How does your garden grow?
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I had 3 but the squirrels and crows took them. Now the plant is dead. (edit, this is about the tomatoes kow and pop were talking about last page)
Still struggling with the azalea's, think I might need to add a bit more soil and top it off with mulch. We had a couple grey days where we were pretty much in clouds so there was this constant mist, sometimes rain and I forgot to water. So now all leaves are pretty much brown. There was also a cricket living in one of them.
Guess my plan should be add extra soil, mulch and move to a spot where they receive a bit more sun. One is called "Nuccio's happy days" and the card says "part shade to shade", and the other is "California beauty" and can do "part sun to part shade".
Don't think any of this can be fixed by bringing in tractors, but it does make for some good pictures I must say! -
yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Lavender does indeed go dormant and you’ll get a better plant every year if you cut it all back to just above the old wood. It takes a bit of faith to do it but trust me, it’ll come back stronger, prettier and healthier every single year. It stops them going all woody and leggy like they tend to do after a couple of years of neglect.
I've just been catching up with this thread. What do you mean by old wood? You chop away nearly all of the green back to the woody stuff?
I had some really nice lavender bushes at my old place where I had dead-headed them back to green on all stems which seemed to work well for it. -
Front of house at the new place was left fairly unloved since we moved in and the weeds took hold. Finally got around to start tidying it up
I've chucked down a bunch of compost and thrown down a lot of flower seed in hopefully a nice arrangement. Some of it is ground cover and some is bigger bushes. Well hopefully there's already some sprouts there now and the area gets a lot of sun so should go well. There's some lavender near the front deck too.
I've done the next section near the rock too but the only photo I have is blurry so I'll take a better one later.
The left section will be done next - it's the biggest bit - and I was planning on doing it this weekend buuuuuut:
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Strewth -
Okay, that looks sore. -
Classic case of everything trying to kill you in Australia.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
And I thought they just looked stupid. -
ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Lavender does indeed go dormant and you’ll get a better plant every year if you cut it all back to just above the old wood. It takes a bit of faith to do it but trust me, it’ll come back stronger, prettier and healthier every single year. It stops them going all woody and leggy like they tend to do after a couple of years of neglect.
I've just been catching up with this thread. What do you mean by old wood? You chop away nearly all of the green back to the woody stuff?
I had some really nice lavender bushes at my old place where I had dead-headed them back to green on all stems which seemed to work well for it.
Yeah, that’s it. Tbh if you don’t cut them even for one year then they’ll never be as good again but they’re cheap enough to dig out and put fresh ones in if the mood ever takes you. I’d also try cutting one right back to ground level just as the go dormant as you might get away with it with your milder climate.
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If it dies then I’ll send you a replacement one all the way out there.
(Please note, the replacement plant may actually be a PayPal transfer to cover the cost of a new plant and not an actual irl plant). -
I fucked up my lavender and took a chance on cutting that shit right back to almost ground level, preserving anything alive looking. Worked a treat, came back bushier than ever
But unless you grow a big fuck off bush of it or have the right variety it’s a bit boring. You need a decent Amount to get the bees buzzing and the smell wafting IMO -
We have a bit of lavender in the back yard. Sprog likes it anyway.
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What a super pic!
Come with g if you want to live... -
That's gonna be a lot of cutting at the end of the season!
Thanks Unc, I'll see how I go. They're just babies at the moment so we'll see how big they get. -
I have found evidence of new life!
Both azaleas are having some of these small little green sprouts coming!
Just checked a few branches, all green inside, gave a bit of extra soil to cover the top of the root ball better and then added a layer of shredded cedar things (there were quite a few things in the bag that I wouldn't really consider shredded, if I'd had a dog they'd be happy with those chunks). Fingers crossed they'll get over it, and I will have some nice flowers in spring. Not gonna move them to a sunnier spot yet, they have a few random moments where they will get some sunshine in the morning / early afternoon, but not much. It's still quite hot here (around 30 Celsius) so don't want to push my luck too much. If the sun gets a lot lower I might move them to a spot with a bit more sun during the day. -
Ok, week later, I got a few questions about the azaleas (again, I know, I'm sorry)
Pictures in spoiler as they're not particularly interesting or well focused.Spoiler:
So all my leaves are brown. I've scratched loads of branches near the end, and all of them have had green without much effort scratching. There's also new growth, although I'm not sure if they're leaves or bulbs or anything else.
1 - Do I prune back? Some growth is near the end of branches, so I don't really want to, but also not sure if the dead leaves are holding anything back. I've pulled some leaves off that fell off without any effort, but am afraid to do any more. Should I just cut off the leaves and leave the branches intact?
2 - Also, I just opened the mulch around the rootball, and made sure it was exposed slightly. The soil still feels moist. Should I throw out the water in the saucer? Can that lead in any way to root rot?
3 - Should I add coffee grounds near the rootball? To possibly keep acidity up? Can keep the stuff from the french press aside, but not sure if it's worth it / might make things worse.
It's still doing better, new green things keep appearing, but B also keeps insisting I should cut some off. I can't really find much about it online, it's mostly "don't prune much, only after they've just bloomed, 1/3 of the plant at most".
Kinda made peace with the fact that it's unlikely I'll see a lot of flowers in spring, so my current goal is to just keep them alive and buy some flowers in spring that I can throw out after a few days.
When I look back to the pictures on the previous page, where I put them in pots about a month ago, they still had actual green leaves. But no new things growing. So I'm not sure if they're dying, or if things are improving. -
Unc can probably help more than me but I've found getting rid of the dead stuff (leaves, flowers etc) tends to help new growth. We have a ratty looking lavender bush in the backyard that was doing nothing until I clipped off all the old dead flowers. I'd take off the dead leaves and maybe clip some parts back to near the new growth but that's just a guess!
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You could take the tips off the end which will make it look tidier I guess. You just really need to give these time now. Don’t mess around with them too much, make sure they have water and add a little food every now and then. They aren’t dead but they clearly nearly were. Patience now I think.
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Thanks Uncle, so you're pretty much confirming B is wrong here, right? That's all I needed to know in the end.
Will be patient, will get azalea food and keep a close eye on them. -
One of them is really showing some proper green bits already, so that's good. Got azalea food ordered, so hopefully that can help the other one a bit.
Also had visitors
Thought it was pretty cute how he was hanging there. Enjoying both the sun and my plants
Less keen with that one, has been going hard on the sage. I saw it around when watering, jumping out of somewhere but could never see where it was. By this week it finally ate enough sage to not being able to hide anymore. He jumped off again during watering yesterday, and went for the plumeria after. Haven't seen it yet today.
Also plenty of hummingbirds (they're still assholes), some pretty blue birds and sometimes there's vultures or hawks or something in the trees. Don't know much about birds. There's an owl in the neighbourhood as well. -
We’ve got an oak tree sapling in a pot (outdoors) that’s grown to about three feet tall already. Is this an okay time of year to plant it out into its permanent spot, or should I wait?
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Excellent, ta. I’ve got the day off tomorrow. Time to dig a hole.
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Don't forget to soak the root ball in wood before planting. -
Love those pics Nina, keep them coming -
GooberTheHat wrote:Don't forget to soak the root ball in wood before planting.
Heh-heh. You said ‘wood’. -
Hmm I should post some more, but I haven't really taken any lately. Haven't seen many interesting animals. Seems like it's spider season and I don't really want them in my view any longer than needed.Paul the sparky wrote:Love those pics Nina, keep them coming
Thought B had a picture of a coyote in the canyon down our block, but I can only find a dead rabbit photo.
There are quite a few nasturtiums sprouting all of a sudden, which I'm quite happy with. There's also a chance that I've got some new parsley coming. I think that's a 2 year herb most of the time, so I just let it bloom, drop seeds and die. Sprouts are too small to really see if it's parsley or not, but still.
Other good news is that my poinsettia's from last year are slowly getting red-ish leaves, and it looks like our current daylight is short enough to not need to bother with boxes etc to keep them in the dark, which is apparently needed if you want red leaves. 10,5 hours of daylight here, and they need between 10-14 hours of darkness, so that works.
Currently debating if I should refresh the soil in all my potted plants. It looks like some kind of flowery weed from the garden has gotten in most of the pots, so I want to resoil to get rid of that. Was gonna do that in spring but might have to do that soon. -
Here’s some pics of the allotment we took over. It’s only a half plot to begin with (I guess to make sure I can manage it accordingly) but we’ll be eating our own veg next year. My overwintering garlic and onions are already growing too.
Literally shovelled shit to get this going. Six cubic metres of the stuff.
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