Gardening

[Luseth 1,749]

So, in a further effort to embed myself into the forum (or embarrass myself) I thought I would talk about gardening (I have had a nose through and it looks like I am not the only one, was particularly impressed with @Drifter 's garden!).

 

I have no idea what I am doing most of the time but I seem to have a few flowers growing 😄 (I will take some photos as everything comes into bloom over the next month or so). But yeah my garden mostly revolves around Dahlia's / Iris / Roses (they were there when we moved in). 

 

Another aspect of my gardening that I began towards the end of the lockdown, I was offered the opportunity to take on an allotment. I did so and it's been quite an experience so far (When I am next there I will take some photos and put them up alongside a before photo if I have one). This would be my first season where I have grown a substantial amount in that we got the allotment around March last year and we were in a hurry to get things in the ground (it was also incredibly overgrown by weed's which you will see from the neighbours plots when I put up a photo). 

 

So my question to you lot is related to the allotment side of things, do you grow anything that's edible in your outdoor spaces and if so what? 

 

To give you an idea of what I have growing on my allotment -

Potatos (lots of these)

Onions (lots of these as well)

Cannelini beans

Strawberries

Cauliflower

Artichoke

Tomatos

Swede

Magetout Peas

Asparagus (Only first year in the ground though)

Leeks

Pumpkins will be going in soon

 

At home I also have some lettuce, more strawberries (including pineberries and Bubbleberries), watermelon (not sure how these will go), a grapevine (still too young to get anything from) a couple of small apple trees (It looks like I will get my first apples this year), a plum tree, cherry tree, some Kale & Beetroot.

[mazzer 28]

I do a little gardening myself but nothing like you, I was wondering how everything turned out as no photos were posted... I did this, this year... in a laundry basket, turned out pretty good, I’ll see if I can find a better photo.. 

[mazzer 28]

Found this one... Wow forgot how nice it looked. 

[Luseth 1,749]

Ah @mazzer that looks ace 🙂 my arrangement skills are incredibly lacking but i do a good job of keeping things alive.

 

I will have a dig around and see if i have any photos but I dont think I took any (assumed no one here was interested when I never got a reply).

[mazzer 28]

I’ve been a member for some time now but never really came to site, had to start a new account as couldn’t remember other one lol, I’m not the best gardener , I plant and pray. I did try carrots but sadly they never grow, but I did try to do them in a basket I found in house lol.... I really hope you can find some photos I’d love to see how your garden and allotment turned out, 

[IRaMPaGe 3,111]

2 hours ago, mazzer said:

I’ve been a member for some time now but never really came to site, had to start a new account as couldn’t remember other one lol, I’m not the best gardener , I plant and pray. I did try carrots but sadly they never grow, but I did try to do them in a basket I found in house lol.... I really hope you can find some photos I’d love to see how your garden and allotment turned out, 

 

Is good to see you here on the forum Mazzer, hopefully you pop by here more often. Always nice to hear from people. 🙂

 

Shame your carrots never turned out as well as you had hoped. 

I'm sure @Luseth  has plenty of good gardening tips to share.

I would imagine the soil plays a big part in it, but I'm no gardener and dunno what I'm talking about really lol. 

[mazzer 28]

1 hour ago, IRaMPaGe said:

 

Is good to see you here on the forum Mazzer, hopefully you pop by here more often. Always nice to hear from people. 🙂

 

Shame your carrots never turned out as well as you had hoped. 

I'm sure @Luseth  has plenty of good gardening tips to share.

I would imagine the soil plays a big part in it, but I'm no gardener and dunno what I'm talking about really lol. 

It’s nice to be here again, I just forgot all about it, fog brain and old age lol..... I will do my best to come by more often .... it all depends on how interesting you lot are lmfao. 

I did put the carrots in compost maybe it was to rich, but I will give them another go next year.. 

[Luseth 1,749]

Im afraid i dont have too many phoros, i will upload the couple i have but its before things are really growing. I do have a few photos of the produce we got back this year so will put them up as well.

 

As for carrots they are actually quite difficult to get to germinate, its not something i have tried but you have to keep them wet for around 20 odd days i think.

 

Soil is often key but yeah im happy to offer some advice 🙂 on the veg side most of my knowledge i have learnt from older allotmenteers at the site.

 

The garden at home where its mostly flowers and such i have learnt just by having a go, I lean towards dahlias as my go to flower and i have a couple of photos of some of my favourites from this year so will get some up tomorrow too 🙂

[Plumbers Crack 4,033]

Carrots. Don’t grow them in ground that’s been freshly manured otherwise they’ll fork. Roots need to search for food 👍

[Luseth 1,749]

So first post with photos are from my garden, so just a quick photo of the garden and then some of the flowers I have grown this year -

 

[Luseth 1,749]

This next lot, some photos of the allotment, though things had not really gotten going yet but show's a couple of the areas -

 

[Luseth 1,749]

And final photos are some of the produce we got from our allotment this year -

[phil bottle 9,567]

Awesome 😍

 

I spent a bit of time on my mate's allotment in Tottenham this summer, just by the river, its an oasis of green and tranquility.

I mostly just drink beer there though😁

[Luseth 1,749]

Yeah it's really quite peaceful, when the weathers nice there is a lovely view from our lot as it's up on a hill. We also had strawberries, tomatos, pumpkins this year and I still have leaks growing. Generally we keep the allotment for bulk growing stuff though as it's a 15 minute drive and fuels not exactly cheap so keeping it to a trip a week is ideal and next year we are going to put more veg beds in at home and try parsnips, carrots and the such.

[Plumbers Crack 4,033]

Leeks! 👍 👏 👏👏

[mazzer 28]

Wow you got lots of veg there, I’m to old for an allotment, I have enuff with garden, can I ask? What’s the purple spike looking plant called, it’s very nice. 

Like ive said, I just plant and pray, mostly they do seem to grow, but I couldn’t say what each flower is called lol. I have taken some seed pods from some plants for next year, not really done much from seed, just normally buy from shops or garden centre. 

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

I need to invest more time into putting up some garden threads. This is great, thanks for sharing @Luseth .

 

My mum has a love for gardening and I do too enjoy seeing lovely gardens, just never knew where to start. I'm probably more into growing nice flowers than vegetables, etc, but you are tempting me to restructure the garden so we have a small patch for growing some things. I think it would help the kids too learn new things.

 

Where do you get your flower seeds from?

[mazzer 28]

On 10/23/2022 at 10:41 AM, GazzaGarratt said:

I need to invest more time into putting up some garden threads. This is great, thanks for sharing @Luseth .

 

My mum has a love for gardening and I do too enjoy seeing lovely gardens, just never knew where to start. I'm probably more into growing nice flowers than vegetables, etc, but you are tempting me to restructure the garden so we have a small patch for growing some things. I think it would help the kids too learn new things.

 

Where do you get your flower seeds from?

Maybe we could have a few Garden challengers , the basket I did was in a challenge on a facebook group I’m in. Ive not been in it long, but from looking around, they tried to grow carrots in pipes lol, strange but seem to turn out ok. Might give it ago next year. 

Hardest part for me in growing is really knowing when to start with veg and plants... I don’t seem to have patience, I like my flowers to flower right away lol, that’s prob why I buy for shops and grow from seed lol

[Luseth 1,749]

On 10/21/2022 at 2:02 PM, mazzer said:

Wow you got lots of veg there, I’m to old for an allotment, I have enuff with garden, can I ask? What’s the purple spike looking plant called, it’s very nice. 

Like ive said, I just plant and pray, mostly they do seem to grow, but I couldn’t say what each flower is called lol. I have taken some seed pods from some plants for next year, not really done much from seed, just normally buy from shops or garden centre. 

Never too old! There is a guy up our allotment who is 96! There is another who is partially blind too!

 

The spikey flower head is actually an allium, it was on it's way out when that photo was taken but if you google alliums pretty much everything that will come up will look more akin to what it is in bloom 🙂 They are quite pretty and certainly grab some attention.

 

On 10/23/2022 at 10:41 AM, GazzaGarratt said:

I need to invest more time into putting up some garden threads. This is great, thanks for sharing @Luseth .

 

My mum has a love for gardening and I do too enjoy seeing lovely gardens, just never knew where to start. I'm probably more into growing nice flowers than vegetables, etc, but you are tempting me to restructure the garden so we have a small patch for growing some things. I think it would help the kids too learn new things.

 

Where do you get your flower seeds from?

 

Veg tends to be either given to us or we keep things back from last year, i.e. all our potato's that we grow next year will be whatever we have left over this year just put in the ground 🙂

 

As for flowers, the dahlia's are my go to and you tend to pick them up as tubers or small plants. Again if they grow well and I'm particularly fond when the tuber's get over a certain size you break them up when you store them away for next year and essentially you get multiple plants of the same sort.

 

If I was to buy seeds it often varies, I have had success with a couple of stores on ebay, suttons is quite good as well or dt browns 🙂 But otherwise most of my stuff tends to come from a little garden centre I found a few years back that I'm quite fond of.

 

16 minutes ago, mazzer said:

Maybe we could have a few Garden challengers , the basket I did was in a challenge on a facebook group I’m in. Ive not been in it long, but from looking around, they tried to grow carrots in pipes lol, strange but seem to turn out ok. Might give it ago next year. 

Hardest part for me in growing is really knowing when to start with veg and plants... I don’t seem to have patience, I like my flowers to flower right away lol, that’s prob why I buy for shops and grow from seed lol

 

Aggh don't test me 😄 Nothing of mine ever looks pretty (unless I just take a cutting of a single flower head 😄 ) Gardening is a patience thing most definately, it's why people tend to just buy flowers each year and throw them in their flower beds but at home we have tried to build up a garden using plants and flowers that come back again each year. We have a couple of camellia's which are lovely (flowering season is a bit short though). The other things is the type of soil you mentioned earlier, like certain flowers don't like acidic or alkiline soils, at home we have clay soil which is horrible to work with as it means your plants sit in water when you get crap weather and it dries out in the summer so you need to consider that (or as we are, you spend time each year working in compost and the such to improve it).

 

Gardenings just a vast subject 😄 I have considered doing a course a couple of times, it would be one of those things that if I could pick any career and money wasn't an issue I would likely be a gardner I think.

[cyberninja2601 1,103]

 

Kind of sorry I missed this before. We have a "community garden" in ottawa. It's basically a plot that you sign up for and if you get it you can grow whatever you want there. We were successful in getting one this year. We live in a Condo so we no longer have our own. We use to have one on our property before. It's about 20 feet by 4 feet plot. 

 

We grew eggplant, zuchinni, squash, green peppers, tomatoes, various herbs, some flowers, green beens and yellow beans. It was a marginal success. 

 

The garden has to be organic and we needed to get familiar with  the sun patterns and the fertilizer. The beans were our most successful. Followed by the tomatoes

 

With the Canadian winter coming we had to pull everything about a month ago. We have plans for next April. 

 

Another problem was that homeless people come and pick the stuff. I feel that if you are that desperate for fresh food that you have to come and steal ours. Go ahead and help yourself. Just don't waste it or hurt the plants. We mostly do it for fun anyways. 

 

b