Tina5

Speed gardening

I feel your pain Joe. I used to garden for a living. As soon as the rain stops, they all want to know why you aren't in their garden! Not getting paid isn't great either....

July in the garden!!

How beautiful! Now that's my kind of garden!

Fork Handles

I've been trendy for years....or maybe it's just that I can't get behind the chicken house to deal with the nettles that are now taller than me..not hard, as I'm a tad over 5ft 3.

Sunny here.......

What's the weather like in your area?

Lovely here today. (North Essex)  Hot and sunny.

Off to catch up on some weeding!

July in the garden!!

House prices are faling here, same as everywhere else. You can still buy a 2 bed bungie with a fair sized garden for around 160K (in a decent area)

The real added bonus for gardeners is that we don't get hose pipe bans. 80% of our water comes from underground aquifers, and the water company (Veolia East) serves such a small area that the reservoirs don't get depleted. The water table here is very high. When we dug the foundations for our extension, three feet down and we were up to our ankles in water! The ground here is sandy soil over glacial clay. You need to make tons and tons of compost to get anywhere near half decent soil for veggies. I'm happy here.

Cheesecake with strawbs from the garden. I had to buy the kwi fruit!

July in the garden!!

 Quercus, I live on the North Essex coast. About five minutes walk from the beach. We don't get much rain here. St Osyth, a couple of miles away is offically the driest place in England. It has been very wet this year, but we still manage to get a fair bit of sunshine!  This morning it was pouring. This afternoon it was clear blue skies..and very hot.

July in the garden!!

What super photos everyone!

Some pics from today

Garden Gallery

Thanks David, I agree, it is a bit of a thug..howver, we inherited some very old fruit trees, and decided to leave them and use them a bird seed hangers and climber supports. We garden very much 'with nature', and although she does get the upper hand now and again, I do enjoy the 'wilder' side of things. It a pain keeping the weeds down in the veg and fruit garden though. It does make for a very labour intensive garden, but as I 'd much rather be in my garden than anywhere else, I don't mind! 

Garden Gallery

Those dahlias are beautiful! The slugs ate all mine within 24 hours of planting. I hate slugs.

David, the clematis in your damson tree is a beauty! We have a montana that almost covers an old apple tree. In fact, the tree's sole reason is now to hold the clematis up! The tree is ancient, and doesn't bear any nice fruit, but the clematis and the ivy provides nesting and roosting for load of birds.

baffled by strawbs and a mystery plant

Looks like slug damage to me too. The first pic seems to show soggy patches..that's probably due to all the rain. We grow a lot of strawberries,and whilst the yeild is good this year, the quality ain't!  Many of the berries are rotting on the plant from all the rain. Slug damage not too bad, but I do lay a very thick layer of straw.

If that leaf is salad, it might be mizuna, or maybe a variety of rocket?