Gardening in England

Zeek, Welcome to the Forum from California, USA.   

Welcome to reservoir of Leicester, burhinus of West Suffolk and ZakthePirate of Cumbria, pretty well spread out in England.
A belated welcome also to French Bean; hope ypou won't feel lonely any more.

Zak, people might know Cumbria as the home of the Lake District.

Kelejan from Surrey, Hertfordshire and Bedordshire but in British Columbia, Canada since 1979.

Welcome Zak the pirate,
Its nice to know  to know fellow gardeners in England.  

By the way Kelejan, I did the reverse immigration.  I left Montreal Quebec in 1980 to come to Leicester UK.  

Christine

ZakthePirate wrote:Hello, new to the site and from Cumbria

 Hi Zack,
Welcome to the site.

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to pop over into the home page and use the new member threads to introduce yourself .
   Are you a Brit or an implant ???     
  
 What part of Cumbria are you from ?
I lived in Carlisle for two years solid  --- early 1967 into March 1969 and then on and off for the next 14 years.
 
What sort of garden are do you have at present?

Hello all i have just joined and live near London, like gardening but not got much of a clue, thought by joining this site might get some ideas.

Chris, Welcome to the Forum from California, US. Do you Have the book "All New Square Foot (Meter) Gardening by Mel Bartholomew? Make sure to get a copy. Between the book and the folks on this Forum, you should have plenty of support to get going.

Welcome Chris  , I'm sure you will enjoy this forum, members are so friendly and very helpful.,
I have only just joined going from rows to squares.

See ya


  Christine

 ChrisD.  What sort of garden do you have at this time? Are you going to do Square Foot Gardening?
Ask questions, we are here to help.  

Hi Chris , welcome to the site .

 If your after material and manure for making you version of Mel's Mix there is plenty to be had locally in both sides of the Houses of Parliament evidently  .        

 look on the left hand side of the home page on the bobbly bits .. these are some of the more pertinent threads wrt ANSFG ( All new Square foot Gardening )

In my strap lines there are details of the books we work with so we all end up singing the same song off the same song sheet to the same tune ..

 ANSFG does work and it works well once you get the gist of it under your belt .
It may sound ogre-ish but in all honesty your best to  stick with what Mel say's as much as you can ..obviously around the globe things will need tweaks and adaptations but in essence what he say is PUKKA.

 One thing  that is worth looking for on Google etc is ... " The 18 day Berkley Hot composting method ".
When you get to the site  it's worth printing off,  for there are lists and ideas for what you can compost , it also gives simple steps of how to make the compost if your fit enough to do it .

 Getting a decent compost heap going ASAP using the Berkley method can save you £'s when it come to making the initial Mel's MIX for your beds as it has so many different fully composted materials in it.

 The vermiculite  ... big insulation grade is OK .
  The big builders merchants like Perkins , or Keyline sell it , last time I checked it was the cheapest from them  in 100 litre bags .
 A 100 litre bag  is good for 1 & 1/2 beds of 4x4 feet by 6 inches deep  when made up into the MM formula .

Any excess MM can be stored in the bag if you use scissors to carefully cut the bag top off and be used to top up the beds as they start to settle down

If you look into the Europe section you might pick up on that I've said B&Q sell a compacted bale of a mix of peat and composted coir made by a company  called Verve . It is great for the peat component of the MM & costs about £10 for a big bale which is enough for 1 & 1/2 beds 4 x 4 feet x 6 inches deep when made into MM( haven't purchased any this year so far  ).

 You may also gather that whilst we all speak English of sorts there are big differences in the usage & meanings  .  " A common people separated by a common language " , was once how it was described "  
 What we  sometimes call manure or stable muck , chicken droppings & cow pats etc is often also politely called compost in the USA    

I've posted in the new member section but wanted to come here and post also. I live in Suffolk between Bury St. Edmunds and Cambridge. SFG is new to me but not gardening. I was hoping to engaging my kids in some non electronc time out in the "garden". Yes I am a transplant, originally from the Newer part of York (he, he get it?).
I have a small square and a double size in my garden. I've had to do alot of clearing and since we rent I've wanted to keep my costs down/be able to return the area. Of course it looks better now then when I started so I doubt the landlord will argue! I've got the new book and the with kids version, my Mel's Mix as best I can with what I can find here, a compost bin I found in the mess reassembled and adding goodies to daily & seeds (mistakenly started early) growing crazy all over my conservatory. I'm worried mostly about the weather. The temperatures vary so much! Also what to do about the wind! it was near 20mph this past weekend! I wasnt able to get my plants in on time and now they all look terrible! how will they survive outside all the time. any advice would be helpful.

Welcome.  You must be near RAF Lakenheath/Mildenhall  I was posted to RAF Croughton for 3 years and loved my time in England.  I didn't do veggies during that time but had some of the best success with flowers I have ever had.  The long days just seem to cause everything to burst into bloom.  

You can try some pvc pipes hooped over the beds and covered with plastic to help with winds and heavy rain.  leave the ends open for ventilation unless the night is below 40 F.  Once the new plants get some age and size, the plastic can come off until you need it for fall protection.

Kay

MyAF gang, Welcome to the Forum!   

 greenkate. I used to live in Surrey, Hertfordshire, and lastly Bedfordshire before I came to Canada.
Are you a beginner gardener or an experienced one?  

Hello " Transplant " Welcome to the forum & UK weather , also welcome to all other new UK ANSFG'ers .
 I'm now on catch up with the gardens & glass house , had a couple of months off sick .



 The real New York where I was born incidentally is in Lincolnshire Great Britain it was there long before the imitator in the USA came into being  Some of the Pilgrim father's came from it as well as Boston ( which is 7 or so miles away ) .    .



 The last fortnight of May & the first three weeks of June are usually our most hectic times of the gardening year .
 Basically now the night temperatures are around or above 10 oC  / 50 oF you will be able to direct sow or sow in post almost all your veg  save for a few things like early leeks and early cauli .



Look on the seed packets for best times and only sow a few every week so you don't get overwhelmed with a massive glut of stuff you can't handle quickly or put to store after blanching  in a freezer or canning 
( Eat your heart out , I have a 21 & 1/2 quart " All American Pressure Canner "  & a couple of hundred " Weck  "  preserving jars with glass lids from Amazing child Montessori on  Amazon
UK . 


 Besides Mel's book there is a book called the , " Garden Expert by DG HESSAYAN " price around £10 in most decent garden centres covers almost everything you can grow in the UK and tells you all about it & how to do it , care for it harvest it and cook it  . 

Peat buy or not to buy ...

Depends on your conscience after  hearing  that apparently Irish peat is used as a fuel for at least two power generating stations over in Ireland .


You can buy a peat substitute on line  . It is chopped up ,steamed to death to remove by-products & sterilize it , highly compacted coir / copra waste fibres and ground up coconut shell.

Formed into a dense highly compressed bock of  12 x 12 x 7 inched deep it  weighs about 10 pound a block . reconstiture it in a big wheel barrow , a standard dust bin is difficult to do ( Guess how I know ? )   

Adding  30 litres of water with a bit of nutrient tomato feed to it  makes up to a whacking 70 to 80 litres of fluffed up material .

 I recently purchased 10 blocks for £52 inc delivery .. It works out far cheaper than the 120 litre bales of compressed Verve from B&Q . As it is dry goods in small blocks it's easy to move around and store ( in a very dry place ) ,  unlike the large bales of compost or Verve stuff .

It's on eBay at " elixirgardensupplies " . Delivery time was just over 36 hours ..ordered it on the Monday afternoon.

New plants ready for planting out .

 You can leave most ready to plant plants outside in the rain or give then a light spray from a fine rose'd hose  for a few days more , just make sure that they get access to full sun and they won't go all weedy & leggy  .   When your ready to go ,  soak the root ball /whole container in a couple of inches of water for a few hours and they will come out the containers really easy unless they are Jiffy pots , water the hole they are going to go into,  then plant them and cover with MM and water them again that evening .

 This time of the year as it warms up try evening planting and watering in the evenings through to just after dawn if you can't sleep . I suggest that you don't water from a sprayer, rose in the sunshine as the suns rays are magnified  in the droplets of water this causing burn marks on the leaves .
 Wind wise 99% of your plants will survive anything the wind can throw at them so long as you keep them watered & if tall plants stake & tie them or run them up a strong trellis / frame  / net etc .

 Make sure your plants are planted at a fraction deeper than they were in the pot and cover the old growth medium .. this helps stop the wind wicking water out the plant thus  drying the root ball

Plantoid, you are  mine of information and so helpfu in sharing. It helps us here across the pond as well. Thanks so much.  

Plantoid - strap line? PUKKA?  Here in Hawaii a puka is a hole.  Doesn't sound like what you're talking about.

To me pukka means something done well or properly. No holes in that.

strap line=signature

PUKKA is just plantoid talking in a foreign language again!   

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pukka

A slang-term used in British English to describe something as "first class" or "absolutely genuine".

that is wild!  Did we say we speak the same language?  Love those idiosyncrasies.

I thought Mickey Rooney was a pukka ... or is that a Puck?

kauairosina wrote:Plantoid - strap line? PUKKA?  Here in Hawaii a puka is a hole.  Doesn't sound like what you're talking about.

 Think you'll have to explain that post using different word  and in a different manner ..I cannot fathom out what you're saying.

 Pukka is a word brought into the English language from our days of imperialism when we played at soldiering & governance in  " The big game in India " in the days of the Rajah's, it means real ...genuine.

 Though we have a cheap brand of greasy, some sort of  beef with blots of liquid in a  pastry pie over here , call PUKKA pies ..
 Me & most  of my pals say the words, "  Puke a pie "  as in regurgitating one you have recently consumed   .



Ah the penny drops with a resounding "  CLANG "

I've just re read things & realised you meant an earlier post . Yes PUKKA , the genuine thing applies .
 Strap lines .. the bits under the post where information hangs ,  it appears on every post .

Just didn't know what they were called.  Mahalo much.

Greetings, I am fresh and green in the forum. So glad to see so many fellow countrymen. Hope we can share a tip or two since I am still a novice in gardening.

Hi Josh,

Wonder if you have the book All New Square Foot Gardening?  Mel Bartholomew condenses and simplifies the knowledge you need. It gave me the confidence to start a garden 4 years ago. 

This forum is really nice as a place to ask questions, expand your knowledge, and support your efforts.  But I would not use the forum as the only source of info.  So many topics covered here could be overwhelming and even worse, you could miss important information already covered in the book.  If you start with the book, you can't go wrong.

Welcome and enjoy square foot gardening!