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Gardening resources and tips, etc.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Suffs » Tue May 05, 2020 1:56 pm

The usual advice on GW forum re privet hedging is that you can cut them back hard ... clear dead leaves and weeds from the base ... scatter Fish, Blood & Bone over the root area, water well and mulch with organic mulch (compost, woodchip etc).

Privet responds to increased light levels by putting out new shoots so cutting back means the base will no longer be shaded by the top.

When it regrows you can keep the base thick and green by cutting to ‘ a batter’ ... an ‘A’ shape so that the base still gets plenty of light.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby PatsyMFagan » Tue May 05, 2020 3:40 pm

Suffs wrote:.

When it regrows you can keep the base thick and green by cutting to ‘ a batter’ ... an ‘A’ shape so that the base still gets plenty of light.


You took the words right out of my mouth Suffs ;) I watch GW avidly and Monty Don regularly demonstrates this when pruning his hedges every year :thumbsup

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby slimpersoninside » Tue May 05, 2020 4:58 pm

Cheers folks. I'll give it a go!

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Lusciouslush » Thu May 07, 2020 10:58 am

herbidacious wrote:I think the diawhatsit earth is working.


That sounds promising :thumbsup keep me posted!

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Luca » Thu May 07, 2020 8:21 pm

Thanks for posting the Thompson Morgan website on the Covid thread Suffs. I’ve just ordered a load of seeds. Cheers! :wino

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby herbidacious » Thu May 14, 2020 4:20 pm

I just got an email from our office's odd job man to say that marshall's have sent my tomato plants to the ofifice :o I double checked and I don't even have my office address attached to my account. I suppose it must be a Paypal thing. I do hope they don't send anythig else there. I have several outstanding orders with them including more tomatoes. Ironic if I don't get my tomato orders having given away about 15 plants :(
Their phone line is not in use, and they have a long lead time on answering emails :(

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Pepper Pig » Mon May 18, 2020 12:22 pm


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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby herbidacious » Sat May 23, 2020 10:32 am

Has anyone grown basil from seed? My plants are looking helathy but getting a bit tall. Should I pinch out the top leaves, and if so how many, and just the leaves? (In the third pic there are two tiny tiny leaves growing 'on top of' the big ones.) Will this make them grow more bushily?


IMG_1552.jpg
IMG_1551.jpg
IMG_1549.jpg


I have 12-15 plants, and that's after having given some away :? (Turns out they are easy to grow :) )

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Stokey Sue » Sat May 23, 2020 11:21 am

I always pinch out the tips of Genoese basil, so it produces lots of side shoots to use

I still had basil seeds in my 5 variety pack from last year so I took advantage of the hot spell to plant the seeds and some others directly into outdoor containers a bit earlier than is really recommended, and I have everything coming up

I have 3x cayenne and 3x jalapeño chilli plants that I did rear indoors hardening off outside, and now my neighbour has supplied a large bag of universal potting compost I will be able to do some fancy potting up into my posh planters, chillies are a nice ornamental addition to a warm herb garden.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby scullion » Sat May 23, 2020 11:51 am

yes, i'd pinch out the tops - and use them.
if you leave a couple of layers of nodes below the pinch each one should produce a new 'branch'.
what you are doing is removing the concentration of hormone in the tip that supresses the other buds from sprouting. once it's gone, the hormone in the baby buds can take over and produce new growth.

if you don't feel too brave about doing it, just do a couple of plants first then treat the others depending on your findings.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby herbidacious » Sat May 23, 2020 12:21 pm

Ok thanks. Yes I thought maybe do a couple. I will look for a video again but I couldn't find anything that zoomed in enough. I could do to have someone show me in person.

I have a lot of cherry bomb chilli seedlings that I should prick out (when the wind dies down). Need to check if they are likely to fruit though, having been taken from last year's fruit, before I bother to do othem all. I shall offer some to neighbours again if they might produce chillis. Although it's quite late. But I guess their season can be prolonged by bringing them indoors in autumn.

Some of my pepper plants have flower buds. Not the ones (chillis or 'bell') grown from seed though. They seem to be quite slow growers compared to tomatoes.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby herbidacious » Sat May 23, 2020 12:23 pm

Actually on that note, how do I find out if I am likely to get fruit from seeds from fruit that I have grown. If they are hybrids, is that a problem?

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby scullion » Sat May 23, 2020 12:35 pm

f1 hybrids won't all come true, half should be like the hybrids but a quarter like each of the parent of the f1 (that's the theory, anyway) it may throw up something from further back in the family tree. whatever you get will be interesting and useable.
i'm assuming that you're talking about fruit from the chillies. planting other seeds - like apples, which never come true to the parent fruit (apples are grafted on to root stock to get the true fruit) is always a way of surprising yourself - if you can wait, sometimes many years, for fruit trees to fruit.
i always save the seed from good flavoured tomatoes.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Stokey Sue » Sat May 23, 2020 1:28 pm

Which is why so many older varieties of apple are called “X’s Seedling” - Mr or Ms X planted a pip and struck lucky, for example Bramley’s Seedling

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby herbidacious » Sun May 24, 2020 11:09 am

Yes chillis - cherry bomb. Was watching Gardener's World las night and a chap talking about he tries to create new dahlias. Would be fun to try something like that.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby scullion » Sun May 24, 2020 11:54 am

i saw the dahlia man - i wonder if he eats the ones that don't work as flowers!
there's a good chance the chillies will produce good, useable fruit even if they don't com true - serendipity.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby slimpersoninside » Tue May 26, 2020 6:10 pm

Sorry, forget this post.

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue May 26, 2020 7:29 pm

The florist downstairs gave me a "patio Salix Voorhuizen" yesterday - it's not saleable because it is a bit sorry for itself having been indoors while she was closed during the initial lockdown, but she thinks conditions on my terrace are so perfect for it that it is likely to recover

It's a teeny tiny weeping willow

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Renee » Tue May 26, 2020 10:02 pm

Herbi, was it Marshalls Seeds that you ordered from?

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.ma ... eeds.co.uk

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Re: gardening resources and tips, etc.

Postby Pepper Pig » Wed May 27, 2020 9:10 am

My Thompson and Morgan plug geraniums arrived yesterday. They were posted two weeks ago. They are completely dead.

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