General Gardening Discussion

Thank you for your very helpful reply. I can raise the soil level and a rock garden sounds ideal. Thanks again.

Alder or willow are usually good in wet conditions

We are looking for ideas for our garden. We are situated on the Somerset/Wiltshire border. Our back garden is approximately 10 metres wide by 15 metres long. It slopes downwards away from the house at approx 45 degrees(!)and faces NNE.Because of the slope, we can't actually see much of the...

Yeah lupins have their own version of greenfly and they are massive, by our standards anyway.

I've not reached 14 in pots yet they must be massive. I stress that if you put them outside it must be in the shade, strange maybe for a s. african plant, but I find the leaves burn very easily.

If you grow crown imperials or any fritillaries of any kind look out for lilly beetles. I took at least 20 off of one plant today, they are bright red, no spots and a bit bigger than a ladybird. They destroy a plant in no time and once the maggots get going thats the end, so they need to be...

SteveW Guete an Abig, war sehr fleissig, den ganzen tag was haben sie neues im triebhus ?

It could be aphids, check inside the curled leaves.

Hi Swompy - it sounds like you've already done pretty much everything you can. Don't aerate or fork when the soil is soaking wet, because all you'll do is smear the soil with the tines, and that won't help at all - you'll just end up with lots of holes that fill with waterIf you can keep...

I think keep the trees and add a few more specimen plants in tubs then cover as much as poss with either bark chippings, pebbles or the red/blue/grey coloured gravel/slate chippings leaving perhaps an area or two for raised beds for such as alpines and herbs ...its one solution if you really...

Not arf! :D

You can take softwood cuttings or preferrably heeled cuttings from lavender now, as it starts into new growth.Find a healthy young bit of new growth - gently peel it back from the stem so that you have the stem with a bit of a tail where it joined the stem. Plant in 50-50 mix of compost and...

Furry sometimes happens in a propagator with the vents shut after a few days...too humid encouraging fungal growths

Ta, v. enlightening! 'S good to keep learning!

You could treat it as a "renewal prune" - where you "lose" at least third of the oldest growth to the base & and cut back the remainder to a third of its length (if that makes sense). Stay inside with a glass of something comforting until it "blows over" lol!

Aha! Fantastic, thanks. I had a go at pulling it out last night and all I succeeded in doing was pulling one wee branch off and somehow skewering it down my thumbnail - ouch!! So I'm taking my mum's secateurs tonight and removing it that way. I'm glad it sounds easy to regrow.

There are lots of plants that like it wet. A number of books on gardening have appendices at the back that give lists of plants for dry areas, wet areas, acid soil etc. You could probably find similar lists on the internet - search on "plants wet area" or similar.In the wetter part of my...

thanx again fran this is a real mystery i think i will take your advice and find a specialist cheers

Many thanks both for the info, I'll see what I can lay my hands on locally. The reason I didn't want lawn feed as well was because I didn't want nice healthy grass coming up thru the gravel, but if I deal with the moss first then I guess I can deal with any grass later. Thanks Carran

I considered the skip option, but the problem is more one of weight rather than volume. A skip bag might be the answer, I'll look into that.