Fruity's Outbox

Really, well thanks for that, all this time I have been thinking it was a reginae and wondered why mine looked different to others I had seen LOL!

Do you know the full name of this plant?

Thanks for the heads up

Simone

Hola

I have 3 cats and that does tend to keep away the other moggies in the area, although sometimes there are many fights

Another way without using expensive machines and needing to buy batteries is to get yourself some lemon oil, mix with water in a squirty spray. Spray this around the garden and even spray the cat with it next time it wanders into your garden, they hate the smell and even more hate being sprayed, cats think you have gone to the toilet on them and being very clean animals they do not like that one bit.

You can also get cat repellant that is safe for the garden and for the animal, however, my next door neighbour used this in his garden when we lived in the town and they just moved it out of the way before going to the loo! LOL

I have just planted potatoes, cauliflower, leaks, tomatoes and peppers - I have tomatoes growing already and my cayenne and chilli peppers have enjoyed this cooler weather.

Most of your root vegetables should go in now so they are ready in time for Christmas :)

Not a very good picture though is it, might have to upload a better quality one. Purple is my favourite colour and I am attempting to get this to grow into a ball :)

Emu, how cool is that! We do have Emu farms here but we don't have any in Monda. I doubt that is boring ;)

We had a Tawny Owl in the garden yesterday but he was too quick for me and I couldn't get an image of him

We did, however, see Red Squirrels this weekend and I managed to get images of them and a video - when I have time I will get them up here

Hola Everyone

Thanks for all the comments, I have not been on much in the last few days because I have been away with my husband - wedding anniversary!

Now it is back to work and all that jazz, I am going to go and get some materials for my raised beds though, it is much better for me having raised beds, especially with the fused spine and I am eager to give it a go.

Laters

My Pear tree is coming along nicely but I don't think I will have fruit this year, this apple tree, however, has fruit now growing on it and I am definitely going to get at least 10 apples from this small tree - amazing - that was a good buy at €4 for the tree!

This is the more popular one in Spain and I believe it is the one that bears fruit :) I have a time lapse video of bees pollinating it on YouTube - not the best video but I have only just started getting into it and the day I did the video we had a slight wind, I will keep trying though and get more

Yeah we have 12 plants growing and just wait for the next photos because they are enormous - mmmm yummy

I have no idea, I have so many different roses growing in my garden and the book I have has literally hundreds and thousands of varities but it would be lovely to know the name of this, they are very sweet roses.

My husband is the Cacti lover and we have a piece at the back of the house that has a slight gradient to it, unfortunately we need to move the fence to see the garden we have made but we thought that was the best place for all the cacti to be because when we finally become parents we didn't want the cacti in harms way and the back gradient is perfect, children wouldn't want to play there anyway - plus they are a great deterrent for burglars - well once they become large anyway. Out of all the cactus we have this one is my favourite

Hola everyone

Thanks for the messages. I think you are right that raised beds is the answer for me, I have made a few beds for my tomatoes and peppers but going higher is definitely the key, either that or have seats built everywhere hehehe

I have not really got into raised beds before so that is new territory for me, I am up for trying my hand at anything, well, cracking the whip on my husband hehehe

The climate helps a great deal and was part of the reason I wanted to live somewhere warmer, the UK weather was making my pain worse because it was contracting my muscles too much.

Howdy neighbour, I am assuming you are in Portugal? We are inland Marbella about 20 minutes, next to Coín and Alhaurín el Grande - Malaga is 20 minutes in the other direction.

As for the herbs, I love them and I took some images today to upload and show you, just not plugged the camera in yet - I eat my Thyme on most meals daily, on chicken and pork especially, in the oven - yummy!

I have a friend in Vancouver, Hel. Would love to visit one day but planes are not the best forms of transport for me, unless we go first class - one day I will get round to it but China is the next stop for us :)

Lovely to chat with everyone and I am now going to add some more images - I have so many!

Hasta Pronto

Oh My God you have a beautiful garden and house :)

I know isn't he just a little darling, he really likes company and if we are sat down the garden with a few friends and the gate is open, he wanders in for a nosey and he loves to be stroked :)

Perfume is wonderful also, this rose is now in a vase on my dining room table :)

This does need support, I have 2 and I have had to support both of them using sticks I found laying in the garden and good old gardening twine, not sure about greenhouse growing as I don't have one - all mine is outside, I live in the South of Spain so we get plenty of sunshine. I wouild imagine you could grow this in a greenhouse just as successfully with support - I would definitely try it - good luck and enjoy and don't forget to share any pictures you get. You can be very rough with grape vines, I cut this down to nothing when I moved in, in November, it was growing up a fence that we wanted to take down and at the time, it was just a stump and I didn't know what it was anyway so I hacked it down, spring came and voila! A beautiful grape vine came right back at me and boy am I glad it did :)

I have already cut it down to a small bush and in a matter of months it has grown into this, I dry the Lavender and make Pot Pourri with it :) It is a hardy little bugger ;)

Thanks, I didn't know what it was when I first moved into this house and I have been hacking at it because it was strangling a fur tree, it is actually growing over an Olive Tree - when these flowers came out I was very excited and squealed with delight hehehe

Do you know what type of rhododendron it is? The above is an Azalea - picture is not very clear though I have just realised, I will try giving a better one. Are you getting plenty of water to it, when did you plant it - has it gone into shock and just needs time to re-adjust?

Hehe - I really want a Donkey but my husband is not sure, I need to talk him into it a bit more, I think they are really cute, he lives across the track in the farmer's field and he brays every morning, I love listening to him and the rooster next door - beats an angle grinder any day!

Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to re-direct anyone, simply telling you I have a blog and if you want to know about me then all my details are there, I am a member of many forums and websites and it is nice to have all your details in one place and keep it there, not my fault that I didn't discover GOY until the other day now is it, that is why i didn't start my original blog here, I didn't know about GOY then, you can hardly have a go at me for that - completely unreasonable and unfair.

If I was a spammer do you really think I would have my details anywhere at all, I feel an active member considering I have answered some question to the best of my ability, after the response yesterday I have decided to add photos here as well as Flickr so I don't upset you even more, if that is possible!

I didn't start my blog on this website because I only found it yesterday and I have been writing on blogs for years!!!!!

I am female, I live in Spain and yes I really do have a garden - I get the message OK, you don't care for me much - fine - but please stop battering me on this blog post, give it a rest already - blimey!

Hola Lori

Thanks for support, nice to have a friend when the rest are trying to kick you down :)

Hope you are having a good day and speak soon hun

Agree with what you like! I was not advertising anything, I thought this was a gardening forum, you know where we share gardening stuff etc????

Sounds to me like you are all in a gang and enjoy beating up new members, well go for your life cos this one has wide shoulders, do your worst!

I have never joined a forum before where people are so mean to others and you said GOY was the friendliest gardening site on the net, not really showing that are you.

I am sure there are other members here that run blogger blogs, what was the crime here, you want me to blog here instead of blogger when I have been doing that for months?

I wouldn't want to delete it - I don't see what I did as wrong. If you are that upset then just don't talk to me - for goodness sakes!

Nice to meet you anyway and thanks for the words of great encouragement, makes me want to stay :D

Oh that's not fair, I have joined this website and I have contributed and plan on carrying on doing so. I was simply stating that I already blog and do not wish to write double - wouldn't make sense for me to do so and more time consuming - I placed this blog entry here so that those who wanted to keep up with me could do so. Please don't take offence that was not the intention ;)

How to make friends and influence people!

Hola

I live in Spain and have 18 + Olive Trees in my garden.

Yellow leaves on any plant can be caused by improper irrigation, how much and how often is the Olive getting water? Are your trees looking like everyone else's around you?

How long have you had this tree in the pot, any chemicals been applied, are the leaves hanging and brown on the tree?

Olive trees store most of their energy in their leaves and you must not let weeds grow around the bottom of Olive Trees and cut any suckers that you may see.

It could also be Peacock Spot - an organism called Spilocaea oleaginea. This is a fungus disease that loves frequent rains and can cause yellow spotting on leaves and leaf drop.

It normally causes dark spotting with a halo around each spot, but sometimes the leaves just turn yellow and fall off too. Another leaf defoliating organism called Cercospora cladosporioides (Mycocentrospora cladosporioides) is also a fungus.

You can’t do anything to control it in the summer, but an application of fixed copper fungicide as early as possible after harvest and hopefully before most of the fall rains, is essential for good control. Complete coverage is necessary too. That means using a power sprayer with high pressure to cover the leaves on both sides, especially in the interior of the tree.

Might be worth testing the soil for any bad chemicals and if need be get down to the garden centre to see if there is a chemical you can use to prevent any fungus or disease :)

Hope that helps

Hola

Rhododendron thrive only in an acid soil that is moist but well drained. Their fibrous root system appreciates a relatively loose, friable soil that the roots can easily penetrate.

Most Rhododendrons need no pruning, but old or straggly specimens benefit from a cut back. The best times to prune are late winter, especially for late flowering plants, or just after flowering.

As a rule, smooth barked rhododendrons - mostly species - do not respond well to being cut back but the commoner hybrids do. Carry out sever pruning in two or three stages, leaving some foliage each time. Remove the thick branches first and, if these put out new growth, cut back or remove altogether the thinner branches.

Most small leaved species and hybrids can be trimmed after flowering to maintain a compact shape, without loss of flowering. Most deciduous azaleas can be invigorated or reduced in size by pruning - it is the azalea that we have in our garden :)

Hope that helps and happy gardening

Hola

I know what you mean, we have tons of this stuff growing, it is a nightmare but we used RoundUp to kill them as weeding them by hand is not a good idea, they are so prickly!

After 10 days of using RoundUp it all died - HA! It is now all brown and dead, we did strim beforehand just to take the tops off everything as some of our weeds were so tall, some at 7 feet high!

Good luck and invest in some RoundUp :)

Hi

I have 3 cats, bless them!

They leave majority of my garden alone but the new soil we had made for planting they loved as their cat litter tray, we got some chicken wire and placed this around the soil to deter them for weeing there - it worked!

As mentioned earlier, water is a great deterrent for cats as they think you have peed on them when you spray and being clean animals they don't like that at all, alternatively you can buy products from the garden centre to deter animals but that has never worked for my cats, they just dig it up!

Hope that helps and if the problem persists consider automatic irrigation that comes on when they approach or something :)