Kitchen Garden Forum

Still worrying whether to risk planting my climbing beans out. Weather forecast not favourable for next few days.
Geoff - the middle of winter seems to be the onky time keen gardeners can risk taking a holiday. An ongoing problem of worrying what,s going wrong or unattended back home!

No Robo, sadly radio and tv cuckoos dont count although for some of us it now seems to be the only way we can still hear them.

Compo wrote:Probably 150 / 200 mm of rain here in Somerset in the past few days. As for weeds, I get a lot of ground-elder, and it is not due to home made compost, just really hard to get all the white bits of root out of clay soil. If we don't add manure and other composts on our shale / clay substrate, we get a greasy clay to work with that will compact no matter whether you walk on it or not. I don't believe we can ever expect a weed free environment. As my wise 25 year old son says. 'Dad - it is what it is''

Weeds are a never-ending problem. Even if you uproot them efficiently, all the same, the seeds will fly from the neighbors and the weeds will grow again.

Another thug weed which seems to have proliferated this spring is herb bennet (or wood aven). It looks pretty at the moment with lots of small yellow flowers but I must be vigilant in cutting the tops off before it seeds!
Took the plunge this morning and planted out my dwarf and climbing French beans and a few runners. The dwarf beans are under a dense netting tunnel which I could cover with fleece, if necessary. The climbers are in a sheltered spot near a south facing wall - so fingers crossed ......

Note to self - do not try to put netting over baby brassica's as the wind is building into a gale! That's about 3/4hr of my life lost but what a feeling of achievement actually winning! Also pleased with my acceleration & interception to stop the darn thing attacking the baby fruit on Plum Beauty when it blew off!

Oh! Have I mentioned Plum Beauty once again got pollinated when no bees were around by those itsy tiny fly things that swarm the flowers! Looking forward to a good harvest if they stay on the tree!

Nothing on the teleevision appealed to me tonight so I went into catch up and put on Gadeners World from last Friday to see what Monty Don had to say about feeding plants.Nothing new there.Nothing which I (and probably 95% of gardeners)didn't know already.Got his plug in for seaweed feed and it brassed off when he mentioned compost,use "peat free".If he said it once he said a dozen times.No Mr Don I'll use what I want and will be a peat based compost which I find works for me.

The wind is certainly battering everything about, the poor plants must be getting fed up wth things year year...

I find what Monty say's is not always correct so gone off his program.

As for peat free compost whilst it is available I will carry on buying it.

Nothing wrong with watching MD with a bottle of wine to liberate the swear words. His seed sowing always annoys me compared to RHS best practice. I wish somebody would present the peat debate properly, what about the transport of the coir half way round the world and the option of burying all the stuff they use to make concoctions that don't work.

Good Oh! Gales again today! Took me quite a time to straighten up supports, reattach netting & find my bits & bobs that had blown away & re-unite the bits that ended on my plot to their rightful owners. Stakes hammered in again, more bricks found to weigh down the netting, more ties on the climbers & more wind protection around other plants. I will see when I am down next but it is getting tiresome sorting everything out.

Fortunately it appears that the temperature is going up over the next week so at least the stakes will be more secure if the wind gets up again.

About to sit down to Christmas dinner, seems almost seasonal.

It may be my fault.......I planted my tomatoes out this afternoon, in between down pours!

HELP. Seem to acquired some new inmates in my living room. ANTS. any idea's [fitted carpet ]

Hoover.
My neighbour is having the same problem, they are even appearing upstairs???
You could try peppermint oil, or is that just for spiders?

I came home one afternoon a few years ago, to find hundreds of the little buggers cirlcling around my dining room (hardwood) floor. We hoovered them all up, then ant powdered all along the outside of that side of the house. I hate using it, but sometimes you have to.

We are starting to have a problem too.
Find those circular Ant Bait stations placed near door and patio door locations are very effective but take a few days to work.
Check outside to see if there are any obvious cracks though which they're coming in - difficult as they can manoeuvre through very small spaces. We found one such space last summer where some sealing cement had come away,. My husband used some kind of aerosol foam hard setting sealant to fill the gap but it was a whiteish colour and ended up looking rather messy.

Shallot Man wrote:HELP. Seem to acquired some new inmates in my living room. ANTS. any idea's [fitted carpet ]

Feel a bit better not being on my own.