General Chat

Hi Sheila.
Generally prune right after the plant is through flowering. Light maintenance pruning will not affect flowering for the following year if done as directed. Cutting back a rhododendron heavily can stop the plant from flowering for a year or two. The information was taken from this web site http://www.flounder.ca I found it very interesting and has a lot more reading.
Ivy is normally pretty tough and I would cut it back any time of the year.

Lavender - I usually keep mine on the kitchen windowsill, until such times that frosts have done. Also that they are sturdy enough to be put in the greenhouse.
What varieties are you growing.

Julia in Derbyshire

My early, adventurous start with tomatoes is a bit wobbly today!

Size and height, about four inches is good but colour slightly yellowing. I think it's the cold at night in the unheated greenhouse despite my wrapping them up in several layers of horticultural fleece. Previously, I heated the greenhouse. I have brought them back on to the windowsill, I swear they are breathing a sigh of relief. They look cosy anyway! :-)

AnninGlos, now in the Lake District. You are making me positvely jealous with your posting of your adventures up there. It is making me feel rather nausious. I want to be there. (Stamps feet in fit of rage)
Hope you all enjoy yourselves
All The Best
Julia in Derbyshire

Seila hopefully somebody will be able to help you.

Up in the Lake District Sunday was a lovely day and we walked round Tarn Hows, only one and a half miles but daughter is recovering from radio therapy and tires easily, she enjoyed it though.

Today has been cloudy but we found a LD Horticultural society garden to visit, Holehird gardens. They were great and we couldn't believe how many spring flowers were out including a huge number of helebores, many that we had not seen before. There were still a few late varieties of snowdrops and lots of daffodils, but other flowers too including, to our surprise some Azaleas, camelias and rhododendrons. Bearing in mind this was on the side of a hill overlooking Windermere and facing across to the Langdales. The heathers also were a picture and the greenhouses were interesting with the alpines growing in them. We shall certainly return in June when we come up here as they have the National collection of Astilbes and a walled garden that should be at its best in June. The garden was apparently started in 1854 by a John Dunlop, there is a lovely mansion in the grounds too but that was gifted in 1954 to the local council for the health and well being of local people. It is now a Leonard Cheshire home. What a lovely spot to end your days it is too.

.

Hi

Need some advice, I live in Germany and now most of the frost has gone want to cut back my rhododendrum bush, it is in a container , is it ok to do this now ? its fairly big and how much would I cut it back.
Also got a few ivys that are in pots, was growing them up planters. They have been left out over winnter and most of the leaves showing are brown, should I cut them right back to just above the roots now ?
Thanks for any help you can give :-)

i did a bit of weeding this morning
and spayed the paths with weedol

I'm quite proud of myself today. At last, and after reading and contributing to this thread, I have finaly made a start.
I have cleaned out the greenhouse, abit more, and washed things down. My workbench is now ready for my seed trays.
I also managed to do abit of deadheading in a border, and it is coming along quite nice now.
Still plenty to do though, weather and health permitting.
OH has started back on the allotment a couple of weeks ago, with his digging. A brand new rotorvator, locked in a shed was stolen at the back end last year, and until it can be replaced, it is a case of getting out the fork and spade. But, years of fertilising with farmyard manure, has helped to break down the soil so that in some areas, it is like digging flour.
So, it is now full steam ahead at this house for the gardening season of 2012.

Julia in Derbyshire

thanks merlin , today is the first day i havent been sewing seeds and my hands and nails are clean, its been a lovely day for it :-P

Could have done with that idea a few years ago Merlin ,they would have been ideal to start my Celery in saving taking them out of big pots ,again saving disturbing the root ball.Fred. :-)

K and Fred
I can understand the logic in what your saying re composting potato peelings but if the peelings come from disease free plants is there still a likely hood of a problem, my brassica stalks and most not all of my pot peelings (after cooking) get fed to chickens.

The centre cardboard roll in toilet rolls and kitchen towels are pretty good you can plant in them put straight in the garden and leave them, they just rot down.

thanks fred, yes good idea, oh just been for some, so there is no excuses lol, the fruit trees oh planted are coming to look alive, pleased as they were cheap shop ones, and nothing else seems to live from there.

they have a large rack full of house and outdoor plants mixed and they never water them, if you tell them its not there department x :-(

If you are talking seedlings grown in the greenhouse Puss,think about plastic cups that you buy for vending machines £1 for 50 from pound shops.
They are the ideal size for the seedlings with a few little holes in the bottom using a lino knife.
If you also get a bulb planter from the same shop you will find the hole made in your garden using this tool ,is exactly the right size for dropping the moist root ball straight into the ground saving time ,and shock to the plants ,because the root ball isn't disturbed,
Both the cups ,and tool can be used for a few years,ideal for an old tight bummed scot like me with two huge allotments to look after.Fred. ;-)

i havent gpt as far as making notes about varieties as im still very much a novice, but i will e making notes as this is my first proper vegetable garden, i thought earlier im going to need loads of pots for all the seedlings thats appearing, at least i can reuse them, so this year its expensive but will be worth it.

my grandad digs his spuds up as soon as they flower ive heard different ideas, also this week i need to vaseline my trees "is that correct" brian like a sieve as usualx :-S

I never put Peelings in ANY compost ,be it for the garden ,or the greenhouse.you can put blight spoor back into a garden too,and where as you can kill spoor in a greenhouse bu putting a bomb in at the end of the season you can't do that for a garden.
I am lucky in that we have a garden waste service ,and all my haulms ,both potato and tomato ,get put in that bin,any missed get put into the garden incineater.along with the roots of my brassica as i clear them out.
It is most important to me because i have a brand of tomato called sugar Plum which i have to keep my own seed from year to year.the seed being no longer available.
I will give those new potatoes a go this year to see how they grow in my bins,and have got a load of new brassica to try ,the seeds now being disease ,and clubroot resistant ,a far cry from my grandads day ,when they had to fight diseased stock all the year round.
Fred is out into the garden ,lol ,the suns out ,and so am i . ;-) :-D

The issue of putting potato peelings in the compost heep does relate to the spread of blight a disease that as Lavender said affects both tomotoes and pototoes in the same family. We had it until recently we started to grow the resistant variaties including Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona. The foliage does get slightly blighted but continues to grow and the tubers are hard and don't get it. I take all the haulm from the plants to the tip each year and never compost it to avoid spreading the disease.

I have had one very wet year when even the greenhouse tomotoes were affected by blight and even Sungold only just still survived. I don't use the peelings to make compost for the greenhouse. Has anyone tried the grafted tomotoes which are supposed to be very resistant to disease and productive? They seem expensive and I can't imagine they could taste as good as Sungold.

Lavender you could be right from the back of my mind I keep thinking nightshade plants.
:-) :-) :-)

Sorry Lesley, I didn't see you there! I can't remember where we read about it but it was only this week. I shall as my h tomorrow. It was something to do with disease, anyway. I suppose that when they rot the spores are left in the compost which is then spread around. I don't know if I've remembered correctly but I think that it might have been to do with growing tomatoes? It could be as they are the same family I think aren't they? :-)

Hello Wend! you're not after the man in uniform too? <3 ;-)