Awful weather - typical Brits talk

twopenny

I noticed the mallow too - meant to look it up to see if that's the sort you can use.
Lovely plant if you've got the room.

Aw Wellies, so envious of you still having stuff to cook. Sounds delicious 

So, I caught Imp out 

Been raining overnight so still soggy. Washing didn't dry despite the sun but promise of no rain today, just cloud and chilly from the wet but a definite improvement if only for a day and a half. 

LessImpecunious

twopenny said:

I found old carpet, the cheap stuff, made the best cover for a strip of cleared soil. Carpet shops chuck it out daily.
It warms it, keeps weeds down and is easy to walk on in any weather.
If you weed a strip, cover with a strip of carpet to kneel on as you clear the next bit you keep clean from mud and all the above.
In spring it's easy to roll strips up and stack.

Can't recommend carpet! I put some down in similar (ish) circumstances, intending it to be temporary...several years later, overgrown with weeds and with new soil forming on top it was a bu66er to remove, not least because it was extremely heavy. But this was large pieces - small strips might be handy, but don't leave them in situ too long... Apparently toxins leach out too into the soil (unless you have old wool carpet).

You could look at No Dig techniques - dig out any unwanted perennial weeds (docks, nettles, thistles, brambles - though can't see any of those), then cover everything else (cut down other weeds first) with cardboard, and then compost/manure on top. Some allotments get deliveries of these for free... There is an excellent FB group, called UnDug, with lots of advice and support, and many people with similar situations. Looks like a fantastic site with great potential!

LessImpecunious

twopenny said:

So, I caught Imp out 

  I like "Imp"! though "Less" is also fine...

ArbitraryRandom

Worth checking with the allotment people as well - I know some places ban carpet or black plastic (from listening to someone at work). 

Farway

That allotment looks like it'll be fine GF, I also spotted geraniums, loved by bees. You may find a lot of the plants are not as bad as it looks, shallow rooted & just come up easily, as long as you are couch grass, bindweed & mare's tail free all others are manageable

Barbados sounds nice, but then I'm daydreaming of Ursula walking out of the sea as I sip my John Collins. I'll wake up soon

Sunny but cold, supposed to be sunny most of the day, so I hope to plant up my new violas, but that's about it for gardening

Pics today, in keeping with the date, it's poppies, these are from the display in Tower of London, they went "On Tour" later. I took these pics in 2018 at Fort Nelson, one of the Palmerston Follies overlooking Portsmouth

YoungBlueEyes

Ooh more cracking pics (must look out my thesaurus!) Your watery sunshine is just what mine looked like Dusty. 

I like your cheeky pic Farway, deffo not scraping the ...bottom... of the barrel there *giggle* I'm not an arty sort but I do think that the cascading poppy thing was pure brilliant, if not actual genius. It's so simple and evocative and I don't think they could have come up with anything better, I really don't. 

I don't know what my mushroom is Imp, so yeah lets go with waxcap I don't know if I could call my 'lawn' "good and threatened grassland habitat". Lovely neighbour says our seller wasn't a gardener so she paid for a load of rolls of turf to be rolled out and then did nothing with it. I often wonder if there's a type of grass that doesn't grow too fast cos I've only cut it twice since we moved here - once in Sept last year, and again the other week when we had that nice spell. If it wasn't for mare's tails it'd have no height at all. I do get a few different fungi though, so that's nice.

Perfect time of year for a caribbean cruise wort and wellies A bunch of us went years ago for a friends' 40th (her husband paid for a few of us to go cos he couldn't think of a special thing to get her, brilliant idea). I can't remember which island it was, but there's one with a lot of waterfalls, and under one of the falls was a steel drum band playing english christmas carols. I'd never heard anything like it and I wish I'd bought the cd. If you get to that island don't miss that bit  

Congrats on getting your allotment gf! Parp prp prp prp parp parp parp paarrpp! That's gonna be a belter in the warm weather when you get it going. Do you know what your neighbouring plots are gonna contain? 


Cold and sunny here again today. Anyone else spotted the new ads on the drunkards app...? Reckon that bar bill is getting outta hand  

YoungBlueEyes

Here’s my offering for the Flowering Wrong judges. 

Yes you’ve produced a nice rich colour, thank you very much, but I want Gold Nugget like it says on the tin label 🙄

twopenny

Bucked up nicely here. Bright and dry.
Now I have a choice.
Mow the lawns and weed or go on a fossil beach.
Now let's see.............

Seems the carpet idea comes in for a lot of stick. I'd have thought reuse and helping to biodegrade before landfill was reasonable. I had fine veg and reused each year to keep the soil warm. It was grey green so blended in.

ArbitraryRandom

With public allotments I can see the argument - if you're using carpet to manage an overgrown/weed full patch then you're either new (and might not stick to it) or you've been struggling to manage. 

In both cases, if the carpet is left down and the plot neglected until it's taken away and given to someone else - might just be making a bigger problem where the carpet starts to rot/fall apart, but because it's largely synthetic just makes a bit of a mess - the minority spoiling it for the rest who want to use the carpet for sensible management reasons (like you do warming the beds to allow earlier planting). 

For in your own garden I can see it'd be useful, and cardboard (removing the tape first) might be a good alternative option for an allotment?

ElaniArtin

ArbitraryRandom said:

Farway said:

That does look nice space Arbs, I think brambles tend to leave nice soil, just PIA getting them out. Not wanting to rain on your panda, [actually it was typo of parade and autocorrected to panda  ]but I'm wondering just how many dormant weed seeds will be liberated, if lucky it's poppies, but I bet its thistles

I've dumped a load of 'wild flower' seeds on the area over the last couple of years with nary a sausage to show for it, so I've got a packet of yellow rattle ready to go to suppress the grass and it'll be interesting to see what comes up.  Other than the brambles, there's not been much in the way of spiky growth, so my money is on bind weed everywhere

Before the growing season, a chunk of it at the top will be covered by a concrete slab for a shed - then down towards where the picture is will be a raised bed for veggies, plus this is the fence I'm hoping to plant a couple (or three) fruit trees against, so will be mulching where I'm planning the roots to be.  

The debate in my head now is to stop with one raised bed or maybe have one between each tree (I could have up to three, with one starting at the house). Thanks to the aspect of the garden, I think the shade cast by the trees would be minimal once they were at a decent height... but would I really want that much (fixed) growing space when I'm an indifferent gardener at best? 

Plantain- this is a really nice ground cover that will compete with other weeds nicely, and, it's nice because it is easy to pull out if you want to. Just find some seeds then broadcast and they rise up!

and the bees do like it.