Gardens, plants etc 2020

Hi Ruth ruthjp

Growing potatoes using bought compost should be fine, if you use it next year, try to get your hands on well rotted horse manure (some of the bigger garden centres may sell it in bags or in pellet form in tubs) I met 2 different ladies who have horses through my job when I was working - 1 had one or two horses and was married to a farmer so the manure was spread over the land and she showed me where they built up the pile and to take as much as I wanted.

The other lady worked for someone who kept 21 horses and she and her partner had to muck them out daily. She showed me where they kept the very large mound of manure. Every so often she has to PAY a local farmer to take it away. She told me to take as much as I wanted and to tell my friends to come too.

Bought compost in bags will have moisture retaining material and the advice is to keep it moist, not waterlogged or the potatoes may rot, but be aware that even should it rain, don't be complacent. As the rain falls on a bag that has many leaves, the rain has a tendency to bounce off the canopy of leaves and not to fall onto the compost (makes sense when you think about it). 

Happy growing Ruth

Tvman xx 

Thanks for the tips xx

Hi Gragon

Whilst reading your post to Ruth (and all of us of course), I'm thinking "here's someone with a bit of experience .

Potatoes and courgettes are hungry critters and they welcome lots of nutrients. Homemade compost doesn't have the most nutrients but it's really good for conditioning the soil. Homemade compost should be made with roughly 50:50 green and brown compost, brown compost consists of cardboard (cut smallish, it degrades faster,) bark and little twigs.

Do you know the variety of apple tree you have and is it young? I have a large 40 yr old Discovery apple tree behind my bedroom window. (The fox was sitting under it yesterday morning) I also have 2 native Irish trees across the road in the orchard, Ardcairn Russet and Keegan's Crab which is not a crab apple tree but a normal eating apple. 

I'm not sure if you know that not all apple trees are not self pollinating, some need to have another tree that is in flower at the same time to cross pollinate with, even a self pollinating tree will bear a bigger crop when cross pollinated with another. That can be a reason for an apple tree not producing fruit.

Take care and stay safe Gragon

Tvman

Thanks for the tips 

These are some courgettes in a gro bag 

Hi tvman,

I've done a bit of gardening over the years but spent most of my life watching my mum and dad garden, my brother is a gardener and I work on the basis that the aim of most plants is to grow and reproduce.  I just try to give them the right conditions and let them go.

With the potatoes i always chuck in a few handfuls of granulated fertiliser.  Over watering is less of an issue in a potato growing bag as they sit on top of the ground and drain freely, you've just got to avoid washing out all the nutrients.  With the courgette i had a friend who was a gardener at a horticultural college and he used to get a few bags of well rotted manure  cover it with a foot of so of soil and plant his courgettes in that.  It would shrink by about half over the year but he got a great crop.  My compost bin is deeper but i only put one plant in so it does fine.

The apple is fairly young and is a self pollinating variety called golden spur.  It is also supposed be columnar in its growth but although dwarf (about 2m height) it is no longer columnar but has clearly bushed out.  It does have golden delicious style fruit which crop late in the season.  Although it has cropped well in the past it didnt produce a single blossom this year to be pollinated.  Either it was focussing on putting it's strength into growth as it has lots of foliage or the birds have managed to take off all the buds as they formed.  Although it is a small town where I live there are plenty of fruit trees in the gardens around for pollination. 

I don't have a big garden but being raised in the country it doesn't seem right to just have an ornamental garden so at the very least I have always grown a few herbs.  Even at my flat when I lived in London I had a rosemary bush and garlic chives growing outside the door.

All the best 

Gragon.

Hi all

I have a few photos to upload but they won't upload here, does it work for anyone here?

Tvman

Dear tvman and Gang,

 I also have had trouble posting since Friday, thought maybe I had Chemobrain, but it looks live everyone is having trouble. I finally got out and took photos of the water lilies and the front garden, and now having trouble loading them. 

One more try here and I will stick to text for a few days

It Worked! first photo is my AG gone wild, have not been eating a lot the past week. second photo, water lilies that were hidden and now I can see them, still need to pull out dead leaves, but that's for another day, do not want to fall in. Finally my front garden, the dahlias bloomed, will cut and make arrangement tomorrow.

Cheers to you all,

Millie

Beautiful, Millie. Just beautiful. 

Yes there have been site issues and I think they are sorted now. Thanks for your  perseverance in sharing these photos. 

Xx

Lovely photos xx

Hi Millie , , fellow gardeners and non gardeners.

Magnificent Millie. I hope there's a door in the AG room because if I were you, I'd close it quickly to stop it going all round the house If your house is open plan I could bring my chainsaw over to sort it out ha ha. Seriously though, it's great to pick our own greens and eat them a few minutes later, so crisp and tasty. Also we can talk not about food miles but food feet! My little oak leaf lettuce are so big now in the sink. I have others elsewhere in a bed. I hope I can upload a photo, here goes.

Yay! It worked. Now I have a couple of photos of my strawberries in a strawberry bed I've had for 3 years. 

Now to post them, fingers crossed.

Tvman xx