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Twitchaldinho wrote

that is a small selection of the rocks that came out the ground yesterday

Ooh rocks rock, you gotta love the rocks man .

Twichaldinho wrote:

StonedSince'67 wrote: ..yes please ... i had a look at Heuchera in google images and there are quite a few different colour patterns in the family

Here ya go. Taken after watering like, 10 minutes ago. I trimmed off a few of the larger, and more droopy, older stems yesterday before planting. Would it benefit from a more severe haircut?

Beautiful plant right?

I intend to dig it up again later in the year, along with any of the other seedlings that take in the bed, then bulk up the bed I have dug with some compost or other soil suggestions you may make. Eventually having a nice raised bed running almost all the way down the side of the garden. Btw, that is a small selection of the rocks that came out the ground yesterday

Yes that is indeed a beautiful plant
I would give it a while to settle in before I took anymore off it

As for the rocks, I have had a fairly sizable crop of them from mine
Most of them have come in handy for using in the garden, even the small stones

its been a couple of weeks since I last posted some photos of mine so just taken a few
the view from the bedroom window








An out of focus Bullfinch (I think)


And a few close ups of flowers I had on the camera
the foxgloves growing wild in next doors bit




And some of the California poppies again growing wild




It could just be me, but I find taking photos of it every couple of weeks seems to make me notice the way it changes even more
as it sort of sneaks up on you when you see it every day then you look at a photo & think was that only 2 weeks ago!!
Like I said probably just me

TTFN

Twichaldinho wrote:

StonedSince'67 wrote: ..yes please ... i had a look at Heuchera in google images and there are quite a few different colour patterns in the family

Here ya go.



Beautiful plant right?

yes you are right and the stunning colour of the plant is a nice contrast to the colours of the grass, the soil and the rocks

Twichaldinho wrote:I intend to dig it up again later in the year, along with any of the other seedlings that take in the bed, then bulk up the bed I have dug with some compost or other soil suggestions you may make. Eventually having a nice raised bed running almost all the way down the side of the garden.

in general plants do not like to be moved too much too soon ... my suggestion for a strategy is that before you move anything, you have already constructed and prepared a small section of the new raised bed for the new plants and any seedlings you wish to keep to be moved into the new bed and then left to settle in their new home ... then you can make a raised bed of the old bed which you just cleared

Twichaldinho wrote:Btw, that is a small selection of the rocks that came out the ground yesterday

what you were doing with the heuchera was gardening, what you were doing with the rocks was landscape gardening ... now you've done it all ... and you have the pleasure of buying a new spade (ps buy the best you can as it will last, i like wooden handles but there some fancy hi-tech materials about these days)

the soil of the raised bed will need the addition of lots of humus, ie clean rotted vegetable matter ... you can make your own compost over time, but buying a lot of it from garden centres will be expensive ... there may be places around your area which sell compost in bigger amounts than the bags

to keep the initial investment low you could buy just enough compost to get started the rirst year and then add additional layers from your own compost heap and other sources as mulch on the surface each year and that will build up the humus content over time

btw the new bed looks really good

got my first harvest of stringbeans today...tonight they get eaten..butter and salt

Bit of an E Coli outbreak with bean sprouts and other vegetables in Europe at the moment, that seems to be emanating from a nursery in Germany. I wouldn't want to be in northern Germany at the moment and eating out in restaurants, etc.

I had E Coli 15 years ago.

they were excellent

USBONGLORD wrote:they were excellent

Stuff always tastes so much better when it’s home grown
Just wish I had more space to get some more veg in

Dry weather gardening tips:-
And this year I think we are going to need them.

Scrape back the surface to make sure water goes to the roots
Re-use house water, collect rain water
For vegetables, step up watering two weeks before eating
Water late at night so it's absorbed before evaporating
Add a layer of mulch to keep moisture in
Don't cut the lawn too short in the summer
Put soaked newspaper under crops that need lots of water
Use screens or windbreaks to reduce effects of drying winds

Also if you can collect rain water from a down pipe, a water barrel and diverter shouldn't break the bank.

Happy green fingers folks .

USBONGLORD wrote:got my first harvest of stringbeans today...tonight they get eaten..butter and salt

USBONGLORD wrote:they were excellent

props to usbl for the early crop of beans ... mine have only just come up ... well done, they looked nice

The what was in your garden is more like it for me:

Tomato plants dead
Radish plants dead
strawberry plants dead
potatoes still ok I think, but they're under a pile of soil
Sunflower seeds just been planted - but let's face it, it aint looking good for them!

Well I thought I would post a few more photos of my garden
It has come on rather well as we have had a bit of decent/useful rain
the last month has more or less just been cutting the grass & watering it
(Oh and lots of watching the starlings squabble over the fat balls)
I have had this week off work to try to give it a bit of a looking at, luckily not much was needed
Last weekend there were a few of the annual poppies that have come up in the back to clear up
they are all growing wild and seeded on top of the weed sheet, so can get quite a size to them
but are so poorly anchored in the ground they take nothing to knock over & break
So after clearing them & chopping them up for the compost bin, I had a bit of a hacking back session on some of the other annual poppies & the pink geranium
Just to give some space to the others
The next job was riddling/sieving some the overspill compost (hidden at the back of next doors bit) got a bit to use as mulch
And made room to shift a load from the compost bin
After seeing the weather forecast for the week Monday was the only day that looked to be dry all day
So I decided to give the lawn a bloody good seeing to
Gave it a rake, then cut it, then raked it again followed buy dropping the mower to the lowest I can get away with
(I just wish my mower had proper settings Like SS67's has, so much easier than using the old wooden school ruler to roughly get the blade even)
Then even though it was forecast to rain on Monday night I got the hose out and gave it all a good soak
For once the weather did do something like they said it would so a week of sunny spells & showers/ rain followed
Come Friday I gave the grass a quick once over at it's normal cut height & then did the killer back breaking job of trimming it's edges then just gave it a good feed of liquid feed
So here is what it looks like this morning




Next doors bit staring to look good




I was mega chuffed this morning the first of the single opium poppies had opened (I was starting to panic they would all be doubles)
The Bee in this one was more luck than judgement


But the bees seem to like the doubles just as much






The sound of the bees while I was taking them first thing this morning was just amazing

TTFN

25211 wrote:Well I thought I would post a few more photos of my garden
It has come on rather well as we have had a bit of decent/useful rain
So here is what it looks like this morning

well i think your garden is looking lovely this morning ... gardens do respond well to loving care ... and it sounds like you have done a good week's work, down even to the compost level

25211 wrote:The sound of the bees while I was taking them first thing this morning was just amazing

i love gardens when they make a buzz ... and yes from your photos it looks like the bees love the poppies

your bench is nicely placed for sitting peacefully amongst all the colour and the buzzing ... it reminds me that building some simple garden benches is on my list of things to do

so far so good..got the peppers going

tomatoes,stringbeans,watermelons,etc

the cucumbers are doing great too

and here come the strawberries

happy growing kids

Looking good USBL I'm pissed I don't have a garden now