I decided to grow some French pole beans (abundance) in the greenhouse as an experiment as I had enough space and wanted to see if I could get an early crop. They've only just produced the first meal. Guess what, the same variety started later and planted outside are just days behind, so it was really a waste of time and space. The leaf:bean ratio is noticeably different with the GH beans having about 5 times as much leaf area as the outdoor ones. I think I'll sacrifice and cut most of it down later, as it's now shading the melons in the late afternoon and I'll have outdoor ones large enough by the weekend:
The good news is that growing mangetout in there was a raging success - those are to the left of the beans and are the second sowing made in the same place and are just starting to set pods. The first lot were sown at the same time as the beans and have cropped, been eaten, dug out and replaced before a single bean flower even appeared!
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
Dianthus 'Rocking Red' - good colour, but always looking half dead and scraggy, even though the plants themselves are fine. So fiddly to dead head but I have to every day. How a flower dies is as important as how it lives. Regular sweet williams don't seem to have these problems.
Potentilla Monarch (picture below, centre) - good flower colour, but the flowers are so tiny, they are all a bit pointless, in my garden, at least.
Can I say everything? Crazy weather ended my dreams of a happy terrace this year. Too hot spring roasted most of my early stuff.... no rain since only knows when means all my pots are stunted and last few scorching days have frazzled my beautiful acer..... to add insult I planted up window boxes for my new neighbors and they are stunning while mine have weathered to crispy wispy mess...
new boxes and soil in everything for me next spring! Oh and a final decision I’m giving up on lobelia entirely. If it says trailing it’s invariably tall and lanky, and if it’s unmarked it just stays as a scraggy clump.
Marne la vallée, basically just outside Paris 🇫🇷, but definitely Scottish at heart.
Interesting to hear a lot of you are disappointed with grasses. Has anyone any recommendations for ornamental grasses (both smaller and larger) that perform well as part of a border?
Ordering 84 million bells plug plants when I meant to order 48. Planting carex as the thriller in the middle of a number of pots. They were too small and got swamped by the 84 million bells.
Ordering 84 million bells plug plants when I meant to order 48. Planting carex as the thriller in the middle of a number of pots. They were too small and got swamped by the 84 million bells.
84 Million? What the hell did you do with them?!
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
Tried for height in the new bed, with little choice, so put in sweetpeas. They are on a wigwam , but will they grow up, no they have just taken over.🙄 Bought from T&M ,just to give them a second chance, shouldn't have bothered. Have another go at courgettes, they are covered in black fly and look manky.🤢
Interesting to hear a lot of you are disappointed with grasses. Has anyone any recommendations for ornamental grasses (both smaller and larger) that perform well as part of a border?
I like miscanthus and use it in a few places.
It's stipa that looks great initially with little "explosions" at the end of each stalk, like mini fireworks. But then it grows, rains, flops everywhere and looks terrible after a while.
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new boxes and soil in everything for me next spring! Oh and a final decision I’m giving up on lobelia entirely. If it says trailing it’s invariably tall and lanky, and if it’s unmarked it just stays as a scraggy clump.
Bought from T&M ,just to give them a second chance, shouldn't have bothered.
Have another go at courgettes, they are covered in black fly and look manky.🤢
It's stipa that looks great initially with little "explosions" at the end of each stalk, like mini fireworks. But then it grows, rains, flops everywhere and looks terrible after a while.