How can I find my old pictures?

[soapdragon]

MH you have put me to shame....too wet here to do anything meaningful without getting claggy - soil has gone from dry to sticky clay in a trice. Can't even step onto the soil now without my garden Crocs ending up looking like clown shoes! And as for getting the fork into the soil.........................

[fdotr]

Part of our garden got very wet in recent wet weather, and the hens have shredded it. I plan to put a fence so the section has time to recover, but some re-seeding will be needed. Is there a grass or lawn seed mix that is particularly good for chicken gardens? 

 

Separately, could someone point me to a good resource on composting, particularly for medium sized gardens (20m x 8m). I think its time to make use of that .....bedding material.

[Chick Chick]

7 minutes ago, fdotr said:

Part of our garden got very wet in recent wet weather, and the hens have shredded it. I plan to put a fence so the section has time to recover, but some re-seeding will be needed. Is there a grass or lawn seed mix that is particularly good for chicken gardens? 

 

Not used it myself yet but am planning to give this grass seed mix a go for my chickens free range area:

https://www.meadowmania.co.uk/grass-seed-for-hen-run-sp3a-1-kilo.htm

 

[Valkyrie]

In spite of the weather we've done quite well with the produce.  Butternut squashes were tardy, so next year I will start them earlier.  Plus I was late with the sweetcorn - we have cobs that look like baby corn.  Wondering if we should try it or if anyone has already and they are OK or yuk?

[Daphne]

Yuk last time I tried one!  But you could give them a go, nothing to lose. 

 

[soapdragon]

I'm feeling really frustrated now; the garden is bare (apart from a few roses still blooming which will need a good prune, if I can be brave and work out how much to reduce them by!) but needs a darn good digging over. There is dead stuff that must come out and some bulbs to go in but it's just so wet (we have heavy clay 'soil') that the soil clings to the fork and I get no further forward. Desperate for some dry weather!

[Valkyrie]

Soapy - with the bulbs, you could always plant them in a pot so that you can just sink them in the ground where you want them.  Then when they have finished flowering just lift up the pot for them to die down - or remove them from the pot and sink them in the ground if it's good weather after flowering - the roots will keep the compost together.  On the other hand the pot method might make you feel you want them moved - much easier to lift the pot and then dig the hole in a new place.  

My mum still has some of my daffs from the old house - and snowdrops!  There are tons of snowdrops and daffs here so I think they'll stay in the pots a bit longer too!  Actually I must retrieve them before the winter really hits!

[Daphne]

You may already know this, but some years ago somebody did a trial on rose pruning and showed it didn't matter if you hacked off 'x' amount with a chainsaw across all the roses, or whether you carefully pruned 'y' amount off each individual bush to an outward facing bud, you still got the same show next year!  

My own pruning technique tends to be a bit hesitant and I leave each bush about 3 ft high, but this year I am going to be more drastic and take each bush down to about 2 ft as long as there is a bud to cut above, after it has finished flowering (we have had a very warm spell).  I'll wait till its dry as I read somewhere you should avoid pruning anything if it is super wet, presumably as dieback might get into a new cut.  This should reduce wind rock and hopefully some of my newer bushes might start to thicken up a bit.  When we first moved in, my Portugeuse neighbour had been in charge of the garden and his technique was to cut everything down to about a foot.  It worked just fine, but I am not brave enough!

[Valkyrie]

I remember Geoff Hamilton doing the sawing - you could almost hear the old TV presenters taking sharp intakes of breath!  

[soapdragon]

That's interesting! I usually take ages to prune, looking really carefully at where stems join etc and thought I'd ruined one of my roses even after all that. However, it's a Roas Mundi and about 18 years old so maybe it's at the end of its life anyway? I am going to bite the bullet and cut back really hard this year.........as soon as it's dry (which may well be next year!).

The problem with putting bulbs in pots then planting the pots is that we have horrible, heavy, claggy soils that is really hard to dig; takes an age to dig a hole big enough to bury a hamster let alone a flower pot! I have ended up sticking all the bulbs saved from last spring's buys from Lidl (as flowering plants which then died back) into the big tub that had the Pink Fir Apple potatoes in earlier this year as it just happened to be there! I dug in a few trowelsfull  from our compost heap and hope that something will come up. Rather a case of 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' at this stage 

[Valkyrie]

That brings back memories of trying to bury our poor old rabbit at the bottom of the garden and finding thick orange and grey clay while it was raining hard.  I planted bulbs over the top in the hope I'd remember and not dig her up again - at the same time hoping the fox didn't find her.  No chance at all here - the depth is not much more than a foot deep and then it's bedrock and not the clay!