Kath's Problem Page for Gardeners and non-gardeners alike!

[Linda]

This is where you post any questions about problems with the garden, plants etc...Gloria can also answer these queries!
:):)

[Brenda]

Gee, Kath and Gloria, do you get the feeling that, when someone called for a volunteer for this job, you stayed in the same spot and everyone else took a step backwards? :lol:

It's such a great thing that everyone is willing to help everyone else with our little daily problems and questions. I, for example, will be most willing to answer any of your questions about blackflies, -30C temperatures, snowshoeing, and skunks - well, no, come to think of it, you should read Utter Peace and Tranquility for that information. But, other stuff, yeah. :wink:

Brenda

[Kath Mulligan]

OMG!!!! As I have just posted elsewhere I am anything but an expert on gardening matters. Most of the info I have come up with has been as a result of trusty Google searches! Plus a small amount of knowledge garnered over the years from my own successes and failures (probably more of the latter than the former) in my own small garden.

However, never let it be said that I shirk a challenge, so ask away and I will do my best to find an answer.

Do you think perhaps I could be the next Monty Don on Gardener's World?! :wink: :wink: :lol: No, perhaps not!

Janet should be included in this page, you know, since I think her father had a nursery - am I right, Janet? You probably know considerably more than I do.

Kath

[Janet Swan]

[quote="Kath Mulligan
Janet should be included in this page, you know, since I think her father had a nursery - am I right, Janet? You probably know considerably more than I do.

Kath[/quote]

Yes, Kath, it is true that my Dad did have a small nursery and still gardens aged 93. He grew cyclamen, bedding plants, rose bushes, cut crysanthemums and dahlias and tomatoes and lettuce. My pocket money was earned deadheading the flowers. However, when I moved back to Hitchin, I planted my own garden with lavender, honeysuckle, perennial geraniums, pinks, lavertera etc. for Summer, with some shrubs, pansies, polyanthus and bulbs for Winter/Spring - and I refuse to have bedding plants, dahlias or crysanthemums on my plot. I also encourage frogs, birds and hedgehogs - and elsewhere you will read that I am suffering from white flies and feeding slugs - so I guess no one will really want my advice on anything, will they :roll: :wink: :lol: ?

Janet

[Kath Mulligan]

When I was a child my dad used to grow dahlias and chrysanthemums for showing. To protect his best blooms from the vagaries of the weather and the birds, he used to cover the heads with paper bags - we had a very weird looking garden I can tell you!!! And oh, the tension just before and on the day of the Show - would his blooms be good enough to win him a rosette, or even the winner's cup - sadly that didn't happen very often, but he enjoyed the camaraderie of swapping hints and tips with other enthusiasts, and after the Show season was over, we actually got to have some of his flowers in a vase to enjoy in the house!

Ah, happy days.

Kath

[gloria townsin]

Kath and Janet I think you have both shown that you have a good inherited knowledge of plants and gardening so watch out for the queries to fly....... :D
My dear Dad didn't know a weed from a plant and was never a keen gardener, but in his defence he didn't grow up with a garden living in London and his first garden in married life was huge and very much the orchard it had been - he never really did get to grips with it, so big was it there was room to build another house and still make two good gardens out of it. Those were the days when no-one really knew how much of a premium building land would become.

[Julia.]

I love gardening and most of the time I can tell the difference between a weed and a flower but I have got this Wisteria,I have had it for 2 years and although it has trebled in size and has plenty of foliage it hasn't produced a flower yet,we have quite heavy clay soil which was improved with compost.Any advice will be gladly received. Julia. :(

[gloria townsin]

Er.......over to you Kath and Janet, I think Linda was crediting me with rather more horticultural knowledge than I actually possess. All I know about Wisteria is that it is beautiful and seems to live a long while, what it's soil and condition preferences are I really don't know. I will see if I have any info on it in my many gardening books but I bet the quickest way is to Google it. Julia I'm sure you will get some guidance very soon. :)

[Kath Mulligan]

I have never grown a wisteria myself, much as I love them but I googled your problem, Julia, and have come up with the following websites (among many!):

http://www.gardenbanter.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17043
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0600/wisteria.asp

Hope these provide some useful information for you and if it works, would love to see some photos on the forum.

Somewhere I have a photo of me taken by Vin at Trellisick (I think) with my nose buried in a massive wisteria in full bloom up against a huge stone wall. I look like the Bisto kid!!!! What a glorious scent it has.

Good luck and good pruning.

Kath

[Julia.]

Thanks Gloria and Kath for going to such trouble.
I did a bit of googling previously but there was so much I gave up at the first hurdle,the RHS page looks good so I will follow their advice and hope to have before and after photos to post next year.Lovely thought. Julia. :o

[Kath Mulligan]

You're welcome, Julia, look forward to seeing the (hopefully) flowering results next spring! :lol:

Kath

[gloria townsin]

Question:- Should I move my bed of strawberry plants to another raised bed on the allotment (discarding any that are not up to standard) or should I let them stay where they are? We planted the bed about 6 years ago and we had pounds of strawberries last year. I'm not sure if they need replacing or just some Growmore put around them at appropriate time.
Spent almost 2hours today doing a bit of tidying up, the wind was keen and my fingers got cold but other than that I kept fairly warm. Everything is budding, the fruit trees and the rhubarb are kicking back into life, the bulbs are never as quick to come through over there, but perhaps that's because they are in a tub and the soil is colder. Got some onions that could be pulled, but lots of bare earth ready to be planted. I have deliberately left it barren after our debacle with the contaminated manure of last year, it should be fine by the time we start planting again. Must get some seed potatoes and begin shooting them. :)

[Janet Swan]

Well, Gloria, I know I'm not Kath (it is her page afterall :wink: ) but I have grown strawberries for a few years now, and my feeling is that you should leave them where they are, put a bit of fresh compost round them and/or feed them, and see what happens. I think they will fruit again, despite what the books say about replacing strawberry plants every couple of years. If the crop is smaller it will be a bit of a disappointment, but, more important, you should get loads of runners, which you can pot up and take to Bryher for a new patch when you move there.

Janet

[Kath Mulligan]

My dad used to peg down quite a few runners each year, then once they had established he would dig up the older plants and discard them, but I can't remember now how many years he kept the original plants for. Like Janet says, if you pot up some of the runners you will have plants to take to Bryher to establish there as well.

Kath

[gloria townsin]

Thank you Janet and Kath. I'm more than happy to give them another year or so and take your advice re feeding and taking runner pottings. It is quite a big bed and it fruited so heavily last year that I kind of thought it might be a final fling, but will get the old food and extra care on the go for them. :D

[gloria townsin]

Haven't consulted this particular page for a while, and I know I could Google for the answer but thought first I would ask here........

Does anyone have any experience with growing a Bottle Brush plant/tree. We have a large one in Bryher's front garden and it has been left to do it's own thing for a while, well certainly since we have been here. It has some dead bottle flowers but the branch has gone on growing and produced new flowers. So what do I do? when it's finished flowering this year do I cut it back to take off the old dead flowers, do I just cut off this years old flowers or do I just leave it to carry on doing what it wants?

Adrian mentioned in another section the loss of his fuschia..I remember reading that many were lost in Cornwall last Winter and one nursery lost all it's stock and had to try to replace them from elsewhere. It was certainly a cold Winter as we can testify with the bursts it caused at Bryher and what all of that entailed.

Nice afternoon here, in fact hot when I was gardening and now there is another car load for the dump.....cannot quite believe how much this garden is producing and still there is a lot more to do.

It's Mullion garden competition next week. I would love to have a go with the front garden but there is still too much to do to get it in competition mood. But it would be fun to have a go, not to mention the Scarecrow Day this year is Scarecrows around the World. You have to tell the committee before hand which Country your Scarecrow is to represent so that there aren't duplicates, or you can make up a country. That takes place later in August. The entry forms have to be in very soon and I can't make up my mind whether to do this or not and if I do what country to do. It would have to be somewhere that is easy to identify. Any thoughts?

[Kath Mulligan]

I've never grown a bottle brush plant, so can't help there I'm afraid, Gloria.

This Scarecrow thing seems to be growing in popularity, doesn't it? Elizabeth was telling us only last night about the ones that are on display in the villages over the hills on her way to work. Their theme is adverts and so far she has spotted the Three Pink Ladies, the Meercats and the Milk Tray advert (a scarecrow man is abseiling down a steep hillside with chocolates in hand for that one). She saw several more out of the corner of her eye but the road is very steep and winding so you need your wits about you and eyes on the road on that stretch. She's planning to try to stop one morning on her way to work and take some photos (it's sunny today so maybe she has already done it).

For the Round The World theme, don't know - how about Crocodile Dundee with his hat with bobbing corks on it? Shouldn't be too difficult. Or a French peasant with a beret and string of onions round his neck. No doubt others will come up with much more original ideas.

Kath

[gloria townsin]

Crocodile Dundee is a good one........just need to go and shoot a crocodile...........:girl_wink:

The adverts one is very good as there are so many possibilities......this is only the third year for Mullion I think the original was done for the Methodist Church roof fund, but it proved popular and last year I was amazed at how many appeared round the village and right down in the harbour. There were so many family groups with pens and paper walking round it was lovely to see. Will have to think it through a bit as I don't want to enter then think - 'Heck what have I let myself in for', especially as once you have named the country you can't change your mind if it proves difficult.

[jane jackson]

Sorry Gloria I have no experience of Bottle Brush trees either other than admiring them.

Good luck with your scarecrow ~ that sounds rather fun. Kath's idea of the corks on a hat is good and relatively easy I should think after you've actually constructed the scarecrow. Perhaps you could find a toy crocodile in a seasidey shop, you never know!

Trengwainton Garden has scarecrows at the moment made by local school children. There is a lovely one "Lady Lavender" who looks very historical in her dress and parasol especially from a distance. For another one they've removed a few bricks from the large wall and the scarecrow is climbing through stealing strawberries ~ very effective.

Lovely day today after the drizzly start. Have fun in your garden.

[Sybille Weber]

What a lovely idea about the scarecrows. Haven't heard of anything similar here in Germany.

By the way, what about entering a German scarecrow?
I could send over our neighbour from downstairs, the one who chases away all the birds from the garden because of their droppings.
;)

[Kath Mulligan]

What a lovely idea about the scarecrows. Haven't heard of anything similar here in Germany.

By the way, what about entering a German scarecrow?
I could send over our neighbour from downstairs, the one who chases away all the birds from the garden because of their droppings.
;)

OOOH! Miaowww Sybille!!! :D:biggrin::biggrin:

Kath

[gloria townsin]

In the garden at Bryher we have some largish clumps of bulbs that sit on the ground rather than in it. Jane told Eddie that they don't flower every year - and so far they haven't - but what they are we don't know. Does anyone have any idea what they might be. The bulbs are quite large. I split the largest clump in September and re-planted them as it was in the wrong place for our re-planting scheme and they are already shooting well, about 4" ten days ago. Can't describe any flower as have no idea what it might look like.

[jane jackson]

Could be the wild type of Amaryllis grown down here and on the Scillies. They seem to grow in quite large clumps mostly out of the ground and usually send the flower stalk up first which is sometimes a reddish colour. The flowers resemble those of the Nerine rather than the trumpets of the Amaryllis grown inside and sold everywhere for Christmas. They are pink or white usually and have been flowering since August on The Mount but I think are mostly out in September/October. We bought a few bulbs from the Islands this spring but they haven't done anything and were a bit soft when we bought them so they very kindly sent us replacements. Hopefully we'll have flowers next year.

[gloria townsin]

Well I kind of thought of Amaryllis but as they didn't actually do anything couldn't judge. When I divided the clump some of them were soft so I discarded them and just replaced/ re-planted the ones that seemed firm.

Was going to give you and Kath a few only I wasn't there when you were down for the Arts Festival and only thought about giving some to Adrian and Rachel after they had left. They will still be there next year though. Thanks Jane for the info.

[Kath Mulligan]

Jane, are these the same plants that you and I were talking about last month when I thought they were nerines? Seem to remember we saw some as we were walking up the lane opposite the Wink on our way to Oliver Land, or maybe those were nerines, I can't remember!!

Kath

[jane jackson]

I'd forgotten about seeing those plants Kath but yes I think that would have been Amaryllis. The Nerines are very similar but slightly more delicate with thinner stems and I think they're usually found in Garden Centres on the prepacked bulb stands whereas I haven't been able to find any Amaryllis bulbs apart from on the Islands. My father was given some Nerine bulbs years ago when we were in Hertfordshire when they first seemed to be around as far as the general public were concerned ~ he died in 1987. We weren't very successful in keeping them after the first season so perhaps they weren't keen on the colder nights.

By the way Kath have you received an email from me with a photo? I only ask as I've sent quite a few emails since soming home and nobody has replied which is unusual. Perhaps everyone is just busy or away.

[Kath Mulligan]

Do you mean the one with the photos on Penzance seafront? If so, yes I have, thanks but am having a bit of a problem accessing emails at the moment. BT Yahoo seems to be having some issues and my home page doesn't open up as normal. BT say they are aware of the problem but it has been going on for several days now, so time they got it sorted in my opinion!

Kath

[gloria townsin]

I think when a company or whoever says they are 'aware' of a situation it's supposed to be an answer in itself, the fact it doesn't resolve the problem is neither here nor there.......:fie:

[jane jackson]

[
Was going to give you and Kath a few only I wasn't there when you were down for the Arts Festival and only thought about giving some to Adrian and Rachel after they had left. They will still be there next year though. Thanks Jane for the info.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the thought Gloria, may take you up on it next year if ours don't perform!