What have you learnt this summer?

Primrose

Keep a diary of when your various vegetables start cropping and don't book your annual fortnight's holiday to coincide with this date, otherwise all your efforts will have been in vain and you'll return to find knobbly overgrown beans, wrinkled dried up peas or courgettes which have turned into marrows. If you grow a wide range of vegetables this probably means booking your holidays during the first three months of the year during the "dead" gardening season

EslaDee

amcluesent wrote: »

Don't ever be tempted to plant ivy to cover a fence

I was thinking of doing this, is it not a good idea? My next door neighbour (well her gardener actually) planted a very pretty ivy against the adjoining fence, it is nicer to look at than just a fence and it has certainly stopped the fence panels being blown out. Was thinking of planting something similar against the new fence I have had put up between us and the other next door neighbours.

Primrose

Yes, ivy can look nice and cover a bare fence but it certainly has its downside, especially when you have fences which are made up of loosely woven panels. We are driven absolutely crazy by ivy coming through from our next door neighbour's fence. It has a very pervasive habit unfortunately and ivy hoots continually grow through the cracks and loose panels in the fence, forcing them open to the point where eventually some fence panels had been almost completely destroyed and had to be replaced. The only way to stop this is to put a permanent barrier up against the fence between the wood and the growing plant such as a corrugated iron sheet or a really thick polythene sheet through which the ivy cannot penetrate. This will look unsightly until the ivy has grown sufficiently to cover the fence but if you don't do this, eventually the ivy will find its way through the smallest crack. If you have a closely boarded fence this risk is not so great but ordinary horizontal lapping panels are hopeless against ivy. I spend half my gardening days stripping out ivy from one of our fences which has grown through the panels and is gradually forcing them further and further apart. The very large leaved decorative and variegated ivies seem to be more controllable, but the ordinary 'wild' ivy is a nightmare to erradicate and control.

EslaDee

I can see what you mean, this is a pretty variegated ivy, and when we came here 5 years ago it had just reached the top of the fence, but it has now grown to the bottom of the fence on our side. It does need trimming back every year or else it would cover the drive, but as I mentioned before, it has stopped the fence panels from popping out when it is really breezy. We are near the coast so it is really breezy quite often.

Perhaps I won`t bother planting one on the other fence then, thanks for the info. :-)

Primrose

Esla - the other way of controlling this variegated ivy is to clip large metal grills to your fence by means of large cup-hooks on the top of the supporting fence posts. The ivy will clamber up this but every so often the metal grills can be lifted off the top hooks, pulled back and the back of the bushy ivy pruned back. I saw this done once as the person concerned wanted access to the fence regularly to recoat it with preservative as it was in an exposed position and it did seem to be effective. Ivy certainly does act as a fence protector in certain windy circumstances so don't necessarily rule it out. Just consider options first as to how you can control it if necessary and whether it would be a nuisance to your next door neighbour.

chloecat_2

I learnt that I need to air my greenhouse evryday, to avoid tomato blight and to plant marigolds when I plant my carrots to outwit carrot fly. I also learnt that there is no short cut when it comes to outsmarting slugs, and will be getting nematodes to murder them with when I save up enough money.
Lastly, I learnt that my ornamental quince does love me and fruited for me this week, and tatties are wonderful and will grow anywhere

MunnyBoiler

I have learnt.....

1) To net my cabbages & sprouts, not just around the side of the veg patch to stop the chickens eating them, but also over the top of the plant to stop Mrs Cabbage White using them to raise the next generation.

2) To just give up trying to grow aubergines from seed, after 3 years of trying.

3) Home made compost made that includes home made chicken manure is bloody fantastic and my plants have never grown so well :j

4) The satisfaction of counting not the food miles, but the food feet that some of my home grown food has travelled....

Primrose

MunnyBoiler - I was very disappointed for you about your aubergines because I've had another successful year sowing them from seed, and keeping them outdoors in pots from mid-June onwards and wonder whether it is either their location or something else which has caused the problem. Were you trying to grow them in a greenhouse or outdoors? In pots or in a border? What part of the country do you live in? For the past three or four couple of years I've had really good crops from something which I always thought needed a Mediterranean climate, so it's worth trying to find out what has caused your lack of success in case it can be overcome.

EslaDee

Primrose wrote: »

Esla - the other way of controlling this variegated ivy is to clip large metal grills to your fence by means of large cup-hooks on the top of the supporting fence posts. The ivy will clamber up this but every so often the metal grills can be lifted off the top hooks, pulled back and the back of the bushy ivy pruned back. I saw this done once as the person concerned wanted access to the fence regularly to recoat it with preservative as it was in an exposed position and it did seem to be effective. Ivy certainly does act as a fence protector in certain windy circumstances so don't necessarily rule it out. Just consider options first as to how you can control it if necessary and whether it would be a nuisance to your next door neighbour.

Thanks Primrose

I will certainly give that some thought, and I think I will just grow a Rambling Rector, and honeysuckles up the other fence, and hopefully some sunflowers, sweet peas and runner beans in the summer. :-)

Steel_2

A._Badger wrote: »

One other thing I've learned (now I come to think about it) is to be more careful when buying multipurpose composts.

Over the years, these seem to have got worse and this year appeared to reach a new degree of strangeness with a batch of three bags of J. Arthur Bowers, I bought.

I'd agree with your there. I've bought a few different types this year and I'm not impressed with them. Great lumps of coarse hairy stuff and tough hard lumps that I can't even break up with my fingers.

I've made a pact with myself to be more pro-active at doing my own compost. I did have one big compost bin to turf out for good stuff, but a hedgehog has made her nest in there and had babies. I haven't the heart to kick her out so I've started again.

I've learnt this year:

Always net my Swiss Chard or the chickens will eat the lot.
Ditto strawberries
And beetroot
My chickens loves sharing a tomato with me, but luckily cannot grasp those red globes in the greenhouse are the same thing.
Three large beds are not going to be enough to grow food all year round
Builders can be a lovely source of waste wood and pallets for edging beds if I bat my eyelashes rapidly and ask nicely. And they'll even drop them off in my front garden.
I hate grass.
Scrumping is alive and well and being perpetrated by my next door neighbour's kids on my plum trees. If they hadn't decided to have an impromptu game of footie on my lawn I would never have found out.