The Scottish Gardeners thread

elantan

jinx my lavender is doing good even managed to survive the snow ... i have some spare even if you need any let me know ...i'm a newbie to the gardening world myself also so we can all learn together


was hoping today to have planted some lettuce etc but with the aphids i found everything got put on hold ... and time is marching on and i am panicking i dont get things done now lol


was in the polytunnel today and did a wee inspection ... i found aphids ...now i am trying to do this as organically as i can so no chemicals unless it gets really bad ... so what i did was squish them all (well the ones i could find) and will be on aphid watch every day from now on ... can anyone tell me did i do right? is there anything else i can do?

elantan

jenfeet ... please let me see the pics of the polytunnel when you get a wee min ... i am trying to have 6 raised beds in mine not sure if it will work or not though .. how did you lay everything out? i'm just not sure if i am doing it all right tbh

Grebe

You could try garlic spray elantan, there are recipes all over the net for it and it is supposed to be pretty good at killing the wee gits as well as warding them off.

elantan

oh never heard of that will look it up thanks grebe

delerium

Is the weather that different up the road a bit.....I had a lovely bh a little on the cool side but dry got loads done and really knackered my back yet again.....

Managed to get the garlic, peas and other remnants planted as well as transplant the alpine strawberries into a pot.

Story about raspberries I had a pretty dead looking stick which hubby accidentily strimmed with his strimmer, last year....this year it is now the same height as my three year old! and has more little growths throughout the bed!!

Jen - may I suggest dark chocolate.....a true waste of chocolate but if it catches the critter.....we had one in the house and it ate all my dark chocolate left everything else!

Grebe

Had a wee looksee at this organicgardening.about.com and they recommend using tomato plant leaf spray. According to them the stuff in the garlic spray is good but can be too strong for some plants. It might be worth using up a tomato plant to make the tomato leaf spray,

Grebe

Jen - may I suggest dark chocolate.....a true waste of chocolate but if it catches the critter.....we had one in the house and it ate all my dark chocolate left everything else![/QUOTE]

I've heard that as well!! The wee gits stared eating the insulating cover around my boiler!

JenFeet

Hi everyone.

It was only 4 degrees here today - pouring down with rain and very windy so unfortunately I didn't get the jobs I wanted to.

I got the real heebie-jeebies today when I got back from the nursery run and thought I should check my trap - IT WAS GONE! I was thinking I must be losing my marbles and I came into the house to check that I hadn't left it inside or anything daft... Not here and not where I left it...

I was really confused! After nursery-home run we all went to check again - no - definitely nothing there! Then we had a visit from my dad and we went to look again!! Still nothing there - not behind the bed - not dug under the soil - just not there...

Then some excitement because my little boy found a frog inside which he rescued (oops - put it into the duck pond we made and I fear it became a snack) and when he was on his way back to the tunnel - "MUM - here's the mouse trap!"

It was in the chicken's part of the field with a giant (dead) mouse in it! How it had got there I don't know - I only hope that it hadn't been dragged out by a bigger rodent to be eaten.... And I hope it was only a giant mouse... (My dad promises me it was only a giant mouse but he's no zoo-ologist!)...

Dad had to dispose of the mouse and then I re-set the trap next to my babies... JenFeet 1 Giant Mouse beasties 0...

Yuck...

Elantan - I will definitely hunt out those pics - but it was only my first year last year and I am on a huge learning curve myself!! But have done plenty of googling to see what I think should work well... But then again - I have mice in my tunnel - so what do I know!!! Your tunnel looks great in your pics on another thread I saw!

And sacrilege to the suggestions of using chocolate in the mouse trap! NEVER!! The chocolate is mine... All mine... You hear?!!

Jen x

Grebe

OMG Jen, perhaps it was a pregnant mouse, they look pretty huge before giving birth. As long as it wasn't a rat!
My friend who loves in Aberdeenshire in the same kind of set up as yourself ended up getting a cat to keep the mice and rat's at bay.

elantan

have to admit we got a cat due to the mice problem we had a few years ago ... sadly the cat died and much as i would love another one hubby was too heartbroken after the last one died ... but if i see any more mice then i might just get one ... you do get big mice especially if they have been eating your crops (wee blighters)

this is my first year altogether growing so i really am a total newbie ... i just know it is something i have wanted to do for years ... but i am finding i am getting so much info i cant store it all in my head and i'm trying to do what would suit us and most importantly i am trying not to get ripped off .. i never knew gardening could be so expensive ... is anyone else finding that ... or am i just being typical me and paying over the odds lol