How is your garden looking today?

Wonderful, McTag!!

Love British gardens. We have some recently transplanted Brits on our block who are remaking their front yard (formerly standard grassy lawn, not much else) into a "real" garden -- they were a little over-ambitious at points (not enough sun for the roses they put in) but it's shaping up nicely.

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Lovely, McTag!

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I just spent a couple days on a little patio project for a friend of a friend. His condo is on the market and has been for some time. They thought maybe adding some plants to the little deck/patio would help. The patio gets lots of sun and has 10-foot tall walls. It gets hot and dry. I haven't done pots really, so I sort of put garden into pots - weird.

They bought the tall conifer, an ivy, a purple salvia, a grass and some pale yellow petunias. I added plants and pots, split up the salvia and ended up with this (not great pictures):

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/Gigipix/In%20and%20Around%20Cambridge/2008june20_finished1small.jpg

Some closer shots:

heuchera frosted violet, petunias, sweet potato vine

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/Gigipix/In%20and%20Around%20Cambridge/2008june20_heucherapetuniasweetpota.jpg

herb pots

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/Gigipix/In%20and%20Around%20Cambridge/2008june20_herbssmall.jpg

guara, salvia, dianthus

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very, very nice!

We got a bit of rain today. Yay!

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Ooh, that's pretty, littlek!

Yay about the rain, eoe.

We're about due, too. General gardening note -- when I moved here, the existing hydrangeas (I've since planted more) were really wimpy. They needed to be watered a lot (evidently they used to be watered often but shallowly). Going on advice here, I started watering them far less often but really soaking them when I did, so that they would grow longer roots. That seems to have worked. I haven't had to water them this year at all, and they're looking perky right now even though other stuff is starting to wilt from heat/ lack of water.

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Good job on the deep roots, Soz!

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Thanks for the compliment on my project. The guara and penstemon should bloom for a while, the salvia should rebloom. The dianthus smell like cinnamon and vanilla.

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McTag wrote:

Diane wrote:
Ditto what eoe said. Your entire garden looks wonderful. Will you post anymore pictures of your garden?

Your wish is my command, but of course I've selected the best in-season bits to snap. It's not all wonderful , but I'll see if I can get some more acceptable pics.
There may be a geranium somewhere....

Anyone seen Diane lately?

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that looks really good lk.

I wish I had an eye for organizing my own pots.
My patio looks like hell worn over.... but I have fresh herbs, pretty flowers and yummy tomatoes Smile

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Ive discovered a formula for an organic ( translate: this wont kill your cats or chickens) herbicide. I got the formula from an AMISH garden center where they grow lots of field mums for sale to the English.

Its very simple too. Make a 4% solution of oil of CLOVES with 3% surfactant /water solution. Apparently this has been known for years and I just found out. Ive been using Roundup and , even though Im comfrortable with its safety, I wont use it in pastures being grazed.
I tried the oil of cloves stuff nd it kills anything in 24 to 48 hours. No waiting a week or more like for Roundup.

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Well, McT. You've got a lawn. I'll overlook that as you've got some beautiful plantings. That rehab project must have been a lot of work - what did you do with all the tree detritus?

Really - lovely garden Very Happy

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ehBeth wrote:

Well, McT. You've got a lawn. I'll overlook that as you've got some beautiful plantings. That rehab project must have been a lot of work - what did you do with all the tree detritus?

Really - lovely garden

Lawns are bad? So where do you collapse when you've done the weeding? :wink:

For disposal of detritus, I bribed the men who come round collecting our green stuff and prunings! We pay a community charge which covers such things as street cleansing and garbage collection. The green collection is not supposed to include any branches more than one inch in diameter, but I came to a financial understanding with the crew. Failing that I would have had to hire a skip (dumpster) which would have cost twice as much.

Here's another picture of the stumps which I dug out along the side wall.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c277/Tags1/127_2748.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c277/Tags1/127_2757.jpg

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farmerman wrote:

Ive discovered a formula for an organic ( translate: this wont kill your cats or chickens) herbicide. I got the formula from an AMISH garden center where they grow lots of field mums for sale to the English.

Its very simple too. Make a 4% solution of oil of CLOVES with 3% surfactant /water solution. Apparently this has been known for years and I just found out. Ive been using Roundup and , even though Im comfrortable with its safety, I wont use it in pastures being grazed.
I tried the oil of cloves stuff nd it kills anything in 24 to 48 hours. No waiting a week or more like for Roundup.

This is huge! It might deserve it's own thread. Think of all the roundup you could keep off the land.

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Ive first gotta see what makes it work. If its just a surface phenom, then its not worth much. However, the areas Ive sprayed , have all burned the weeds and only the perennials needed to be sprayed twice.

Im looking for a good herbicide to help me get rid of thistle in pastures.

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Explain the mixture to me. 4% oil of cloves, 3% surfactant (such as?) and the rest water?
My brother lives in Germany and he mentioned yesterday that he has a patch of clover in his lawn he wants to get rid of, Things like Round-up are not available and with the kid and the dog, he wouldn't want to use it anyway. Thank you.

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You do such nice gardening work, littlek. Wouldn't this be a nice side business for you, to do some gardening work for others and get paid?
With everyone working long hours, they hardly have time to attend to flowers and the upkeep thereof, and they gladly would pay someone to do so for
them.

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rjb-First make a 3%surfactant solution (any detergent would work). Then , to trhat add your oil of cloves to make a 4% solution of the active ingredient. I saw that some of the organic "brews" of cloves use an adjuvant of sodium citrate or citric acid . An adjuvant is more like a catalyst so Im not sure if its needed or not. My solution of cloves was quite satisfactory and it killed the weeds real good.

It made the weeds turn brown ans crispy as if the cell walls were broken down. Maybe thats how it works. When we get down to it, most herbicides either cause the plant to oxidize itself todeath or they cause the plants cell walls to break down and lose water.

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CJ - that's the master plan. Start teaching and then do gardens in the spring and summer.

Farmer - can you spell it out? Detergent = dish soap? bleach?

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Hi McTag--sorry I lost track of this thread. I also tend to let my emails build up to approximately 200 before I dig in and see what needs to be read and what needs to be sent to trash.

Your garden is really lovely. The variety of plants and colors is beautiful. Salvia, geraniums, and a few others do very well here as they need very little water.

I have been working on the front yard to make it xeric and also friendly to hummingbirds. I'm finding out that some plants are more xeric than others. I hope within another year, I'll have a good combination that takes the same amount of water.

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I have - so far, in the front, subject to burning - 1 Gaura, 1 Agastache, 4 native Penstemon, 5 lavenders, 1 rosemary, 1 Nepeta, a small parsley and small thyme, and a Ribes sanguineum. Oops, and a presently tiny fennel. Oh, and a growing more fulgent Sedum autumn joy and a fairly newly planted Salvia greggii 'coral'. A Cuphea.. And an ugly rose mistake, thriving to date. That might get moved somewhere far away. The presumptive future trees.. Forestiera neomexicana (new mexican olive).. so far so good.

Plus some serious shrubs to dig out.

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