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No ladybirds in my neck of the woods, but there is a very sinister, constant buzzing sound from somewhere in the vicinity of the darts shed at present.
The spawn our neighbour donated has now evolved into a sprawling mass of tadpoles, and should keep the local heron busy, once they develop into frogs.
We dug and prepared the last raised-bed in the veg garden last night – replete with dung that the father-in-law carted over from the hills of Mull. It’s not really what I was expecting when he said he was bringing me some "good sh*it", but it will apparently heat the bed, and make for quality courgettes and squashes (whatever they may be) later in the year.
We are building a last raised bed tomorrow – 6m x 2m – and that will be the lot as far as the veg garden is concerned – just waiting for feast or pestilence thereafter.
Your enthusiasm is heartening Grasshopper I must say, though not surprising. In my experience the majority who give gardening a go – with some trepidation at first – are rapidly converted into green-fingered obsessives
If you’ve planted an early variety of potato they should be ready for digging from mid-June. Lifting the first new potatoes of the season is always a satisfying experience. There remains a little bit of magic about putting one in and getting ten back
Have you a pond for your tadpoles? Frogs are the gardener’s friend; they just lurv slugs and snails
A word of warning:
Onion, chillis, cucumber and bell peppers will move out of the greenhouse soon. Tomato plants will stay behind.
Onions no problem, mine are out already and growing away slowly. But chillis, cucumbers (unless one of the few gherkin-type varieties) and bell peppers don’t do particularly well outdoors – certainly not until late May – and are really best left in the greenhouse throughout the summer. Tomatoes infact can do well outside if grown against a wall, but they are pretty dodgy too. It’s cold winds these half-hardy crops don’t like and I’d imagine the Firth of Forth is prone to chiily blasts even in mid-summer
Gardening is essentially evens success and failure: grow more than you think you’ll need and you’ll end up with about enough
Some ladybirds about here but the only plague I have is moles. Why they always choose to dig a tunnel right under the row of seedlings you’ve just planted out is is one of life’s great mysteries. Like rabbits, rats and wood pigeons they just hide and wait until we’re not around, then laugh and pounce
Cracking weather at present, a joy to be pottering about in. Got a touch sunburnt the other day
Your pepper and cucumber advice has been duly noted, Drone – thanks for the nod. We’re only about 400 yards from the Forth, and icy-blasts have to be considered a certainty – even in the height of summer.
The tadpoles are in a Heath-Robinson pond, manufactured from a nippers plastic sandbox, which seems to be doing the job, if the amount of wriggling is anything to go by.
The buzzing from the darts shed appears to be down to a couple of fat, bumblebees nesting underneath it, rather than a plague of wasps. Hope I haven’t spoken too soon.
I don’t have a pond – I miss tadpoles
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Gardening is essentially evens success and failure: grow more than you think you’ll need and you’ll end up with about enough
…such good advice Drone as always…and what a lovely way of putting it
here’s something from afar, I hope you like it:-
Yellowstone Park, Montana
Buffalo grazing amongst Campanula Rotundifolia, the pretty blue flowers in the foreground…http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/ac17/MarLorena/Spring%20Flowers%202010/Scan00051.jpg
Drone, I spoke to the wife about the peppers and chillis, and she concurred with you 100%. In fact, what she said was "Of course they’ll stay in the greenhouse, you erse".
She’s quite the catch, don’t you know.
The father-in-law heads back up to Mull today, and it will be a shame to see him go. He has done a power of work in the garden over the last fortnight (aided and abetted by yours truly), and has given us a zillion tips about how we should landscape. The veg/fruit garden will be finished in a couple of weekends, I reckon, and thereafter we have to set about demolishing the 1950’s caravan that has been parked-up in the garden since……….well, the 1950’s, if looks are anything to go by. The previous residents chose not to get shot of it when the neighbours were building their extension several years back, and it’s now blocked-in, so we have no option but to take a sledgehammer to the bleeder.
Mrs Grass has made firm pals with the neighbours on our right-hand-side. They have a 1/3 acre garden similar to us, and have developed it over the 20 years they have lived there. They have a pond and a boat-house, and Gawd knows how many varieties of plants in there (a very grand New Zealand Flax being my personal favourite) – though she is the gardening correspondent for the local rag, so it’s to be expected, I suppose. She is a lovely old bird, and is forever giving us cuttings of plants and whatnot "for when you get your beds down".
Between her and the old man, we are not going to struggle for helpful hints.
The only downside to gardening that I have found thus far, is not the physical effort required, but the fact that it is not an immediate fix. Patience is a virtue which has generally escaped my clutches, but I fear it is something I’m going to have to develop rapidly.
A 1/3 acre is a biggish garden GH. Big enough for a paddock to house Only The Best when retired perhaps
Patience is a virtue indeed when it comes to gardening. Though come May when Spring really springs I’m confident you’ll be amazed how just how quickly plants grow
Gardening like the time-honoured racing fixture list gives structure to the year and definiton to the months – if it’s March it must be Cheltenham and Tomatoes must be sown
Not been to Mull though my brother has and reportedly saw a Golden Eagle during his stroll up Ben More.
Another corking day. 10 Summer Cabbages (Greyhound) were planted out today. The little gentleman in black velvet will no doubt push them out of the ground overnight
C’est la vie de le jardinier
Drone; have you ever thought of writing a book in the form of a year in the life of a horticultural gambler?
The Gardening Gambler?
The Gambling Gardener?
The Pottering Punter?Or given the negativity that seems to pervade my posts on the main board nowadays
The Grumbling Gambling Gardener perhaps?
I may do a Lolly’s and only post here in this serene chocolate-stocked lounge with its virtual views of blue skies, green fields and distant nutty Aztecs worshipping the ever-ascendant Mars
…nice
The garden is a fair old size, Drone, but would still be a little tight for a rangy brute like Georgie.
I took a wander down to the veg garden 30 mins ago, and we have some garlic and carrot shoots now showing (not too much, but enough), and six of the raspberry’s are now poking through the soil (though they are strictly a long-term gain).
Some 30 onoins in pots were sitting outside the greenhouse when I got home. I believe they are ‘hardening’, and have lobbed them back into the greenhouse, as it’s gettting a bit chilly/breezy. Mrs Grass’s reaction to such pro-active measures, will tell me if I did the right thing or not.
I can strongly recommend a visit to the Isle of Mull. The old man was telling me just the other day that a pair of sea eagles regularly patrol the area of Lochdon just outside his gaff, which must be a sight to behold.
The island’s real hidden jewel isn’t revealed until after dusk, imo. The same may be true of other remote areas of the UK, but the crystal-clear skies over Mull (when it isn’t horsing down stair-rods of rain, at any rate) are something which everyone brought-up in a light-polluted city should be allowed (perhaps even made?) to experience.
The Milky Way can easily be seen on a good night, I’ve even seen satellite’s (or the ISS) go by at a real rate of knots, and – despite the weather giving me the shoogles – I’ve had a good look at Venus through a relatively cheap telescope (surface appeared stone-grey and somewhat broiling, to my eye). None of which I had experienced, before I started going out there. I can’t recommend the place highly enough.
The island’s real hidden jewel isn’t revealed until after dusk, imo. The same may be true of other remote areas of the UK, but the crystal-clear skies over Mull (when it isn’t horsing down stair-rods of rain, at any rate) are something which everyone brought-up in a light-polluted city should be allowed (perhaps even made?) to experience.
The Milky Way can easily be seen on a good night, I’ve even seen satellite’s (or the ISS) go by at a real rate of knots, and – despite the weather giving me the shoogles – I’ve had a good look at Venus through a relatively cheap telescope (surface appeared stone-grey and somewhat broiling, to my eye). None of which I had experienced, before I started going out there. I can’t recommend the place highly enough.
Bang on. A dark sky as nature intended – starlit and bible black – is an awesome spectacle, once free-to-view for all. The Milky Way (boring chocolate you can eat between meals
) is er…milky and the whole celestial sphere takes on an almost three-dimensional aspect with all those faint ‘deep sky’ objects twinkling awayNorth Yorkshire is hardly over-populated or over-lit but even up on the Pennines at night there is a ring of street light on the horizon from the conurbations centred on Leeds and Manchester which is sufficient to drown the Milky Way and many of the fainter stars. The coast is the place to go
The thinking man’s trainer Nige the Twister appears to have developed an interest in astronomy: a head above the clouds
what is out there? what the hell is out there?
Do you work for the Scottish Tourist Board GH?
The Western Isles are fab indeed
out here in the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we is stoned, immaculate
….the whole celestial sphere takes on an almost three-dimensional aspect with all those faint ‘deep sky’ objects twinkling away
When I lived in Sheffield and worked in Manchester I always used to travel between the two on Snake Pass but late one night it was closed (as it often is in winter) and I had to take the other road from Manchester to Sheffield (Wood-something I can’t remember).
Anyhow, this night I simply had to stop the car and get out and look at the sky. It would have been at 10’ish, cold but not freezing cold, not a soul around or a sound to be heard and the stars in the sky that night was (and remains) one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if it was just a one off due to whatever.
It’s quite sad to think most people (in this country) will never get to see the beauty of the night sky due to light pollution.
I have my gardening mojo at Defcon 5, and it’s staying there.
We’re starting to see the first bud of plums and cherries (cherry’s?) on the trees, though no apples as yet. Our redcurrant and blackcurrant plants are also now showing the first tentative buds.
Two of the three blossom’s have now given up the ghost, but the one with deep crimson flowers is still going strong, and our other ornamental tree (no idea what kind it is) has produced beautiful violet leaves (gathered together in a kind of upside-down ice-cream-cone shape), and a lilac scent.
The fruit and veg are looking very handy.
We’ve got lots of flowers on the 30 or so strawbs, and 9 of the 15 raspberry plants are now through, with some really thriving.
Veg-wise, we have sturdy carrot and beetroot shoots through, and our thirty onion plants all look in extremely good nick. The broad beans and mange-tout are starting to rocket skywards, though ironically, the rocket has barely bothered to move it’s ar*se.
We are getting plentiful lettuce and spinach, and five courgettes were planted at the weekend, after hardening-off for a couple of weeks.
The two varieties of tomato (cherry and…er…bigger)are now in planter beds in the greenhouse, and there are a couple of whopping cucumbers (ooh, Matron) just waiting to be snipped off the two plants, and lobbed into a salad.
The dill and coriander are looking good, as are the bell, cayenne and jalapeno pepper plants, though it looks like we are going to strike-out with the Latern peppers.
It’s just as well we are growing all this nosebag, because the frequency of Mrs Grass’s visits to Dobbies, will mean we have no cash left for actual food. Last week, she came home with a melon plant, a Japanese Acer, geraniums, nesturtiums (sp?), hosta’s and a somewhat sinister-sounding "spurge".
All-in-all, it’s so-far-so-good, though I myself have only sampled the lettuce as yet.
I can confirm, however, that the grass is a
complete
ba*stard to cut, so it’s not all positive.
We really wanna see those green fingers….
All-in-all, it’s so-far-so-good, though I myself have only sampled the lettuce as yet.
This is a prime example of what happens to, who was once a respected authority of horseracing has turned into a Vegetable all because he had a bad Cheltenham!
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