Garden stuff

[ewt]

I need to do a lot more weeding.

I wnat to put black plastic and newspaper (and rocks to weigh it all down) on top of some of the areas I want to turn into vegetable beds; doing this for a month should kill off a lot of weeds growing there and make it a lot easier to dig. If I can get it done this week then I should still actually be able to dig the ground.

I'm going to need a proper compost heap as well as the enhanced hot one. The enhanced hot one is lovely, and just about handles all our kitchen waste, but it isn't big enough to take any of the garden waste. There is a lot of garden waste to go into a warm-ish heap. I need to figure out where to put it, though, and get it set up.

There is one container in the back garden that I could use for retting nettles. It's full of various sorts of garden rubbish; it was full when I got here. At this point I think I might just end up taking the contents and putting them into a binbag for the bin men; they're all mixed up, some organic waste and some not, and I seriously lack the time to sort it out properly. Besides, there are probably spiders in there.

There is also a big plastic garbage bin (full of slits, unfortunately, so no good for nettle retting unless I can repair it somehow - duct tape maybe? or just lining it with a bag?) full of clippings from the quince tree. I think they're mostly too thick to compost, but I'm wondering about chopping them up small and using them as a mulch. That will be a hard afternoon's work with loppers I don't even own yet, but should be fairly useful.

The quince and the forsythia both need to be cut back hard. I'm vaguely considering getting rid of the forsythia entirely - I can't eat it, it isn't useful medicinally, and the back corner of the garden is no place for a hedge. There don't seem to be any birds or other wildlife living in it (that'll be down to the cats that frequent our garden, then - I've counted five different ones on various occasions), so I'm not too worried about habitat loss if I get rid of it. I would like to grow more useful things there. However, I'm not sure how to get rid of it.

I also have a bit in the front garden where there used to be hedge and it has been cut down to the ground but the roots have not been removed. This would be an ideal place for lavendar, but there are roots in the way. Any ideas on how I should get rid of these? I have a feeling it involves a small saw and a lot of sweat.

I'm very pleased with the butternut squash so far. It has spread out beautifully over the whole front garden, which has helped keep the weeds down. Also there is an abundance of female flowers now; if they all produce fruit I'm going to be able to eat a serious amount of squash this winter, which is not bad going considering what butternut squash costs from supermarkets and how much the seeds cost me.

I really enjoyed the courgettes ksta gave me from her garden, so I want to grow some of those next year too. I think trying melons might be a little ambitious.. having said that, I have four or five squash plants this year and the yield is looking like it'll be pretty tremendous, so maybe if I had one melon, one courgette, and a few different varieties of squash (including pumpkins, YUM) it would work alright and I'd have more variety. I think it would be fun to grow gourds and then hollow them out and dry them and use them as bowls, but I'm not sure where I'd get seeds or how well it would work in this country. It'd be fun though.

I'd like a second water butt, for the front garden. The one in the back got empty a few times this summer, it wouldn't have if I had higher storage capacity. Space is very limited and the back garden is really my main growing area because there is less paving, it would be ace to get a water butt in the front too though (it could go where the bin is and the bin could come forward a bit). If I had more space, I'd have a huge network of loads of water butts, but I don't have.

The landlady said she would get someone to haul the rickety falling-down shed away, but it is still there. I need to phone her about this (among other things), because the shed a) makes lots of shade and b) takes up a lot of ground space that would be better used for vegables. Maybe I can take it apart myself and stick it under the picnic table (which really also needs to go!), anyone want to help with this?

I don't know what garden equipment is in the locked shed, it looked like mostly DIY stuff to me when I saw it last.

The lean-to area beside the locked shed is still full of random crap; I'd like it to be full of my bicycle instead. Moving the stuff out of it is going to prove highly impractical until the falling-down shed is gone, though.

It's coming up to time to plant things like raspberry canes and blueberries. I need to prepare the soil and acquire the plants. I also need to look at some of the 'gardening calendar' things in my various gardening books and figure out what I should be doing at this time of year. I know I've missed the window for some of the winter things, already.

The three tomato plants continue to provide me with a small tomato salad once or twice a week. There are some really big ones coming up to ripening now. YUM.

One of the Scotch Bonnet chili plants has an actual little teensy tiny chili on it. This is exciting, I didn't know if I'd be getting any fruit on it at all. I think I will probably have to bring it inside to ripen, if the other pepper plant is anything to go by. I don't mind this though; Solanaceae are perennials in their native habitat.

I know growing potatoes is generally done from, um, potatoes. Is it possible to save seeds from the fruits (yes, potato flowers make fruits, and yes, mine have, no, they're not good to eat afaik)? Would it be safe to eat the tubers grown from such a plant? I'm curious. Seeds are a lot easier to store, and keep better, than potatoes.

Time for some lunch.

Comments

[redcountess]

I find the RHS calendar good for telling me what needs doing when:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/calendar.asp

Perhaps you could hire someone through college to come and do the heavy work like removing the shed and grubbing the hedge stumps from the front?

[ksta.livejournal.com]

we are STILL eating green beans. THe fridge is full of them, luckily there are no more in the garde now. Mum has boiled some up in jars, as she desn't like the way they freeze.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

also, at some point when I have some time (ha!), I would like to point out that I am available for destruction work. I love destroying things. This includes mowing lawns, or breaking things, or dismantling things. I'm sure we could work out some form of thing in return, like trumpet lessons, ra ra ra. This is assuming you don't want to do it yourself of course.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I'm quite happy to do some of it for myself; I suspect the shed is a big job requiring at least two people, though. Besides I'm afeared of the spiders.

I'd be happy for you to come and help and then I'll give you a trumpet lesson afterwards, some afternoon.

Wht are you doing Wednesday?

[ksta.livejournal.com]

will be in the office till 5.30 prob.

[knockoutapathy.livejournal.com]

I've decided it's time for me to stop talking and start learning. So, my first question to you is, what's nettle retting?

Also, isn't it/wouldn't it be somewhat nice to have a picnic table? Or is it just a piece of shit?

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

The picnic table is rotten. The benches are no longer safe to sit on, painting it now will not help any and with time the whole thing is going to collapse. It was already beyond help by the time I moved in, I think perhaps the paint that was used on it wasn't suitable for outdoor things.

Having a picnic table will be nice, both for eating outside and for using as a work table to do gardening things, but the existing one has to go.

Nettle retting is part of the process of preparing nettles for spinning into thread. The idea is to put them in warm-ish water and then leave them for a few weeks to do their thing, this breaks down the pectin in them without destroying the long fibres. After that you wash them (wearing gloves! the liquid is caustic by this point), dry the fibres, and spin them. I've never done it before, and I've only really spun with wool, so it will be interesting to find out just how hard it is to do.

I'll be sure to update here (and probably also at techipcom) with results.

[knockoutapathy.livejournal.com]

Cheers. :) I've added your community, I reckon I could learn some things from it, if you'd like to accept me for joining.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I've not received any record of your trying to join, so can't approve your membership. Note that adding a community to your friendslist and requesting to join it are different!

I've tried to use the invite function before but it doesn't seem to work very well at all:(

[knockoutapathy.livejournal.com]

I know there's a difference, and I even read your user-info which says note the difference, and I STILL did it wrong. I am le fool.

I've done it now.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

ooh, ta for the tip.

Using less plastic = good!

[zaniyah.livejournal.com]

I have used a good, thick (about 6 inches) layer of dead leaves and that worked quite well.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Not sure where I'd get that many leaves unless I stole them from Greenwich Park.

I suppose I could, though. Last year there were evil men with leafblowers there, perhaps they would let me have some leaves. I'd even bring a rake...

[zaniyah.livejournal.com]

Don't use rhododendron, beech, laurel or yew leaves. Chestnut, sycamore, maple, etc should work well.

[juliet]

Or cardboard. (also has the advantage of rotting down).

[qadira.livejournal.com]

My husband used the small electric chainsaw (we still don't know where it came from, it just seemed to sprout in our garage one day. maybe my Mom left it behind when she moved) to attack the lilacs. But that only works until you get close to the dirt, then the chain gets clogged up and it's just not safe OR effective. So we abandoned the lilac bush project early on. In the back, there are a lot of elms, which are the weediest trees after lilacs that I have ever known. Earlier this summer, what The Spouse did was to clear away anything burnable from around the stumps, and then laid charcoal bricquets (sp??? augh) on them, dowsed them in lighter fluid, and set them on fire. the charcoal gave them a good long slow burn, and only the ones that didn't get much char have sent up new suckers.

He didn't repeat the trick, though. I think if one were to want to chop/dig them out below ground level, that some hacking at the charred parts, and then repeating the process a couple times might work. just be sure to be there the whole time, with plenty of water /dirt to hand to smother it if the flames leap out of control.

my MIL says for anything that has shoots & leaves, to use a Roundup type herbicide, the sort that penetrates the leaves and kills the roots. I haven't done that, because I'm fairly anti-pesticide and herbicide. I happen to really like wildlife, am fond of my cats even though they drive me nuts, and love my children. Not interested in turning my domain into a toxic dump.

Potatoes. never heard of growing them from seed. ever. eating-potatoes from the grocery may have been treated and not grow plants, so I'd test sprout a spud or two before relying on that source. cold-storage/root cellars are the only things I've heard of for saving seed potatoes.

[wildcelticrose.livejournal.com]

I so miss having a garden (gave up house, garden and greenhouse in the divorce)

Some day...

~L

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Find out whether you can get an allotment locally? There are loads of them in the UK for people who have no gardens, although waiting lists in some areas are long.

Do you at least have a south-facing windowsill somewhere? I've seen websites around devoted entirely to growing your own food indoors with no garden. It's more expensive than just putting seeds in the ground and applying water and hope, but probably still less expensive than the same produce from pesticide-treated greenhouses halfway across the country.

[oban23.livejournal.com]

Gone all physiocratic, have you?

[zaniyah.livejournal.com]

We have a forsythia in our current garden. I think you can only get rid of it by cutting it down to the ground and then digging the roots out. I think they are used in chinese herbalism sometimes but they are quite poisonous and not used in Western herbal medicine AFAIK.

You are right, the only way of getting rid of those roots is a saw and hard work.

I've never heard of anyone growing potatoes from their fruits, only from the smaller tubas (the ones too small to bother preparing for eating). The fruits themselves are poisonous. (You probably know this already, but the potato is a member of the nightshade family, as is the tomatoe. You may have noticed that the fruits and flowers are similar to those of woody nightshade.) Usually it is best to just pluck off the flowers from the potatoes so that the plant puts all its energy into growing the tubas instead of the fruits.

I have a load of seeds I was going to put in my garden that I can't now - sweetcorn, peas, calendula, poppies, foxgloves, which I can post to you if you would like.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Ah, I forgot about picking the flowers off the potato plants. I think I'd best do that tomorrow. Yes, I know they are nightshade blah blah blah, but thanks for telling me anyway.

Maybe I should save some of the fruit and see what happens if I do grow it from seed.

I'd be very glad of those seeds if you don't mind posting them.