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Call to all gardeners! [pics]

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Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

01:52 / 18.04.04

Bitchiekittie:

Both the corkscrew hazel & the bay trees are in (relatively large) pots. You don't need much space, just a moderate amount of light and you can grow either of these. The bay tree is especially suited to small areas, having a long (3 foot) trunk, topped by an almost spherical ball of densely leaved branches, and not needing all-day sunlight.

The corkscrew (contorted) hazel needs a reasonable amount of light and can be pruned to keep size down, if necessary.

Trees are cool, and there's so many different varieties around (many pottable (sp?)) that you can't fail to find a compatible breed, although it's worth checking on local compatabilities vis a vis climate, seasons, etc..

00:03 / 05.05.04

Spring has continued to spring. This means that the big mahogany in the front yard has shed all of its leaves in about a week. Mountains of them. Everywhere.

Nevertheless, other things are enjoying the season.

Behold:

orchid is blooming over budding pineapple, grown from grocery store pineapple top.

ripening orange mini pepper, among basil, cuban oregano, rosemary, orchids and more pepper plants (grown from seeds from dinner leftovers).

yellow pear tomatoes springing up all wild-like and unplanted at the base of an avocado sapling grown from guacamole leftovers. The tall weedy thing is a milkweed - monarch butterflies love it.

Notice drifts of mahogany leaves everywhere.

20:28 / 05.05.04

Well, I've got a whole bunch of stuff started (tis the time of year). I've got some jalapeno pepper plants growing. Two varieties, one hot...and one not. I've got a couple of hornbeam trees established from which I'll take cuttings for bonsai (I've other trees as well).

And the one I'm most excited about....I started some giant pumkin plants this year. For some reason I kind of woke up one day and said "I want to grow a 900 pound pumkin!"

What can I say, I like miniature trees and mammoth vegetables.

13:37 / 07.05.04

new pics from my garden! I'm so excited. since these were taken, I've done a lot more work and my iris, peacock orchids, and dahlias are starting to bloom.

my twin daisies, joined at the neck. these are in the front yard, though I have them all over front, back, and in pots. they're such hardy, cheery plants, how can you not love them?

I love the way my rosebushes look, even before they beging to bloom. mine are so healthy and low maintenance!

one of the line of tulips in my front yard.

my hydrangeas - this picture doesn't really do the color justice. they're so bright and cheery, I'll likely buy more and line the fence with them once I see how this one does.

this is my clematis, before I planted it in the ground. once I did, it almost immediately lost its petals, which didn't worry me much as it was also growing new leaves. a strong storm blew it off of its grip, but within days it had established a newer, tighter grip on its trellis. it's amazing - it even attached to some encroaching weeds!

a bonus shadowy cat picture!

13:47 / 07.05.04

now that you mention it, I've seen those little bay trees, and I really want one!

that pineapple looks so cute, it looks more like a novelty thing than an actual plant! I always see little mini pepper plants in the store, and they're adorable, but peppers are one of the few foods that I just do not enjoy.

I don't have nearly enough yard for a giant pumpkin patch!

my strawberries have taken over the entire back quarter of my yard, and I'm pretty sure if I let it go long enough, I'll have an attractive but overwhelming mess of a replacement for my grass!

Psi-L is working in hell

08:57 / 12.05.04

What a great thread...have recently discovered the joys of gardening, and am spending many hours pottering away in my back garden....it was completely over grown so i ripped pretty much everything out and have a blank slate to work with.

I'm wanting to plant quite a lot of vegetables...and am about to plant peas. Does anyone know how you are supposed to train them? up canes like broad beans? i seem to think that it should be along netting, but am not sure?

Bitchiekittie: beuatiful pics and love the cat...what's she/he called? am sadly not allowed pets myself...

18:46 / 21.05.04

with summer fast approaching here in the uk, my salvia divinorum plantation is exploding into unprecedented growth.

it makes me proud to have such a productive relationship!

magical, so it is.

Tryphena Absent

00:44 / 01.06.05

Now that I live in a flat with a garden I've gone mad. I've cleaned out a quarter of the flower beds of all but one plant and a young tree. The honeysuckle has been trimmed. Currently I have a list of plants that goes, perhaps not very interestingly (but I've never gardened properly before) winter jasmine, wolfsbane, hydrangea, lavender, rosemary, basil. My flatmate wants some bamboo. Any suggestions more than welcome...

02:56 / 01.06.05

hey what do I plant all these tomatoes in
what kind of soil

03:00 / 01.06.05

hey go look at my cactus photo on the last page -- they were so cute & tiny

all grown up (same pot):
http://photos9.flickr.com/13493260_be93e6222f.jpg

08:52 / 01.06.05

A while ago I was having a bit of a shit time of things. On my dad's suggestion I bought a potted plant, to look after and perk up my spirits. Three years later that sprout has turned into a towering 4ft triffid of botanical fuuuuryyyyy

Pictures later today if I can find my camera.

08:53 / 01.06.05

And now I want some bamboo.

09:45 / 01.06.05

Nina - come to Columbia Road flower market one Sunday and have a look - then we can meet up as well - the market gets quite packed later in the morning/early afternoon though...

13:40 / 01.06.05

nina - this is the first real yard I've ever had, because I've either lived in apartments or in houses where someone else was in charge. everything I do is very trial and error, and I'm in absolute awe of the handiwork of the woman on the corner, who has created these lovely, and neatly ordered yet natural-looking layers in her garden.

I currently have two boxes of herbs, one with rosemary and basil, the other with dill and spearmint (the last of which I don't actually use to cook with, but it grows well and smells so nice). it gets far too cold here to leave it out in the winter, so I keep them in a planter and will bring them in when it gets cold, because there's nothing nothing nothing like freshly plucked herbs! and I think your garden sounds interesting - definitely very nice smelling, too

dwight - I use the dirt that's enriched with fertilizer, because I'm too lazy to actually fertilize as recommended. if it's not super low maintenance, it's not going to make it at my house. I've noticed that they seem to grow better if put into the ground rather than a pot, but that's almost certainly more to do with my lack of experience than an actual issue with potted tomatoes (because I know at least one person who have had potted plants that produced quite well).

and lovely cacti! I never see the really pretty ones here.

ms triplets - I'm so bad with houseplants! I tend to sway towards the tropicals, which apparently like to get nice and dry between waterings, but I either tend to let them get TOO dry or I overwater them and rot the roots. I'm very glad you've had better luck with yours.

kit kat club, you should take pics of your market - I love markets, and would like to see if the offerings over there are much different than what they tend to have here.

13:49 / 01.06.05

Have you planted your tomatoes yet, HF? I can ask R what he uses. He's the tomato king. He does some special mix.

14:15 / 01.06.05

If you have room to make compost, tomatoes love compost. Especially (and this is odd) compost made from tomato plants. We composted this year and there are tomato plants in the garden that are as tall as I am.

I wish I could post pictures of my veggie garden this year. You really wouldn't believe it.

15:18 / 01.06.05

I bought this stuff called 'amend' -- it's not soil really, just something you mix with the soil. I figured I'd do half amedn and half dirt from the yard, only it turned out the 'dirt from the yard' is in fact one big rock that threw off sparks and laughed at me when I swung a shovel at it. So for now, they're in a big plastic tray, with a bagload of amend just kind of dumped on top of them.

Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

More photos, everybody.

15:34 / 01.06.05

I am a man of my word

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Image hosted by Photobucket.com

They grow up... grow up so fast!

18:15 / 01.06.05

Once again, I've moved to a different house and am trying to encourage some non-citrus fruit trees to do their things.

Breadfruit is A-OK, one of the jackfruits is doing better than the other, and the durian might not survive (but I was surprised to get one to begin with). The mangosteen is lingering on, which is nice.

We've got a tomato in a pot, lettuce in a pot and broccoli in a pot. Pineapples in the ground (two are fruiting now). Lots of ferns this go-round.

Nina: I always seem to plant bamboo and then move away from it. Things you should know --

* That "lucky bamboo" you find in glass vases in feng shui shops or wherever isn't really bamboo... it's some kind of river plant that I *think* is related to water chestnuts.

* Bamboo comes in two basic types, the running kind and the clumping kind. The running kind grows fast and is *incredibly* invasive, so if you want the large, fast-growing stuff, you really need to keep it contained. Or else all your neighbors will have it too. Most responsible nurseries sell clumping varieties. There's plenty of variation among them -- some can get pretty darn big and some have very showy stems, and pretty much every climate zone has a few bamboo species that do well there.

* Regardless of all their different qualities, pretty much all varieties like a fair amount of water and an awful lot of food. So don't plant alongside stuff that gets easily burned by overfertilization.

18:30 / 01.06.05

Jungle Giants is in Shropshire.

There are more links here, at the JapanGarden.co.uk site. Their bamboo section seems pretty cool.

18:39 / 01.06.05

Grant, how the shit do you grow a pineapple plant? I want one of those kitsch mini ones you had growing further up!

18:40 / 01.06.05

Cheers for the bamboo links

13:35 / 02.06.05

Grow a Pineapple in Four Easy Steps

1. Buy a pineapple and eat it. Peel it first and (this is the important part) cut off the spiky stuff at the top.

2. Get a pot and put dirt in. Or, you know, just clear a space in your yard. Make soil black and good.

3. Put the top in the pot. Or in the cleared space. Top pot. Pot top. Toppot pottop. You don't need to bury it, just make sure the butt end of it is in good contact with the dirt.

4. Water it and, once it seems to be rooting, toss on a handful of plant food. The leaves will grow and eventually a shoot will shoot up in the middle that'll grow into another pineapple plant. In very slow motion, it looks a bit like a rocket taking off, only shaped like a pineapple and attached to the ground with a stem. Wooosh! Tropical goodness!

You'll know when it's ripe by the smell moreso than the size or the color. Leave it on as long as possible before cutting off.

16:23 / 02.06.05

grant, those mahogany leaves are quite pretty, and I like how you're growing all this stuff from your own food

I want to try that

16:29 / 02.06.05

If you want to contain invasive-type bamboo, the technique my parents used was to sink a half dozen of those square cement paving stones around the plant. On edge, of course. I think my father filled in the cracks with cement, forming a barrier which the plant can't get through. Seemed to work, although they moved out of that house a year later. Maybe the old neighbourhood's now covered in bamboo...

Question: I feel the need to have a plant in my flat. However, it must be able to survive with relatively low light. I live in a ground-floor flat and need to keep my curtains closed to hide the comp and CD/DVD collection. So the only daylight that comes in is through a window high up one of the walls. Might as well call it a skylight even though it's vertical. Any suggestions?

19:03 / 02.06.05

Mushrooms?

Actually, most of the things you find on rainforest floors do OK in low light.

The first thing that comes to mind is spathiphyllum, or peace lily (they clean the air, too). More ideas here.

Monstera deliciosa is, as the name implies, delicious, too, if you've got a big fucking pot.

Tryphena Absent

15:36 / 03.06.05

Oh no! Huge thunderstorms outside, what if my tiny, sweet lavender plant dies? Mind you, it's meant to be watered to take, so perhaps this will help? Eek.

16:21 / 03.06.05

pothos is the very best low maintenance plant, a standard office plant. you can't possibly overwater it and it will begin to droop a little when it needs water, but it's very tolerate of bad conditions - it doesn't even need dirt to thrive. no matter how awful you are with plants, its near impossible to kill.

of course, it's not terribly interesting, just green leaves, but you can coax it to climb and cling, and it's terrific for filling in spaces with a little green. I like to keep a sprig in with my bettas, and it will grow so well that you need to keep it trimmed so it won't crowd out the fish!

I've seen it sprout little nubs which it used to cling to an ordinary interior wall, and climbed up the ceiling. it was really cool.

16:23 / 03.06.05

ms triplets, I love your plant! it's so green and healthy looking, it almost looks fake.

02:03 / 05.06.05

Nina: just replicate as closely as possible wherever it is that lavender grows wild. I'm sure it rains there sometimes.

if it's in a pot and water seems to collect in it, dump the pot over to drain the water (and consider repotting with rocks in the bottom to ensure drainage).

Tryphena Absent

02:36 / 05.06.05

I've stuck it in a sunny (but not too sunny) flowerbed. I shall monitor it closely.

Today I planted a Hydrangea that I'm not worried about at all because the conditions are precisely as described, a Clematis, which I worried about for 10 minutes and then realised the ground was still wet so I didn't need to soak the root ball that thoroughly. A Hollyhock, which I'm going to need to feed at some point to keep healthy and a couple of other plants, I can't recall what they're called, one with small purple flowers that I couldn't resist but looks very happy and I think Catlin's Giant for the corner that's shaded by the honeysuckle. If worst comes to worst and they look ill I shall replant them in pots and tend them like they are my own flu-addled children.

15:42 / 06.06.05

Does looking at them give you satisfaction?

Tryphena Absent

16:29 / 06.06.05

Oodles!

19:11 / 06.06.05

ms triplets, I love your plant! it's so green and healthy looking, it almost looks fake.

Do not take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks!

Thanks for your words, the little triffid makes me proud so he does. I wouldn't mind moving out to some outdoor types if it weren't for a possible flat move by November.

Now for that pineapple...

16:05 / 07.06.05

Be aware that your triffid is a rubber plant, and if you stick it in the ground anywhere near plumbing, it'll find a way to get roots in your pipes.

"Near" being a few hundred feet.

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