The Scottish Gardeners thread

rsj

Hello everyone from wet and windy Renfrewshire!
Thought Id join in on the thread if you dont mind. Its a horrible day today, been looking out at my poor garden all morning, my plastic greenhouses are looking sickly after the awful battering they took in the storms. Managed to salvage most of the plants inside tho, need to start saving seriously for a sturdier greenhouse. Apart from the wind setback the tomatoes, peppers, baby cucumbers and aubergines have been doing great. The peas would be really heavy with pods if the wee one wasnt eating them faster than they can grow. Apples trees are heavy with fruit, cant wait till they are ripe and the fruit bushes will soon be getting picked for jam.
The slugs have been terrible tho, anyone know where I can get a friendly hedgehog? lol

skelly01

Borrow my hens they love slugs, go mental for them!!! In fact go mental for most things if you let them!!!!

rsj

skelly01,
I would absolutely love a couple of hens, I am so jealous, bet the eggs are amazing.I live in a mid terrace, dont think my neighbours would appreciate it unfortunately

orchidpepper

Hi Guys,

I'm in West Dumbartonshire and wondered if my plant problems might be regional.... anyone fancy a comparison?

My potatoes, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, herbs and courgettes are looking good so far but

My radishes which are netted are being eaten
onions from seed are puny
cauliflowers are all leaves
brussel sprouts have skeleton leaves due to greedy pigeons
french beans have made little progress since planting out
leeks.... too soon to tell

Grebe

Hello peeps, nice to read that every ones gardens are doing so well.
Mine has been neglected for the past couple of weeks, the only gardening I have done is deadheading the flowers in my mums garden, my 75 year old mum fell down a flight of stairs and has broken a bone in her neck, so all thoughts of the garden went out of the window. Luckily the break is stable so she is in a collar and was flat on her back until today when she was able to sit up:j So feeling a bit more calm I went out into the garden to survey what has happened over the past couple of weeks.
The strong winds over the past couple of days has managed to rip off a huge branch on the the buddleia and break some of the stems on the potatoes.
The strawberries have given me a fair old crop today, lovely big red fruits and there will be more to come, there are a few runners so I will be potting them up for next year.
Equally the red currants were ready to harvest, the netting I put over them really did the trick on keeping the birds off so all I have to do now is prune it back to ensure lots of growth for next years cropping.
The carrots are looking good but I am going to leave them for another couple of weeks.
I have a handfull of blueberries on the wee tiny blueberry bush I planted a few months ago, I don't know how long they take to ripen so I will keep an eye on them.
There are still no flower buds on the fuschia bushes, I haven't the foggiest idea what's going on there.
Everything else seems to have survived being ignored, except the grass, but it's way too damp to cut so if all keeps going well with mum I might get the chance to get the lawnmower out.
It's typical Glasgow fair weather, chilly wind, wet one minute sunny the next.
Hope all is well with everyone.
XX Grebe

song_of_calliope

I just found this great thread and thought I'd add my 2p as a newbie gardener up in the very north of Scotland in Caithness.

This is my first year really giving gardening a go and it hasn't been great so far (although I won't give up!).

I have a small 4-shelf greenhouse thingy that I filled with tomatoes but stupidly fed them every day until I realised I should only be feeding one a week and then only when I got flowers on the plants! So now I have loads of beautiful and luscious tomato leaves but no tomatoes and only a very few flowers that have so far dropped off without setting. I've stopped feeding now so perhaps it's not too late for them, we'll see.

On the other hand my cucumbers are growing like mad, also in the greenhouse, and a couple of them are almost big enough to harvest now.

I took my aubergine out of the greenhouse, put some straw around the base of it and brought it into the house as all the flowers had been dropping off without setting. Now it sits on the windowsill and goes outside on the rare sunny day so fingers crossed I may get some aubergines off it before the season ends.

The courgettes in the garden outside are doing ok except the slugs took a huge chunk out of my largest one the other day. There are a couple more that should be ready in about a week.

The calabrese is the only thing that's doing extremely well, I have loads and have harvested some already and it tastes nice, not at all bitter.

The radishes on the other hand have been almost entirely eaten by slugs. The carrots died but the potatoes are doing well and should be ready to dig up soon.

The hot peppers have sprouted from seed now after several months of doing absolutely nothing but they aren't growing very quickly at all and only have a couple of leaves on each of them.

The strawberries have had a few stunted white fruit on them for ages now that don't seem to be doing anything. And the blueberry which I planted a few months ago is still alive although there is not a berry to be seen on it.

So that all sounds terrible after typing it all out like that, but I have to say I'm still having fun and learning a lot so hopefully next year will be much better.

mardatha

I think gardening in Scotland is a bit of an oxymoron. I am sick to the back teeth of this rubbish weather !!!

Craftyscholar

Morning all
Think I need to join this thread
I'm aiming to start growing more of my own veg etc. although this year is a bit of an experiment.
Yesterday I was tempted by a strawberry hanging basket in B&Q 20% sale (I think I must have missed another sign as it was even cheaper than I expected:T)
Anyway hanging won't work - too windy so I will need to put it in other pots - looks as if I have some runners as well!

However - finally- the point of this post.

I have a resident wood pigeon - so I will need a cheap way of protecting any fruit I may get.
Any suggestions?

mardatha

I tried net curtains, but it looked mad and tore to ribbons in the wind..

orchidpepper

I ended up building a cage and covering it with netting for my strawberries and most of my brassicas. Woodies are CRAZY for my sprouts! I hope i get to taste them too.

I chased them out my garden the other day and they are seriously huge, best fed in the area lol