Gran/Grandads Gardening Corner

Good grief, Mamie. Forty raised beds? You must have acres of garden - or do you run a nursery?

Wow! Not we.

Only half an acre and beds are mostly 1.2 metre square. We distribute plants and exotic veg around the village (our French neighbours are sometimes a bit bemused) and freeze lots for the winter. ?

Sounds lovely, Mamie.

Well done - we have much less. Half to potatoes, the other half lettuce onions beetroot and various beans.
No tomatoes this year.
Might put some peppers in later. Herbs are elsewhere.
BTW re potatoes - we planted 3 rows in March, another 3 in April. The earlies are nearly ready, flowers starting to fade.
But the others look healthy but have no sign of flowers - will they still produce fruits?
I can't remember what kind they were.

We don't really eat potatoes - see low-carb thread. ?
Disaster on the fruit front here. We had three very hard frosts in early May and lost all the plums, peaches, apricots, cherries and apples. The last are a catastrophic loss for Normandy.
My roses are very late too. The frost took out all the buds. ?

I am still trying to grow strawberries (never had much success) with some different 'guaranteed' plants given by a kind friend. Have put straw underneath but still a tiny black slug has eaten into the first ripe one and a bird has pecked the second nearly ripe one.

The ants are eating mine! I read that they hate the smell of mint leaves so scrunched some up and put them round the plants - now they are eating the mint. ?
Maybe try organic slug pellets around (but not touching) the plants, Jalima?

Thanks Mamie - I may go and do that now!

In fact, we have a few pesky ants which keep appearing in the kitchen (can't find anything that they are after) and I read today that peppermint oil is good to wipe along their trail - apparently it overpowers the trail of pheronomes left by the lead ant!

I think these are the tiny slugs that live in the soil rather than the big ones that march across the garden at night.
The second one definitely had been pecked, much as like our blackbird and his song I don't want him eating my strawberries.
DH has covered them with some netting for the time being.

For the tiny slugs (actually it works for big ones too), have you tried naematodes? You buy them on line, they arrive invisibly in a small plastic container in sawdust stuff. Mix with water, water in round your strawberries or hostas or whatever and they deal with the slugs biologically. I bought my first lot via Amazon and it / they really seemed to make a difference.

For strawberries - husband made a range of 4 rows of wooden troughs, fixed to a wall of our house, plants them there.
So far no slugs, no weeds, easy to water and pick.
He hasn't renewed them yet, I'll try to post a picture when they're ready.

Thanks Icyalittle

I did think of baskets but if we go away they're one more thing to water.
Or a hydroponic system

Or Waitrose, which is what we ate tonight!

It's strange, because we get little Alpine strawberries seeding themselves all over the garden and nothing goes for those at all.

Thanks for that warning Shysal. Since introducing a Black Barlow to my wild grannies I now have a fantastic range of colours and would be devastated if this disease would kill off aquilias indiscriminately. Will keep a beady eye out.out.

Oooops just catching up with this thread.

The lawn advice I followed (after trying everything else)was to buy 2 strips of turf (B and Q's best) and cutting patches out of it and replacing the bits that had been decimated by the moss killer. We tried seeding and re-seeding so many times but to no avail, as the seed just wouldn't germinate. The patching has worked a treat and DH is feeding it every week too. Its looking really good. Just want a bit of sunshine to enjoy it now. 3 days of solid rain here on the NE coast.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201707/medium-152437-dahlia.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201707/medium-936989-dahlia2.png

Thought I would get this thread going again. I expect our gardens are at their best at the moment. I spotted these 'Happy Days' dahlias at my local plant centre this morning when looking for something to fill a gap on the patio. Only £10 for two. The photos don't do it justice, the foliage is almost black and the flowers a deep purple, or they also had crimson. They were selling like hot cakes.

I could be generous and say my garden is a riot of colour at the moment, but while it is very colourful it is a bit of a mess (job for tomorrow), with things going over, and we will have a lag phase before other things, like the agapanthus, hollyhocks and yellow and pink rudbeckia come through. Dahlias and lilies are holding the fort though. I never seem to get it quite right, and all my roses apart from one have been a complete disaster this year. That's a nice dahlia, shysal! I like the dark foliage varieties.

Our garden was at it's best a month ago. Having to scatter some pots of various plants around now to fill the gaps.Lawns need rain badly as well.
Tomatoes doing well though, and herbs.

I have a wild rambling rose in the garden it's just finished flowering and the leaves are now getting completely decimated eaten down to just leaving the veins only left It seems like some caterpillar but I can't see anything on it anywhere
Any ideas ?

Could it be these Bluebelle?

www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=196

Sorry Bluebelle can't help but I also have a rose problem.

We have two fairly new climbers. When they bloomed I cut off each dead flower stalk to a 'joint'. Some have re-grown strong shoots with new buds. Others are sprouting what look like suckers from 'joints' all the way up the stems. These are very soft and carry no buds. I have never had this happen before. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Please?

Our clematis seem to be looking better with a good top dressing of shrub compost.
We may have some flowers on Hagley Hybrid at last although Mr President still looks quite sickly.

I don't know Jalima I can't see any eggs or any sign of ANY insect or caterpillar they are just stalks and veins left
Talking about clematis I ve had one in the garden about 20 years it grows prolifically the greenery covers a shed and a wall but it's NEVER had a flower on it not one Any ideas about that

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201707/medium-367350-climber.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201707/medium-141863-leaf-cutter.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201707/medium-194393-bug-hotel.png

cornergran, I am definitely no expert rose grower. I bought my first climber this year. I have only had one flower so far! One of the main stems is doing as you describe, with shoots at nearly every joint. I wonder if this is the way climbers grow.
I was also interested to see a leaf-cutter bee dragging a piece of rose leaf into my bug hotel. It has left neat semi-circular holes on the plant.

Bluebelle perhaps they have feasted and now turned into flies and flown away.

The large rose sawfly (Arge pagana) will produce two (sometimes three) generations from May to October. Arge ochropus usually has a single generation in early summer, but sometimes there is a second generation in late summer.

Eats shoots and leaves as they say.

Wham, bam, thank you maam kinda fly.