Kitchen Garden Forum

Is everybody busy gardening?

A plea to the KG editors: please promote this website a little more in the magazine! We need some new members. I have had some great gardening advice over the years on this forum and also really appreciate the friendship and general banter.

Hello Monika, I think it does get quieter this time of the year. I am here trying to use an old laptop while I am waiing for my new PC to be installed. Having to reset passwords etc. is driving me nuts. Beautiful day here in the south I would much rather have been over the lottie. I still have lots of topping up to do with wood chip to my paths. Otherwise I think I am fairly up to date. Now thumbing the new catalogues and trying to decide what to order for next year. My main order has been done but would like something different. I try to do at least one new veg.each year. I like the sound of the new dwarf Broad Bean by Seeds of Distinction, Robin Hood. I've not grown BB for some years now. Not my fav. veg but willing to give it a go again.

regards
Beryl.

Evening all, i've been tied up with all sorts of stressful paperwork just lately, but normal postings will soon resume.

Lovely day here today....

...and I've been tied up with buckets of Bindweed....

Clive.

Agree Monika - promote the forum & get more folk on here to ask & advise! Maybe it is time to review the popular topics & have a little re-design. Not enough to scare off us regulars mind!

Trying not to be controversial but why is there not a Facebook page / link, a whole new audience to capture & teach so all the skills & experience that regularly appear on here is not lost but shared with everyone - anywhere in the world?

Westi
PS Might sell a few more magazines as well - there is overseas subscriptions isn't there?

Apologies for my absence but after 2 hard days grafting over the weekend, every muscle I have and a few I didn't know I had, have forced me to take it a little easier this week .

On a positive note:

all my strawberry plants and their runners have been sorted ready for winter;

all my empty veg beds have now been weeded, dug over and enriched with chicken manure pellets and himself has promised to collect a load of manure from the Garden Center in a week or so (he has some serious grovelling reparations to do after very nearly potentially killing my greenhouse carrots AND all my newly planted up strawberry runners by using Jeyes fluid to clean the outside of the LEAKING greenhouse and then spraying Jeyes on the concrete surrounding the greenhouse before hosing it all down with the 'water jet' nozzel and sweeping it into the greenhouse!). Thankfully I got the carrot tub out of the way before the puddle reached it and under cover before the leaking panels allowed any to get to the young plants! I was not a happy bunny though, I can tell you ;

all the canes, labels and plant rings have been gathered up from around the garden and the latter 2 of these are now awaiting cleaning; and also

all the root veg and potatoes have been dug up from the school garden and the potatoes were served at school today as part of 'Roast Dinner Day' as was the kale.

VPM
x

OH said "I've been tied up with all sorts"

I missed that one

oldherbaceous wrote:Evening all, i've been tied up with all sorts of stressful paperwork just lately, but normal postings will soon resume.

Lovely day here today....

Are you appearing after Starbucks before the Select Committee to be quizzed about your "ahem" creative accounting practices in relation to HMRC?

Simply brilliant.. you lot can really be the best tonic anyone ever needs.

Planning and house selling has been the problem.

I have been looking at the forum regularly every day. If I haven't replied it's because there was nothing that I had anything to contribute to. I suspect a few of our regular visitors have felt the same. As for a Facebook page, lord forbid; we get enough spam advertising kitchens (!) on the forum as it is. It's impossible to discuss things on Facebook when one topic just follows another and posts get hidden - at least they do on any pages I've seen. We need some of the old members and some of the old enthusiasm back.

The season we have just had has not done a great deal for enthusiasm levels, I fear.

Mind you, we have a good few enthusiastic newcomers at the lottie. I hope it lasts.

I agree with Alan in that I just haven't seen many threads that I feel I can contribute to.

I think the Facebook/Twitter idea was put forward just promote the forum on these sites not to transfer it. I know KG does have a Facebook page - I've just followed the link from the website - but it has no mention of the forum

I promote my blog on Facebook and people can follow it on Facebook but I don't actually post anything there. I think the trouble is that there are just so many gardening forums/blogs/groups out there that you really have to have something to draw people in. I get lots of invitations to join this group or other and you could end up spending all your time responding to and reading messages.

I must admit to maybe being more drawn to responding to blogs (maybe because I have one myself). I like the idea where others write about and share what they have been doing with photographs with me being able to join in and comment about what has been written or ask or give advice. The format holds my interest.

I know that the KG website has a blog but unless I've missed something it doesn't allow for comments so it's a one way thing. To me this isn't a blog just a series of articles. Maybe the forum could be more integrated into the magazine by taking some of the ideas from blogging. Maybe linking to magazine articles - you could have a short summary of any article and invite discussion on the blog. In the magazine you could invite people to add experiences or comment on articles maybe picking out some comments for publication in the next issue so you don't leave out people who haven't an Internet connection.

Just my wild rambling thoughts!

glallotments wrote: I know KG does have a Facebook page - I've just followed the link from the website - but it has no mention of the forum

Thanks for that. I never knew it existed. Though having had a look at it my fears were borne out - no discussion, very little apart from self-advertisement - typical Facebook!

alan refail wrote:

glallotments wrote: I know KG does have a Facebook page - I've just followed the link from the website - but it has no mention of the forum

Thanks for that. I never knew it existed. Though having had a look at it my fears were borne out - no discussion, very little apart from self-advertisement - typical Facebook!

I didn't until today - I'm no Facebook or Twitter fan either!