plants and chilies. It'll join the fruit bushes and trees we've planted last year and hopefully I'll see crops this year.

We've brought the allotment shed with us, one of my tasks over the next few weeks is to convert it into a chicken shed. I'm quartering up the space and raising the chickens up so they get the back top quarter of a 6x4 shed, the feed can go underneath and a few choice garden implements on the walls.

I do blog about it (you can see the link in my profile - but I won't sully the forum with it here) and happy to hear from other bloggers - but preferably people who don't actually use 'blogger' because it's blocked to me! (boo!)

Haven't started the tomatoes yet...

TallGirl

I have been on MSE for years normally hang out on the Mortgage Free Board but have lately been reading here and got a lot of good advice so I thought I would join in.

My garden is a standard small garden which has heavy clay soil with lots of rubble we still find eventhough we have lived here since the house was built 16 years ago. Because of this I have been growing in bags and raised beds but now we are going to have a larger patio, a new deck (bottom of the garden where the sun stays for longer) and I am also getting a new 2m x 9m bed dug out. Its only being dug down to 1ft so will have to do a bit more work but I am digging in lots of manure and have a load of compost from the old raised bed to get in too.

Going to have fruit trees, fruit bushes and veg. Cannot wait to get started the fence is being replaced on Saturday and then hopefully within a week it will be all done. Not started any seeds yet but just bought Nemaslug as I am sick of them and they eat everything.

I envy Tim my waterbutt is empty the hose had come off the drainpipe but we are not on a meter. I do need some for my new blueberry's though.

So hello from me sorry for the long post.

aliasojo

tim_n wrote: »

I do blog about it (you can see the link in my profile - but I won't sully the forum with it here) and happy to hear from other bloggers - but preferably people who don't actually use 'blogger' because it's blocked to me! (boo!)

Hi Tim, I had a wee look at your page and saw you have some of those hard plastic cloches.

I was toying with buying them but thought I'd ask if you were happy enough with them. Did you use any other type of cloche first? Do you feel these are better? Worth the money?

duchy

I've hung around but not really jumped in so here goes.

I'm currently reclaiming my garden (long boring story about neighbours from hell-won't bore you) after 2 years of neglect.

I've cleared most of the brambles now (100 foot garden) and need to do some serious fence repairs so once all that is done time will have marched on so I'm thinking of growing in pots this year -and growbags rather than ending up planting too late by the time I've got the beds sorted.

I keep wandering past our local lotties for inspiration but everyone looks so capable and organized -I'm a bit daunted by it all. Hence pots-and sort out the very sad lawn. Maybe if I started a blog with lots of photos-I'd 1 Shame myself into keeping going and 2 Have a record of my progress for when I get disheartened.

Time to dig out the camera I think and log into blogspot -Diary of a Hopeless and Broke Gardener sounds a bit grim-I need something snappier