Ukslim's Outbox

What do you do when the flowers die in the first season? It's important to leave the leaves alone until they die back naturally, because this when the plant is storing energy ready for next year's growth.

Almost all a bulb's growth comes from energy stored the previous season -- that's how they survive in their niche of early season growers.

The simplest answer is to recruit a reliable friend to pop in and water them (oh, you said there's no-one :( )

Otherwise it's elaborate arrangements of slow-release pipes or wicking strips of felt.

Weedkillers in your garden centre will have indications as to how long it takes for them to become inactive, which would be when you could begin planting.

Alternatively, I've seen land covered in black plastic sheeting, to exclude light and water. A few weeks like this kills most weeds, or at least weakens them enough to fork out.

I wouldn't consider ants to be a garden pest unless they become a biting nuisance, or you eat al fresco and they're marching onto your food/drink.

However, ant colonies can be controlled with poison traps (e.g. sold in the UK as 'Nippon') - It doesn't kill instantly, but the worker ants carry it back to the queen. When the queen dies, the whole colony withers away.

The good old RHS confirms what Caz13 says:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0601/cuckoo_spit.asp

There was another thread on here about gardening in Las Vegas:
http://www.growsonyou.com/question/show/792-gardening-in-las-vegas

Summing up, see what other people are growing, take cues from what grows naturally around you (cactii, shurbs), and see if you can find a book about gardening in your climate.

Good luck!

That's interesting. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are the three components of fertiliser. They get used up as plants grow (they are incorporated into the biomass of the plants).

So perhaps the way to deplete your excess nitrogen is to grow other things for a couple of years, until your soil is less nutrient-rich.

No no no.

Remove everything visible - above and below the surface.
THEN apply boiling water.
THEN let it dry a bit
THEN apply fungicide

Check for new 'eggs' every day, and if they appear, repeat the process.

I think you're doing the right thing - remove them, and remove the 'eggs', and bag them up in the rubbish so the spores don't contaminate anything else.

Fungicide ought to help. I've also seen suggestions of pouring boiling water on the affected area (after removing the visible bits) to kill off any spores.

In fact Rhododendron prefer acidic soil - perhaps it's not acid enough? You might need to use an acidifier.

The BBC has advice: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plantprofile_rhododendron.shtml

... from which I garner:
- Pruning is not usually required, but it it's straggly it could be worth doing.
- Dead heading might help you get more flowers
- Careful with soil improvers, tap water etc. that might lower the acidity of the soil.

I use washing up liquid in about the same ratio as I would use for washing up. It seems to do the trick - although I've not seen off greenfly /permanently/ as I would like!

Yes, the same material is sold as a dehumidifying tool. It does absorb moisture from the air. You can dry it out in the oven, but if it's gone completely liquid it's probably too late.

I don't know the answer to Xela's question. At a guess, the gel for gardeners is slightly different to what Magnus Pike had, so that it does release moisture at the right time.

My previous garden had a very gentle slope, but I terraced it into two flat levels, and it was well worth it -- it meant I could have a level patio to spend time on.

I did pay to get the work done -- but that was just sheer laziness on my part, and knowing I didn't have the expertise to lay a patio myself tidily in any reasonable time frame. David's technique looks cheap and achievable.

I think you need to decide whether you're going to fight nature or work with it. Plenty of people have beautiful lawns and borders in Nevada - because they buy in soil and make heavy use of their sprinklers. No wonder Lake Mead is emptying faster than it fills :)

To work with the environment you have, I'd suggest looking at the desert around you. I've been to Nevada a couple of times, and I was struck by how much plant life there actually is in the desert. It's far from being just sand like 'Lawrence of Arabia'. So take your cues from that - grasses and cactii.

You must see impressive desert gardens around the area -- copy them!

I've just peeked on Amazon and found there's a book called "Month by Month Gardening in the Deserts of Nevada".

Good luck, and we look forward to seeing your photos!

In theory, yes. Spritzhenry's point about commercial bulbs not doing so well in following years still stands.

Once the leaves have died, you can forget about the pots until spring.

Interesting aside - spring bulbs developed to occupy the ground below deciduous trees. They leaf and flower early because later in the season, the tree will leaf, and leave the area in shade - so they need to get their sunlight before then.

So, they grow when there's little light, by using energy stored in the bulb, then collect energy by photosynthesising spring sunlight, developing new energy resources in the bulb, then die back in summer, when the tree steals all the light... and repeat the cycle the following year.

Of course our ornamental flowers are artificially bred, so not everything works exactly as in nature -- but if you want to leave bulbs in the ground for a perennial display, it makes sense to simulate their natural habitat -- after the flowers die, keep feeding them and do not cut back the leaves, because this is the crucial stage where the bulb is being 'charged' for next year. It's not a pretty stage though - which might be a reason to buy fresh bulbs next year instead.

I'm not sure what 'spoil' means in this context if it doesn't mean 'earth and stones piled up'.

But if it's not big enough, and you know what a sett looks like, then I guess we're back to the rabbit theory.

I had a summer job at a research farm (PBS, now IGER, in Penrhyncoch, near Aberystwyth) when I was at school. One day our job was digging a trench for a rabbit-proof fence. It was hard work!

Good info on badgers here:
http://www.badger.org.uk/content/Living.asp

It says a badger sett has a diameter of 250mm - which is pretty much bang on your 10". You didn't mention spoil - was there any?

The "Badgers in your garden" PDF has good advice, including ways to deter them if you decide you don't want them.

"There are claims that badgers carry disease and will infect
humans. This is only remotely possible if you were to be bitten by
an infectious badger, or if some reason you ingested faeces from
such a badger."

Of course if you have cows in your garden, you might worry about bovine TB ...

If it's a badger, I'm not sure you're allowed to do anything (and if it were me, I'd be out every night watching it in delight). I'm not sure whether the same applies to foxes.

It does look too big to be a rat, so I'm thinking rabbit. Invite a ferret keeper round?

Imagine what a natural pond would be like. It would have a layer of non-porous soil or rock, keeping the water in, and above that a (perhaps very deep) layer of wet soil.

The plants in your pond can't put their roots into the liner - so definitely if you want a living pond, put some soil back in. That could mean you need to dig deeper to end up with the size of pond you want. Bad luck!

PS it gets complicated when filling in forms, because the words' meanings are a bit fuzzy. Generally if a form asks for my nationality, I'd say 'British' or 'UK'; if it asked for 'country of birth' I'd say 'England', and if someone asked me in the pub what country I was from, I'd say 'Wales' (where I was brought up) and maybe go into more detail if asked.

One helpful way to remember the UK/GB thing is to note that 'United Kingdom' is short for 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

The Queen's role is purely ceremonial, but yes, she covers the whole of the UK.

Wikipedia has lots of detail about all this.

I always assumed talking to plants was a code-word for simply spending time with each one, paying attention to it. If you don't spend time looking at your plants, you won't notice when they need watering, pruning, deadheading, etc.

Not much of a jump, then, to leap from muttering to yourself, to talking to them as you would a pet. "Let's have a look at you then. How are you this morning? Ooh, a bit dry I see. Have a drink on me. Someone been nibbling at your leaves? We'll have to put a stop to that!" and so.

Ironically, this system where they talk back, is billed as a way to automate yourself out of having to spend time checking your plants.

I'm afraid it has to be poison. "Nippon" is a good example. The worker ants carry it back to the nest and feed it to the queen.

At what stage do they look sick?

It's likely to be either:
- too much or too little water
- lack of nutrients
- lack of light

For the water -- take care watering, making sure the soil is moist but not waterlogged.

For the nutrition - use fresh seed compost, thin out as your seed packet instructs, and transplant to potting compost before it's spent.

For the light - make sure the seedlings get enough sunlight (but not so much that they dry out!).

Try this web site:
http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/trees/index.htm

The site identifies trees from the small detail of a leafy twig, rather than the broad detail of a whole-tree view as you've provided.

Really beautiful pictures. You've worked miracles and I wish I had your perseverance!

I think living without attractive gardens (and municipal planting is rarely sufficient) really gets to people, so urban gardening is vital for people's mental health -- not to mention the effect of greenery on air quality.

When I was in Japan recently -- we have an office in a densely developed part of Tokyo -- I stumbled on a community garden nestled among a cluster of residential tower blocks. Not only did it make a potentially horrible place really quite pleasant, but it was clearly a social focal point (I passed as a group of volunteers were festooning the garden with Christmas decorations).

I read somewhere that the conversion of front gardens into parking spaces was having a measurable effect on air quality in suburban London. It's probably more of a local issue than a national issue, but I think city councils should make it a public policy issue -- left to a free market flats and parking spaces *will* replace too many gardens.

The thing is, the link between 'harmful' and 'organic' isn't 100%.

I'm all for avoiding nasty stuff like poisonous chemical pesticides. But I lost faith in the organic movement when I learned that organic certification forbids a simple NPK fertiliser. I think that's just fundamentalism.

So when you ask about organic gardening, either it's important to you because you're a fundamentalist (in which case, carry on -- I'm not stopping you -- I doubt this product is compatible with your beliefs), or (hypothetically if you were a commercial grower) your customers respond to the Organic label, or you're like me and you care about not polluting or poisoning, not about labels.

If it's the latter -- evaluate the effect of the stuff, and decide for yourself whether you find it acceptable.

This page is informative:
http://www.global-garden.com.au/burnley/dec02jan03dte.htm
Based on that I would personally be a little wary of the environmental impact if this stuff, in proportion to its usefulness.

According to the Warwick Chamber of Trade web site:
"Close to the town centre, and behind the Tourist Information Centre, is the unexpected haven of the Pageant Garden.
In this public open space are held civic garden parties; it forms the backdrop for wedding photographs and the huge chestnut trees cast a welcome shade to passers by."

It was pretty uninspiring on our visit in January -- little of the planting was in at an attractive stage, and the admittedly impressive trees were bare. I'm sure it's a lot more pleasant in season.

There's a leaflet available by the £1.50 honesty box. Here's some facts lifted from it:

The Mill Garden is the private garden of hte late Arthur Measures.

This peaceful garden stands in a place which, for many centuries was one of hustle and business. The whole of the traffic from the town going South and East crossed it on its way to the old bridge; earlier still to the ford. For hundreds of years traffic to and from the Castle Corn Mill came to it. At times when the Castle building work was in progress, it was little better than a stone mason's yard.

Many famous people must have come this way - all the Earls of Warwick, some of our kings and queens, probably William Shakespeare and common folk too from the town and the surrounding countryside.

Times of opening: 9am to 6pm, April 1st - October 31st. (We went on a sunny Sunday in January - I suppose we must have been lucky to find it open). Adults £1.50, young children with adults free, no dogs.

£134,880 has been raised for national and local charities between 1974 and 2006. Garden proceeds will go towards keeping The Mill Gardens open to the public, and to support National Gardens Scheme and 35 other charities.