Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

wort said:

Thank you 2p , I would love to get down that way some day as I spent many holidays in Devon as a child, all piled in the car, sat on the sheets etc, I’m amazed my dad could see through the windows, so many kids and stuff needed for self catering. 🤗

Sounds like my car queuing on the A35, my kids in the back, giggling at Piddlehinton & river Piddle signs & hoping the tailbacks at Dorchester were not too long but they always were

Sunny morning with bit of a breeze, today all being well today is prune the pyracantha, at least one large branch to come f where it's starting to encroach over the Hibiscus and shade it it. I'm just on PC waiting for sun to come round a bit and warm it up

One of my newly planted dwarf French beans has been savaged by snails despite pellets, I remove snails when I see them but I'm over run with them right now despite my efforts.

However some things survive, here is a radish flowering & going to seed, I missed the best picking time but have left it because I've read the seed pods are edible & radish like so maybe another bite at this cherry?

Davesnave

Farway said:

wort said:

Thank you 2p , I would love to get down that way some day as I spent many holidays in Devon as a child, all piled in the car, sat on the sheets etc, I’m amazed my dad could see through the windows, so many kids and stuff needed for self catering. 🤗

Sounds like my car queuing on the A35, my kids in the back, giggling at Piddlehinton & river Piddle signs & hoping the tailbacks at Dorchester were not too long but they always were

If you were on the A35, I'm sure you wouldn't have let your kids miss out on a quick detour to this place:

As you can see, my DD2 thought it was a hoot.

 Google notes: "It has attracted worldwide attention for its name, which dates back at least 1000 years and means "farmstead on the stream used as an open sewer".

The heavy duty sign was necessitated because of people nicking the ordinary ones.

phoebe1989seb

Ah, I fondly recall the Piddles too....but don't think we ever visited that attractively named destination, Dave 😂😂😂

Loving *peonies envy* Poppy 🤣🤣🤣..and your gorgeous water lily ❤️ I can't wait to recreate the pond we had at our last garden here - just need to choose the best location!

So, I now have both pond/water lily envy and astrantia envy as our clump of six cannot begin to compare with Dave's beautiful border 😃

We had rain yesterday and whilst it's sunny today, it's quite gusty. No gardening being done here, although DH - in his guise as good samaritan - has driven up to Lampeter (keeping up the toilet humour theme, this is known affectionately as *Lumpy Turd* in our house, lol!) to tidy the garden of a partially-sighted young woman who's a student there. She was one of his first clients when he began doing some gardening work back in 2019 and although it's much too far to travel really (and he's since moved on to larger things) he doesn't like to let her (or her parents in Kent who own the house) down as he's the only person she trusts to do it 😇

Hopefully we'll get some work done on ours tomorrow if the weather stays fine....

Another rose pic and another peony shot as already the rain is taking its toll 🙄....

Ferdinand Pichard

wort

Phoebe gorgeous flowers!🤩
Farway, one time that sticks in my mind traveling en masse to Devon, we ended up on the spaghetti junction!! My sister had to go in a phone box and rip the map page out of the phone book😂 wouldn’t be able to do that now!! 

DD265

Loving the photos! My roses (that will flower this year; two don't look as though they're going to) are in full bloom and look beautiful, reminding me why I have them.

I've had one strawberry but birds have beaten me to others so I'm considering a cloche or net. I spotted a tomato growing the other day and will look for more when I go out to water later. The peppers plants are still small so not sure what these will do. One seems to have had some 'bark' stripped (I have no idea how), another just shed a load of leaves and is growing new ones but the two given by my grandfather are very healthy.

The new nectarine tree is possibly dormant - it's done nothing. I'm reluctant to pull it up to see if there's been any changes to it's root structure and I don't want to damage it doing the bark test either. I may email the company I bought it from to ask their advice/expectations for it. The peach is a lovely tree though and the plummond is down to one stem and growing well.

I've got some nastusiums in the beds/bigger rose pots now but still struggling with aphids in some places. I saw a ladybird when I was out running this morning but I don't think it would've enjoyed the journey home with me.

Currently trying to figure out what I want from a greenhouse. I had my heart set on the Juliana City one, which runs about £600, but have realised the main shelf in it is fixed, meaning we wouldn't be able to move the peach/nectarine trees in over winter. I also wonder if it might be a bit small for tomatoes which is what I want to grow in a greenhouse; thankfully the plastic one is doing the job well right now but I'd prefer a glass one.

I'm also coveting a VegTrug. If I'm 100% honest maybe we don't have room for one but I want to grow more things! Plan B might be to hang the guttering off the fence as I think we could grow some salad leaves in those - will have to investigate some alternative options, too.

In house plant news, the fly trap is going to make it. I removed all the dead/dying traps and any dead/dying growth on the leaves. I kept as much leaf as possible to help it photosynthesise, and made sure it had all three lights shining on it (moving the peppers outside) from the grow light - it has light 12 hours a day as there's no 9 hour setting! I've also kept it very well watered as it was drying out that caused the issue. The next few traps started going black very quickly and were removed, but now it's got healthy growth and should have a viable open trap before next weekend. Phew! As much as I might like to reduce the number of plants we have in some respects, I also get very sad at the prospect of losing one.

Farway

Very mixed weather day at the moment, it tipped down & woke me up about 5, but now sun's out with a breeze blowing

I managed to hack prune the pyracantha and found my gloves were not as thorn resistant as I thought.

However the branches duly reduced in size & stuffed into the garden waste wheelie bin with just a bit of space left. It's bin day Friday all being well so that's a job done that needed doing

I now have to try and "walk" the potted apple tree along a bit to let more light onto my hibiscus with the pyracantha excess gone.

The pot is too heavy for me to lift these days and not having access to a sack truck pulling, pushing & puffing is the only solution left for me

I'm still picking off the occasional Lily Beetle, very persistent little red devils

Davesnave

Having lowered the tone yesterday, I thought I'd post a picture from off centre of last night's wonderful sunset ....

Unfortunately, 'red sky at night' hasn't worked, so we have a blustery, cool day with occasional spits and spots of rain, but none of the promised deluge yet.

greenbee

Rain is missing here too, which is annoying as I didn’t water yesterday. If I had, I’m sure it would have been torrential! 

Dug up some asters, planted some rhubarb and sunflowers, poisoned some nettles and brambles, and weeded part of the stream. One side is starting to look good, with water parsnip easy to spot and pull out - although the forget-me-not is now almost over and has collapsed so will need cutting soon. The other side is next to a neglected plot, wand the owners don’t manage the boundary - so unless the local conservation group clear it (they cut rather than uproot weeds, and slash through everything father than being selective) I have to do it. Not sure what the solution to that is really. I guess planting up my bank to obscure the view of the nettles and then keeping a channel clear my side is about all I can do.

MovingForwards

Back to blue sky and sunshine after a couple of mildly wet days.

Finally got the last of my plants outside today. Lifted some spud, harvested some greens and lost myself in thoughts of when self-sufficiency is my FT work and I drop days at work.

My lounge smells of freshly lifted onions with the stems cut off and freshly grown cabage. 

Farway

Rain overnight, tipping down again.

Too soggy to think about stepping outside, at least the rain will have washed away the dusty dry bits from the pyracantha removal

I do want to get out and tie down some of the wispy new plum growth, seems more horizontal works very well with plums, and because mine's in a large pot I do need to restrict it's growth, I like the idea of lollipop style dripping with plums, mind you this year's crop is very poor with the cold spring we had

Now the pyracantha has been cut back I have a Thorn Free blackberry to tie in, it's trained horizontal along the boundary and was just laying on the pyracantha, now it's flopping about unsupported, a job once it's a bit drier, like trying in a dwarf buddlia which is near my front door and starting to encroach upon the access