The sun's been shining today, without being too hot, so I've been busy outdoors.

Spent a couple of hours this morning working on the front garden.  Mowed the lawn, weeded the bed by the house and transplanted a small euphorbia that was being swamped by large bleeding heart plant.  The bleeding heart has flowered fantastically this year (the flowers ( Read more... )

Went to the dentist this morning - he's growing a few veg at the back of the surgery and was asking for tips.

A lot of my friends are also starting to grow things for the first time.

So, here are my handy tips on compost.

1.  Anything organic will rot.  (by organic, I mean 'made of organic material', not 'grown without pesticides')

You can compost: ( Read more... )

Been pottering a mixture of things the last few days.

Mowed the front lawn, raked it and mowed it again.  I had to take occasional breaks.  The great tits are nesting in the box above our front door, the chicks are quite noisy now and the parents tend to be nervous about visiting the box when I'm using the mower, so I gave them some chances to get ( Read more... )

Anyone thinking of growing veg for the first time and looking for something easy to try could do a lot worse than grow rocket.


( Read more... )

Having just escaped from a long argument in another LJ with the kind of person who valued opinion over fact (and refused even to state her opinion half the time - for reasons that were dead easy to spot - she was the kind of person who called the UK out for not treating babies born so premature that the had no real chance of survival, but was ( Read more... )

When you first start growing veg, the odds are that your soil will be pretty crap.  Don't worry, all soil can be improved - it takes a couple of years, but you can start with bad soil and know that your crop will get better as the soil improves ( Read more... )

Having just planted out the lettuce seedlings which are growing amazingly well and are so far untroubled by slugs, and managed (so far at least) to greatly reduce the aphid problems on the gooseberry (last year we had mega-problems with aphids), and the garden and allotment generally looking pretty good (we'll certainly have some disasters, just ( Read more... )

If you have any raspberries or blackcurrants, then this is the best time of year (just as the new leaf growth is starting) to feed them. About three inches of manure or compost all round them (go out at as far as the bush goes and maybe a little bit more). Don't let the compost/manure touch the stems - give a couple of inches space ( Read more... )

Today, (and yesterday, and several days last week), Richard and I have been working on micavity  and entorien 's back garden.

So far, we've cleared and shredded a large quantity of brambles (and dug out the roots), removed large quantities of weeds from around the pyracantha, deduced one of the pyracantha to be  a trailing variety which isn't going to work in what ( Read more... )

There are two species of plant with the common name Jersey Lily.  Amaryllis belldonna and Nerine bowdenii.  neither, it turns out are native to Jersey...  They both come from South Africa.

Trying to collect British native plants for the garden can be very difficult on occasion!