Trowel and Error

[absley]

Hello, how are your gardens looking?

Mine has many weeds (wild geum/herb bennet remains my nemesis, but so far I've reclaimed one bed that it had totally dominated, and am working my way around the others - they are getting to flowering point though in some places, grr) but it also has, thanks to D many tulips, which is very lovely.

I continue to be a slacker with buying/sowing veg seeds but have got peas, borlottis and tom seeds done, plus my lovely neighbours has ordered me a couple of her baby courgettes. I've also taken out my seed box to see what I can find in there.

I took this pic yesterday morning, as the hazy light was so lovely. Plus you can see Ziggy, who recently moved in.

[Cerise]

Hello, Ziggy!

Your garden looks lovely. I’ve done quite a lot of tidying over the weekend. The bindweed and the marestail (I think it’s called that) make me want to cry and I need to look into more chemical solutions to that problem, I think.

I had a voucher for a half price plant so, yesterday, I chose a well establish Acer and that’s now in a place where its job is to cover up the hole the badgers have made in the fence.

Mr Sax and I have made a couple of garden plans. He knows zilch about gardening so needs instruction and he’s very “bull in a china shop” in his methods. :lol:

[Cosmopolitan]

I usually do Tumbling Toms which are great, they ripen quickly, are delicious and easy to grow in pots or hanging baskets

[Derek Nimmo]

Stunning Abs, like a painting

I'm very excited by the fact that my peonies seem to have self-seeded, I counted over ten big clumps with buds in various places around the garden yesterday (both in sun and shade, they don't seem to care).

My ceanothus however has thrown out about four flowers, despite looking healthy as hell otherwise. Seeing as they're in full flower around the neighborhood, including by roads and the railway track (so don't seem to need much pampering), I'm unamused. Clearly it's doing it to spite me

[Mountain Goat]

I really love that photo and your garden. AND ZIGGY!!?! Is he all black? He looks like he appreciates the garden too.

I am impressed and jealous of the self seeded peonies. My one peony (planted last year too late to flower that year) has been teasing me with multiple buds for what seems like months now, please open, I can't remember what you're supposed to look like.

My main weeds are thistles which aren't too bad as far as weeds go but I will keep trying to pull them up without gloves on rather than going back to get gloves. I am sorry for your bindweed and marestail Cerise. I have a little bindweed which is manageable to just keep on top of by pulling up/mulching but I did have rampant bindweed in my last house and it's very hard to manage manually. Also I want to know your garden plans please.

I have most of my seeds done now, although have had poor germination with some things that should be easy (some sunflowers?! 5 year olds manage this :lol: ). I've bought some better quality compost (Sylvagrow, after Frances Tophill did a comparison in which it had much better germination) so let's see.

I have a million things to say and don't know which ones to focus on. :)) I lifted all my dahlias last autumn as they were all in the wrong place re height, colour etc, labelled them carefully and stored them. When I came to get them out a month or so ago, all the labels had fallen off. So now I'm back to a mystery bran tub situation. I divided them where I could do it as they were so massive and as a result have around 30 mystery dahlias, multiplying the problem. I also now have one monster dahlia, I keep reading that I should reduce to about 4 strong stems and this has about 30. Rather than just cut off a load of stems, I tried yesterday to divide it into three more manageable plants but it was not going to come apart without a chainsaw and I chickened out. I'm dithering about what to do with it.

I'm really excited by the front of the house at the moment as a lot of plants that didn't do much last year have come back stronger this year, and a lot of things have self seeded (in a positive way), so I feel like it's coming together. There's a lot of stuff with just one or two flowers showing hints of what it might look like in a few weeks if nothing bad happens. IF.

[absley]

Cerise, D also needs v careful managing - he can't do anything that requires judgement (most plants look the same apparently ) but is at least vaguely careful with anything he does approach.

Del, my ceoanthus was v similar last year but looks much better atm - I wonder if they just have bad years every now and then? Or maybe you're in a microclimate! Oh, and I'm also jealous of your peony seedlings - I didn't know they did that, how amazing!

Mystery dahlias sound fun, Goat. Are they growable from seed, do you know? I can't be faffed with lifting but thought that seeds might be fun to try. Wrt your massive tuber, can you delegate to Mr Goat? I often do that if I don't know which way to approach something - and at least half the time, once D has finished asking should be do x, y or z I'm more than ready to get on with it myself!

[Disco]

Your grden looks gorgeous, Abs.

Does anyone have thousands of weird black bugs every where? I'm a bit scared of them.

[Disco]

What are they???!

[absley]

Thanks Disco, we're so lucky to have it. I spotted lots of small black bugs on my black sambucas at the weekend, but haven't seen them elsewhere. We do have lots of ladybirds atm though, so maybe they're feasting...

Eta. No not that sort of bug, ew! Can your phone ID them?

[Disco]

I don't know about my phone ID ing them. Erm, I'll see if there's an app. I'm scared of them. I have no idea what they are except they look like ticks to me. Not that I've ever seen one.

T get blackfly all over my black sambucas normally every late summerI

[Disco]

I am trying to connvince myself they are not ticks but I'm panicking and feel like they might come down the chimney.

[Derek Nimmo]

They look like they have antennae, in which case they're aphids not ticks. What a random piece of knowledge to have in my head!

[Disco]

They are really big! I've never seen an aphid like that?! :eek: They are ladybird sized! With six spindly long legs.

[Disco]

I know ticks have eight legs but nymphs have six. I've been checking google out for hours now but I think they must be too big surely?!

[Mountain Goat]

They look a bit like vine weevils but not quite, maybe there are other weevils?

[Mountain Goat]

Also ugh.

[Mountain Goat]

Oh I think they might actually be black vine weevils, I have only seen brown ones before but google shows them also as black. AFAIK they are not much of an issue as adults, but when they lay eggs their evil offspring eat roots especially of plants in pots and heucheras, you can get nematodes to deal with them when it's that time of year (I think Aug or Sept from memory).

[Mountain Goat]

Abs, your suggestion of letting Mr G deal with monster dahlia made me immediately jump into bossy and decisive mode through fear of him destroying it. So now I have a clear path, thank you, I will remove some stems as basal cuttings and pot them on. I am sure I have seen people grow dahlias from seed but I have no idea how easy/lengthy a process it is. I don't think it's at all necessary to lift tubers, I think they're as likely to be buggered in storage as in the ground, I only did it so I could move them all around, I just mulched them heavily before.

[absley]

Abs, your suggestion of letting Mr G deal with monster dahlia made me immediately jump into bossy and decisive mode through fear of him destroying it.

[Disco]

Goat one of my elderly lady friends suggested weevils a short while ago! I don't think they are vine weevils but like you I concluded they are most similar to black vine w leevils. Ew, They're horrible! But not ticks.

Thank you! In the meantime I am going to keep jet hosing them from surfaces in the hope that many of them die in the tsunami.