Daydream thread continues.....

COOLTRIKERCHICK

just been on my toddles to homebase had £15.80 left on giftcard, so bought an aloe vera plant, nice 'proper' leather gardening gloves and some other bits.

then went to b&q bought some floral wellies £11.00 they will do for now, until i find a pair that i am prepared to pay good money for, ( the more expensive wellies looked as theough they didnt have good grip underneath them)

then went to wyevale.. had some good reductions, on garden folks, spades etc,

was looking for a soil testing kit, but nothing

is it the wrong time to do a soil test?

Davesnave maybe you can help:D

on the ranch i planted courgettes, onions, sprouts, runner beans and sweet peas..

courgetttes just didnt grow at all:o

onions the same:o

sprouts got eaten by the horses that get out of their field now and again and just wonder around the place :mad::mad::mad:

runner beans and sweet peas were very slow growing, but when they did manage to get there, had a good crop, but foilage/leaves wernt that good.

a friend said the soil was 'stale' so i should have limed the ground????

weeds that grow with gusto are

buttercups:mad:
horsetail:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

hymalian sp? balsam


this might give you an inkling what condition the soil is in

Even though i didnt want to, in the spring i am going to 'neuke' it all with weedkiller to try and get rid of it all

Itismehonest

Was the friend who suggested liming a local who knows the ground around the ranch, CTC? If so, it would mean the soil is acidic.
Can you get this link? (LIR had problems with the site yesterday)
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=144
If you can, both the page on liming & the link therein to the pge on soil testing may be useful.

Without knowing what soil you have it's going to be almost impossible to know what to do.

All the weeds mentioned can come up in most soil conditions. None are easy to eradicate for different reasons - horsetail roots can go down about 7ft; balsam spits it's seeds out over a wide area &, even when chopped down, likes to send up new shoots; buttercup (ordinary or creeping?) well ....... creeping buttercup is pretty infamous on this thread :rotfl:
All may need several goes before you are successful.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

ITSME... he is not local to the ranch,

We have ouper strong ( but not strongest) round up weed killer which give the jap knotweed a dam good kicking:D we couldnt have the nucleor strength one has the knotweed is so close a stream. so will use this stuff in the spring

edit.... the stonemason said it would take approx 6 weeks to do the pine end of the house

rhiwfield

CTC, looking at soil I would have guessed acidic.

But instead of a soil testing kit why not a cheapo PH tester/probe. Much easier and instantaneous and can be used time after time.

Himalyan Balsam is easy to control in the spring/early summer. Its very shallow rooted with hollow stems. Pull up and crush or, if on level ground just trample to crush stems. Seeds last for up to 4 years so you'd need to redo annually and get any new patches washed down by the stream.

Knotweed, I think RAS had the best approach, its a b*****r to shift.

Wood ash is alkaline and can be used for smallish areas to combat acidity, otherwise it is liming that will be needed if soil is too acid. The leaching effect of this summers rain wont have helped much.

Horsetail, sorry, no idea!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

rhiwfield wrote: »

CTC, looking at soil I would have guessed acidic.

But instead of a soil testing kit why not a cheapo PH tester/probe. Much easier and instantaneous and can be used time after time

cool thanks will have a nose on the bay for one..

wind is picking up...and its cold outside too when there is a gust of wind

Itismehonest

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

ITSME... he is not local to the ranch,

We have ouper strong ( but not strongest) round up weed killer which give the jap knotweed a dam good kicking:D we couldnt have the nucleor strength one has the knotweed is so close a stream. so will use this stuff in the spring

edit.... the stonemason said it would take approx 6 weeks to do the pine end of the house

All you can do is give it a try. I'm one of those bemoaning the EU's banning of Asulox :mad: Whoever came up with that idea doesn't have to clear bracken off steep hillsides. We're all now in the realms of Roundup (maybe someone at the EU has shares?) which seldom does as good a job. You may, as I say, just have to keep at it.

Without knowing exactly what the stonemason has to do, & the conditions he has to work with/in, it's hard to judge.
I'd say he's given himself wriggle room by saying 6 weeks.
If all was straightforward it should be able to be done inside that time, if the weather was good & there were no other problems.
Our builders used to do the 2ft on one wall & move on to another while that went off overnight. Then they went back to the first one the following morning & carried on like that - going to & fro doing the 2ft-ish a day on each part.
That's for straightforward walls. Things like going around doors & windows tends to make things take longer.
A lot will depend on the stone they have to work with, too. They can spend ages finding the right stone to fit particularly if the pile includes a lot of odd shapes & sizes. Are they re-using, using new or a mix of both?

Forgot to ask - Is it being rendered, painted or left .........nude?

lostinrates

Dh has offered to do afternoon rounds alone and I am gratefully accepting. It's grim, grim grim here. I want to garden so much.

I want to buy some white poppies ( a in the red cornfield type) for the front border this year and have seen about a hundred pounds worth of seeds in sales I have to cut down to thirty, and as impressed BT crocus am eyeing up more in their sale. One of our local nurseries is promising a bumper sale this spring, and the big garden centre says its having one too.

If it just stopped raining I would go all chemical warier and spray where I have avoided spraying before now, because the weeds are just laughing in this weather, and there is an end of border still unweedded, plus the mulching to do, etc etc.....it's too wet for all of this.

Rummer

Creepy buttercups, shudder

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Itsme... the wall isnt straightfroward... the chimnley needs to come down, and the top 3rd of the wall has 'blown' so will practically need to be rebuilt,( along wih the chimley) also around the 2 windows on that wall ( these have been added later) they have put breeze blocks and concrete, so as we need to put in new windows, he will re-do the surounds in stone .

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Rummer wrote: »

Creepy buttercups, shudder

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: