Awful weather - typical Brits talk

LessImpecunious

Your May has beaten ours Dusty - but we're in the (rarely sunlit) uplands of Wales. No apple blossom yet either, which is worrying me somewhat as bullfinches have been more in evidence this year than usual, and one or two trees I've inspected closely look as though buds may have been removed...

Farway

Tomatoes planted outside into their pots, although I've labelled them I can't be sure it's correct due to the previous knocking on the floor episode. Time will tell.

Also found and sowed some French breakfast radish seeds while hoping for better luck this year.

Hope you do get apples Less, be a bummer if the birds have had them already

And I have found a goosegog under my baby bush, or is it the other way round?

YoungBlueEyes

Good of you to do a BBQ pp, I’ll fetch some nice fresh crabs on my way up. Anything else you want fetching…? Other than everyone else I mean Is kittycat behaving now or…? 

Depending on my robins’ progress to Farwayland, maybe your bullfinches could beat them to it Less? Wouldn’t it be good if it worked like that. Like those folks that drive about the place with swarms of bees. 

Similarly, give us a go of your ant-eating little brown birds 2p, once they’ve cleared yours up I’ve tried the Nippon traps, didn’t make the least bit of difference. Nor is any powder tbf so I’ll lift some Jeyes Fluid next time I see some. Every time I spot them running round a hole I squirt them but they just sacrifice a few of themselves and the rest come up somewhere else. Once the new baby birds are up and sorted I might start reducing their food so they choose ants and slugs instead. 

Those cannas look alright eh Farway, hopefully they’ll decide to properly go for it this year 🤞🏻

Too bladdy hot and burny out there for me today - 20’ and the UV is 4 - so I wasn’t out there long this morning. I’ve got a few bits potted on and my Hanging Baskets ready to go. Not sure my toms are big enough to play outside on their own yet so it’s a work in progress. But it is progressing  

Dustyevsky

Moving on to cats of the slightly feral variety, our two are sisters from a farm, but it seems likely they had different Dads. The very woolly one has a tendency to belt people with her paw if she detects an intention to stroke the 'wrong' bit, or perhaps to stop stroking, but rarely are her claws extended. They might be if she thinks you're laughing at her! She looks fearsome, but she's a total wuss puss, fleeing from any other cat that invades her garden, even if it's a kitten.

The smooth cat, Wiggy, has always been a softie. She would never scratch anyone. Her behaviour is quite dog-like, so she'll 'talk' and follow us around to observe. It didn't take long for her to find a good spot for that while Mrs Dusty was putting landscape fabric over the washing line area on Tuesday:

Our tomatoes aren't ready to go out yet, but I've 3 courgettes that are, so they'll be planted soon. Squash still seem very touch & go. Of course, the wildly hot chillies belonging to DD's husband, are doing fabulously, though largely ignored by all. 

OT. Very warm here, and quite dreamy. I'm late in for lunch and may need a siesta now!

pink_poppy

Ooh, fresh crab 🦀 that’ll be grand, YBE.

Kitty has forgotten (for now) that he’s in a mood with me. Lovely pic of your pussycat, Dusty. My DD bought their cat a fancy new bed and of course he would rather sleep in the box it came in. Fickle creatures...

Apart from the spuds, I haven’t sowed any seeds or planted any fruit trees or bushes. I’ve got tomato seeds from lovely neighbour’s gifted toms last year that I might have a go with - still suffering with bouts of CBA-itis though.

I’ve been watching some gardening programmes and it did make me smile when sitooterie was mentioned on an episode of Beechgrove 😊

pink_poppy

I forgot to say, I’ve got two Aquilegias growing together where there were two last year, including the white one. I’m hoping the one on the bottom of the pic is going to be white again - it looks like it to me.

ArbitraryRandom

Farway said:

Another garden book trawler, mine were the "Be your own ***** Expert" series, by David Gerald Hessayon, still going strong I believe. 50 million copies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._G._Hessayon

I've picked up a few of those as I've seen them.

Given my like of productive/useful and less common plants, one of my favourite reference books is an old copy of 'a country harvest' by pamela michael. I 'aquired' my original hardcover from my parents (it's nearly as old as I am) but a while back I came across a PDF version someone had made (I hope it's not considered piracy given I do legally own the book!) and that's been handy to flick through while I've been thinking about what I want to give space to. Each plant has a page or so of information about it's growing habits/history etc, then there's a selection of recipes/uses: 





As for the topic... more sun and lack of rain today. I was a little busy this morning so didn't get out until the sun was high, and one of my tomato seedlings cooked (I've been hedging my bets with the hardening off and keeping some of them in a cold frame, which acted as an unventilated greenhouse this morning!). That means my excess tomatoes are down to 4 and looking at the forecast I won't cover them back up again this week to avoid more casualties. 

No more obvious slug attacks in the night. I really need to stop procrastinating and finish building the supports so the rest of my beans can be planted out. I did 'potter' a bit and plant some sunflower and aquilegia seeds that I found while tidying up. 

Dustyevsky

LessImpecunious said:

Your May has beaten ours Dusty - but we're in the (rarely sunlit) uplands of Wales. No apple blossom yet either, which is worrying me somewhat as bullfinches have been more in evidence this year than usual, and one or two trees I've inspected closely look as though buds may have been removed...

I'd love to have more bullfinches than we do. I'm sure they'd not dent our apple crop, though it's a Heinz 57 mix, and only half of them fit to eat. The others are cider and 'weird.' Among the latter, we have 'Kirton Fair,' an apple bred to be ready for that event, but barely palatable.

pp, there's no telling what the genes will throw up with your aquilegias. I spotted a triple or quadruple one today. Rather a mucky colour, but worth keeping in the gene pool. I discovered this year that astrantias also throw different colours from the same batch of seeds. We have some Astrantia maxima by the stream, and some of its progeny have turned out dark red, despite the nearest reds in the garden being well over 100m away. That's brilliant, because our reds have largely been overwhelmed by a pale cousin called 'Buckland.' It's a great doer, I can thoroughly recommend, provided it's kept under control.

Farway said:

And I have found a goosegog under my baby bush, or is it the other way round?

I hope not, for your sake....and the baby's! I also wonder if the Gen Zs and onwards will 'get' that, given they had a more honest biological education than we did!

YoungBlueEyes said:

Those cannas look alright eh Farway, hopefully they’ll decide to properly go for it this year 🤞🏻

I must've missed that, but if Farway has cannas, I'm not looking! There was something resembling a canna leaf in the washing area border the other day,, but I'm ignoring it. No doubt my friend's one, down by the coast has turned into 3, all of them 2' tall and slug-free!

LessImpecunious

Dustyevsky said:

LessImpecunious said:

Your May has beaten ours Dusty - but we're in the (rarely sunlit) uplands of Wales. No apple blossom yet either, which is worrying me somewhat as bullfinches have been more in evidence this year than usual, and one or two trees I've inspected closely look as though buds may have been removed...

I'd love to have more bullfinches than we do. I'm sure they'd not dent our apple crop, though it's a Heinz 57 mix, and only half of them fit to eat. The others are cider and 'weird.' Among the latter, we have 'Kirton Fair,' an apple bred to be ready for that event, but barely palatable.

Our apple crop is a bit marginal here - we have two trees that (almost) always fruit well - a Keswick Codlin whose fruits develop brown rot and/or go soft as soon as they ripen, and a Winston whose fruits eventually go from being hard and inedible to just about palatable in February before turning soft and mushy - the others have mostly produced little fruit for many years... I've just (well, c. mid March) completed the third year of an attempted 3 or 4 year rejuvenation pruning of most of them, as they'd been somewhat neglected in despair at poor performance over many years, so was particularly hoping for good things this year! Fingers crossed though, maybe the buds really are there, still hiding! 

YoungBlueEyes

Righto I'll fetch plenty of crabs then pp, and how about some samphire while I'm at it, yum  
I think only 1 of the aquilegia seeds you sent me has come up (I planted a good few), but then one's all I need for my own seeds. I wonder what colour it'll be. The one the Oracle gave me is a bright purple and white, so something different would be good.
It was George from Beachgrove that I got "sitooterie" from. It does sound better in his lovely lyrical accent doesn't it. 

That looks like a beautiful book Arb, a real treasure. Lime leaf sandwhiches - I've never even heard of them! They do sound nice, just right for a hot afternoon. Maybe want a squidge of mayo on them... 

Fingers firmly crossed for your hide+seek buds Less.

I had a check of my apple tree this morning while on slug patrol (think I'm making a difference with that now), and I definitely have the startings of diddy apples *ooh giggidy* Nothing on pear or plum or Ska/pear, but they've plenty of leaves and still growing so that's fine. Next year next year! 

Cool here now but it'll not last. The sobers have given cloud again today but the drunkards say the opposite, which is what they said yesterday and the drunkards were right Perhaps a touch more breeze today, which will be welcome.