Category Archives: Guest Gardeners

There’s a sheep in me garden what am I gonna do?

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Thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a pic of a woolly intruder in his back garden the other day. We like the look on the sheep’s face who could be thinking “What is this human doing in MY field?”

One advantage is there’s a good chance that may be some sheep droppings left which could be a pain in the neck but looking online it looks like they’re high in both phosphorus and potassium which is great for the garden. Just like the classic horse manure it has to have time to age (as it’s far too strong and if used straight away would burn the plants) and you can even make a compost tea out of it to apply to the garden in liquid form. We’d suggest a thick pair of gloves if you intend to pick some up this weekend. Cheers for that Rich! More on sheep manure here.

Pictures from Kyiv

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Cheers to Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some pictures a fortnight or so which we’ve only got around to posting now. The first is how his good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD)‘s indoor banana plant is doing (above) and as you can it’s looking healthy! Love to know how his date palm is getting on.

And here’s a nice picture of how Wlad’s Dill and Potatoes make a good combination in the same container. We’ve sowed some Dill here a few years ago and actually got it to grow but didn’t really do anything with it sadly as we weren’t into the herb at the time but the Dill above is looking healthy. More on how to grow Dill here. Cheers for the pictures Wlad.

Something very special from far far away

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A big shout to Jesse Yuen (of RTMFM’s North of The River Swan) for letting us know that he’s moved into a new house in Perth and that in the garden they have a wonderful looking Foxtail Agave (above) that’s actually flowering! As Jesse said “Flowers are rare for the plant and each one only flowers once in their life, after 10-15 years.” and he also said “It’s like ours is welcoming us to the new house.” We agree with you there! What a great housewarming present.

Jesse also said “All over Perth you can see them flowering, and the members of local gardening Facebook groups are speculating that because we had a really dry, long summer, they are in shock which has bought on a mass flowering season.”

He was saying the bees are going bonkers for the flowers and told us “Apparently once it finishes flowering the big head dies off and these smaller “pups” take over” (above and below).

Absolutely wonderful stuff Jesse and best of luck to you and the family for the new house and hope everything goes well with the move and getting settled in! More on the wonderful plant here.

More from (near) Coventry

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As we mentioned in our post here here’s a few more pictures from Mike and Julia’s garden near Coventry. The first is a perennial poppy (something we also have ourselves, grown from seed a few years ago). They really are worth having in the garden that will give you a good pop of red.

The rest are a close-up of a rosemary flower (above) and lilac (below).

And finally some black tulips with a black geranium (below). Thanks to both of you again for the wonderful pictures.

Sent from (near) Coventry

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Here’s some excellent pictures from Mike G and Julia’s garden near Coventry which is now really getting into the swing of things. The above are of geums and agapanthus. We’re loving the red geum photo!

And above is a great looking aquilegia. This will be a two parter of a post as there’s so much good stuff sent.

Thanks to Julia for the wonderful pictures and for adding the names of the plants too and Mike for sending them over. We at Weeds do struggle with names of flowers so a helping hand is always appreciated. And as for the Latin names…

With all the wonderful pictures we’ve been receiving of late, perhaps the Weeds version of the Countryfile calendar can now be realised. We’ll be ringing the BBC when the show’s on tomorrow and ask to be put straight through to John Craven and see if he’ll be alright with a bit of competition.

Thanks again to Mike and Julia again for their great contribution!

Where there’s a will there’s a way

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A big thanks goes out to our good friend in Kyiv, Wlad (US7IGN) for sending us some more great pictures. This time it’s his indoor grown potatoes, from harvest to serving!

We seem to forget that to garden you don’t actually have to have a physical garden and Wlad proves this point really well with this great little harvest of potatoes which they look tasty too! All served with a bit of tasty dill that he grew indoors too.

And Wlad has written a great book which we featured (here) a while ago called War Diaries: A Radio Amateur in Kyiv which is available here. It’s a great read and well worth getting, even if you’re not interested in ham radio. Cheers for the photographs Wlad and hope you’re bearing up well out there.

Spring must be here!

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Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.

Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.

We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
So cheers Mike and Julia for sending in the pictures of your great garden and do let us know how things are going later this season!

 

Spring is here (or just around the corner)

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Cheers for Debby H for getting in touch with us today. She sent us a pic of daffodils in full bloom in a council maintained bed near her home in North London (above) and they look great!

Debby has recently started off some tomato and cosmos seeds. The cosmos seeds were straight off the flower heads of the plants they grew last year. After being left in a box all winter they were sown a couple of days ago. As she said: “We just scattered the whole dead heads on earth/compost and covered them over. We didn’t bother to try to separate out the seeds first. Within two days the little things were germinating madly!”  (Photo above). That is crazy! The seeds must have had exactly the right conditions that they loved as two days is good going for germination.

Debby told us a great tip that she used with the cosmos seedlings (pic above): “I re-planted some of them in an egg box as they were growing too densely. The idea Is that, when they are ready to go outside, I will cut the egg box into individual sections, then plant each section separately. As the egg box is made of cardboard it should bio-degrade so I won’t need to remove the seedlings from the box partitions before planting them.” That is a top idea, we have been using some biodegradable pots from B&Q but this idea is better. What we usually do with our egg boxes is chuck them on the compost heap but we reckon we’ll be putting seeds in them!

Cheers Debby, thanks again and look forward for more pics soon!

No complaints about the cold today

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Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a photo of what the view was the like from his front doorstep on Saturday. Now that looks cold! And to accompany the picture, Rich said “The mountains are still covered this morning but not ground level. A lot of people were posting pics of the northern lights last night.” That is crazy stuff. Keep warm Rich and keep on sending us the pictures.