Tell me about your gardening methods

Anything I grow in my garden has to be able to withstand the onslaught of a greyhound zooming around or helping himself to :laugh: I have a hazel tree and an elder tree in the back garden, and an elder tree, an apple tree and blackberries in the front garden. He doesn't touch the elder trees or the apple tree, but hazelnuts and blackberries are an open invitation for him to pick his own. I did plant the pepper seeds in large flower pots, but as the garden is north facing they are rather slow to grow and have now been brought indoors. Herbs are grown indoors, but were not necessarily safe from the cats. I've had to do a bit of rearranging.
 
ElizabethB said:
The rickety part is why I switched to table height boxes rather than ground level boxes.
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I used to watch ABC's "The Chew" regularly. On one show, chef Michael Symon showed how to build a raised bed using wooden pallets and, I think, saw horses. That would work for me, except that I would have to put the base on wheels and chase the sun through the yard each day!
 
The last of the peppers and basil with fennel and a sage bush behind

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Rosemary:

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The ridiculously long garden (good for playing ball with the dog):

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@morning glory I'm in envy of your Rosemary tree! We had to replace our Rosemary plant this year, don't know why but the old one just wasn't very happy. In my herb bed we also have Thyme, Bay, Mint, Tarragon, Sage, Oregano, Chives and Lemon Verbena.

I've not taken any photos of the garden this year and both the garden and the allotment are looking a bit bare now, so these are all photos from last year (or before!)....

Our garden was a blank canvas when we moved in....literally. Its was a new build house and the "garden" was a patch of mud and weeds:
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We had it landscaped to give us 3 fairly high raised beds for veg and space for a greenhouse:
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Despite it facing north west, we still get a fair amount of sun and successfully grow a range of things like tomatoes and chillies in the greenhouse, and cucumbers, salad leaves, spring onions, leeks and carrots outside. We now also have two fan-trained pear trees against the back fence....we even had baby fruits on one of them this year, but sadly no harvest as the pesky squirrels pinched them all :devil:

We grow most of our veg on the allotment though - this is a picture of half of our allotment from last year. Since then we have finished constructing the other 6 beds on the left hand side (where you can see the plastic covering the ground in the photo):
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On the allotment this year we grew garlic, onions, shallots, potatoes, broad beans and red kidney beans (the red kidney beans weren't anywhere near as sucessful as last year's borlotti), celeriac, parsnips, cabbages, brussel sprouts, rhubarb and strawberries.
mEiZ6R
mEiZ6R
nB3O0m
 
morning glory said:
I'm very impressed by your gardening skills and your very organised allotment. How do you find time to look after it all?
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It actually doesn't take all that much looking after - a few hours on a weekend every few weeks is about it. At planting and harvest time of course it gets a bit busier, but outside those times there isn't much to apart from weeding :( and watering when it gets hot in the summer. Luckily the allotment is only 5 minutes down the road so its easy to pop down there.

ElizabethB said:
@MrsDangermouse
Beautiful garden! Impressive.

Now you need to explain to me what an allotment is. Is it the same as a community garden in the U.S.?
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Thanks :D
I think an allotment may be different from your community gardens....basically its an area of land (usually owned by the local council) which is split into various size plots. Each plot is rented out fairly cheaply to local people who use it to grow (almost) whatever they like. There's usually a huge waiting list for allotments in the UK because sadly many sites have been sold off for housing over the years :( We are very lucky that when they built the estate we live on the developer had to provide the allotments as part of the planning permission and as they're only a couple of years old there hadn't been time for a big waiting list to build up so we only waited about 6 months before one became free.
 
ElizabethB said:
@MrsDangermouse
I assume there is a convenient water source.
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Yes there are a number of stand pipes and water troughs dotted around the site so we don't have to walk too far to fill the watering cans. Though I have heard of allotments that don't have a water supply :ohmy:....I guess the tenants on those sites have to be creative and find some way to harvest and store rainwater.
 
When I first moved into my house (which was then a Council house on an open plan estate), someone gave me some rosemary, which I planted in the front garden (in those days I only had one small dog, and used to grow various veggies and had two trees in the back garden, so there wasn't a lot of room for anything else). The Council gardeners used to come round then and look after the trees, shrubs etc which the Council had planted, They pulled the rosemary out! I used to keep iguanas, so had a little patch of dandelions too which were a great favourite of theirs. The Council gardeners pulled all that out as well. But they didn't touch the nightshade which was growing prolifically all over the estate. Work that one out :mad:
 
As if the horn worms on my tomatoes were not bad enough I just found cabbage worms devouring my cauliflower. :devil:
 
One day my cauliflower looked lovely the next day the leaves were riddled with holes. I found the nasty creatures on the bottom side of the leaves and in the center of the plant where the crown was just starting to form.
 
Garden thread. So exciting.

We live in an area with hard frosts and even after 10 years I'm still learning every year, usually the hard way. We rent but privately so we don't have many restrictions at all. The owners gave me $500 for soil and $200 for plants in my first year here as there was nothing but a house sitting on a plot of weeds and dirt.

I put a large garden across the front of the house by collecting large rocks then concreting them in then backfilling with shredded tree mulch - an entire truck load over the years I've topped it up and the soil out there is in pretty good shape now (the purchased soil went into the veggie patch) and it's been fabulous but neglected over the past couple of years so I'm embarking on a battle to get it back in shape. It's mostly flowers but I do grow herbs out there and some lettuce.

The back is more challenging as we have dogs. I originally put a huge patch in but after the dogs ate my kale a few years back I gave up for a while, now I have some very serious fencing around my veggie patch.

I put 7 advanced Grose Elise tomato seedlings in last week - I bought them 6 weeks ago in a punned for under $3 and planted them into a polystyrene box on the porch to advance until last week. Normally I start tomato from seed in those boxes but I didn't get an early enough jump on it. The cherry tom seeds I put in are still quite pathetic.

Something has been in my cucumber seedlings. I put 4 in last week and 2 are not going to survive. The stems have been snapped. No clue. Birds?

Am I boring you yet?

LoL


I'll be back.
 
@Frizz1974

Sounds like cut worms are killing your cucumbers. Dig around the base of the plants. You will probably find greyish worms curled up near the base of your plants. Cucumbers, Squash, Broccoli. Cauliflower are all susceptible to cut worms. An easy preventive measure is to plant inside of the cardboard from a toilet paper roll. Bury the tube 1/2 in the soil. The cut worms can not dig under the tube nor can they crawl over it.
 
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