Moral support for crap gardeners

[frozenthunderbolt]

IVe been growing vege in several places for better than 6 years now and i still can't grow either beetroot or parsnips worth shit.

I 1+ the raised gardens - they are infinaitely faster and easier to manage keeping them less than 6x3x2feet MAX will mean that they are moveable by two people when full (but not recently watered).

Any larger and you rish serious back problems, hernias and loss of fingers/kneecaps - even with 4 people.

You do need to be careful to keep them watered though - raised gardens dry out much faster IMHO - even my ones lined with clear plastic.

Invest in good compost to grow in not crap. It more than pays for itsself. GIGO.

[dave45]

i still can't grow either beetroot or parsnips worth shit.

keep trying - parsnips were 3rd time lucky for me. And I don't even like them. :-)

my son does though.

Planted beetroots too late last year - ended up with useless golf-balls

[oldjerry]

[quote="frozenthunderbolt"]IVe been growing vege in several places for better than 6 years now and i still can't grow either beetroot or parsnips worth shit



40 years, and I still cant grow a decent cauli!

[niknik]

40 years, and I still cant grow a decent cauli!

There´s hope for me yet then...... mind you I don´t HAVE 40 yrs to keep trying

tried a few.... ping pong ball sized..... got attacked by catrepillars. so no leaves left.

They were delicious though....
one is still showing signs of growth. has got to abut a tennis ball size!

Was my first ever yearthough... maybe I´ll get them a little biggerthis time around!

[Susie]

I've thought about this (because obviously the first step to a garden is self analysis, not anything sensible like digging), and I think part of my problem is, I think I ought to be able to do unrealistic things, and then when I can't, I get despondent. So for example, you have all said raised beds are fine and now I feel better about raised beds and can plan where to put one.

Can you tell me if this is fine as well? Is it ok to get someone else to replace fencing? I am having this guilt that I ought to be out there doing something clever with a hammer whereas realistically I would have no clue how to do it and no-one to help me. (Lots of people to stand there thoughtfully and tell me what it says about gardening in the bloody Georgics, no-one to actually mix the concrete for the posts!).

[niknik]

well.......... 2 ways of looking at this I think.

1st.. If you really can´t diy it, or would do a bad job, then best to get someone in. Diy could well be a false economy. Never mind the despondency factor


2nd....Look at it from a differnt angle.........

Do you really need a fence?

I dont mean just leave it open,,,,, but an alternative..
using what´s there, plant round it, bushy, thorny shrubs, climbing plants.

anything that could use the existing fence for support, and in time become the fence and a better barrier.

garden fences, are NOT a good deterrent to criminals. thorny, spiky, prickly dense vegetation is much better!
Mind you, when chased by a snarling police dog, they´ll try to escape through anyting!

That way you could kill 2 birds with 1 stone so to speak... (and more)

you get the "fence"
you get a better crime prevention barrier
It´s much prettier
It could provide food ( blackberies, gooseberries.etc......)
It could provide decoration. ( flowers, hollyetc..)

Better for the environment.. more plants using up more Co2.
and atttractmore wildlife, beneficial to your plats and others.
and more for your compostheap as well in due course.....

It may notbe an option you can use for all the perimeter. but atleast you could maybe try and partly do that. and get your garden off to a good start..

[Susie]

Excellent point! Thank you! I think we can replace some of it with hedges. I wonder if we could actually replace more than I thought. I'm not so much worried about security, because most of it's a low fence, so people could jump over if they wanted to anyway. I just want something to mark a barrier really. (We have a funny set up whereby people have access through the middle of our garden - they're nice people, I'm not bothered about them interfering with anything, I just want a nice clear divide so they can get down the passage and drag their bikes and dustbins without my greenery getting in their way!).

Food for thought! Thanks! .

[niknik]

It´not the nice people who are supposed to have access you need to worry about ( hopefully). it´s the ones you don´t want on your property.so maybe consider a good barrier your house side of the common path.treat that effectively as your boundary.
A good solid new fence.is actually worse than a rickety one, on a crime preventon basis.
a new solid one, gives your unwanted visitor something siolid to use to help himself over.an old rickety one. is a better deterrent as is more likely to collapse under any pressure.

You may not have been thinking along the crie prevention lines, but bestdo it now ( ideal opportunity really)
than after the fact.

[Peggy Sue]

niknak you have to remeber this is Cambridgeshire, crimianls are people who have protested against the hunting ban! Only joking, no-where is 100% safe but it's really not that bad down here, my OH accidentally lef his walet out in the front garden on top of a washing machine we were throwing out, it was still there in the morning!!!!

My onlky issue with hedges is they don't keep the RABBITS out- not an issue in the house (well we have the dog for that problem I guess) but at the allotment they can undo padlocked security fencing I swear.

Anyway my thought for the day is I reckon an experienced gardener is one who never expects the impossible, I'm still at the mildly optimistic stage about most things- except celery, cauli, and turnips- they are all a complete dead loss here, oh yes and silly things like cumin, what possessed me to try and grow that?

[Flo]

Susie go and get The Vegetable and Herb Expert by Dr D G Hessayon. It comes with pretty pictures and simple instructions on how to grow all sorts of common vegetables. There's a Fruit Expert and a Flower Expert by the same person. They have set lots of people who thought that they were crap gardeners on the way to being better at gardening.

That's something to read on wet days. If you are going to put a hedge in rather than a fence, well put a row of blackcurrant bushes, gooseberry bushes and such like in the place. The your hedge will feed you.

[Susie]

niknak you have to remeber this is Cambridgeshire, crimianls are people who have protested against the hunting ban!

This is horribly true although you've just blown all my urban cool credentials out of the water .

Flo, thanks for book recommendations! I've just reserved the veg & herb one at the library, also they've got them for the usual 1p + horrendous postage deal at Amazon so if I like it I might even splash out .

I'm making progress, I've got a man who's going to come next week and take away my dead hedge so I can dig over the border and plant a live one, and now I'm looking at hedging online (I never thought I would type those words). I think I might even plant some kind of a fruit bush on my really dodgy bit of weedy ground. We're collecting cardboard so we can lay it down to suppress the weeds in the rest of it and then mulch on top (for this year). Then I'm going to think about constructing a raised bed. I'm not particularly handy but I am thinking that hammering a nail into four bits of wood to make a raised bed frame might not be beyond me . Oh God, what have I started??!!

Off to look for a fruit bush it's impossible to kill.

[Zech]

Can you tell me if this is fine as well? Is it ok to get someone else to replace fencing? I am having this guilt that I ought to be out there doing something clever with a hammer whereas realistically I would have no clue how to do it and no-one to help me.

I know the feeling! I had grand plans about building a log store until my husband persuaded me that if we just went out and bought one, we might actually have somewhere to keep the wood

[sarahkeast]

I was in a similar position this time last year [with whole house to fix up too] Looking forward to a more laid back list of tasks this year

my first move was to get all the gross smoky carpets out of the house and lay them over where I wanted to put my raised beds. Then moved indoors for a few months of diy and planning with the help of local library and Amazon used. When I came to dig over and make raised beds [with scaffold from builder] the carpet had killed about everything under it. I then chatted up local carpet shop and they brought me hessian backed carpets as they took them out of people's houses [free] which I used as paths.

I have rickety fences too, most is still standing so I have planted native hedging whips [cheap] as a long term solution and will wait for hedge to grow as fence collapses.

In other areas I covered with cardboard [packing boxes] and planted thru holes, dumped a load of manure and compost on top.

The raised beds were a heck of a job to dig, but it was a large area and I figured 'do it once and do it right'. Got all sorts of roots and junk out. Chickens helped too, they were ex-bats, but soon figured it out. No dig from here on out tho.

We had a good crop of potatoes, peas and a few other things. Carrots sucumbed to root fly badly. So some good and some failed.

Try and get some fruit trees and bushes in now, between carpet/cardboard etc. Brutally take off all blossoms and let trees grow on well. Hoping this will pay dividends this year !

Still trying to figure out the crop rotation thing and where to put things this year.

Good luck and enjoy, some of it will go well at least !

[sarahkeast]

try online planners, www.growveg.com does a free trial, get all plans laid out there ! they do email updates and stuff on Facebook too.

Love them !

[oldjerry]

You don't HAVE to go down the laid out veg garden route,if your plot isn't massive,you're gonna be pushed to grow everything youwant anyhow.If you like flowers/shrubs as well why not think about a potager?(one big advantage,when things aren't lined up in seried ranks,your failures aren't so aparrant!),anyhow organization smacks of control.