I have two perennial flower beds, an elaeagnus hedge, a vegetable garden, numerous fruit trees, some potted flowers, and some miscellaneous bushes and plants.
Have spent the last 3 years taking out the stuff left by prevous owners that I didn't care for, i.e. thuja hedge, woody shrubs, and numerous daffodils, etc.; and re-planting with my tastes in mind and better use of the natural terrain. Most everything is coming into form now, having had a year or so to grow. The only thing still missing is a Glycine, which I absolutely want, but haven't found a suitable spot yet. That will be next year's project. A constant overlook of things each year, with about 15% to be replanted in a given year, but this gets less and less as I get things sorted to where and how I want them.
Ah well - the fun is in the effort as much as in the result. The slugs and mice are fat and happy, though.
and most of the time in the kitchen garden
Not sure how much I'll be able to do in the garden of our rented house in Neuchatel so I'll probably have to make do with a few pots and stuff.
Probably shouldn't be worrying about that when I've got a million other things to be doing instead
Karl, I got my raised beds from the UK and brought them over. See
Harrod Horticultural. Not so pretty, but I chose the plastic ones as we live at altitude and get v. cold weather and much snow. I had some nice stone flower troughs brought over from our UK garden, and I've placed them in front to hide the plastic- it works really well.
I planted all sorts of veg in my garden, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc. and unfortunately the yield was disappointing due to bugs and rot induced by the damp weather. All tomatoes failed: after an initial growth burst, they all became infected with rot. Down the street I spotted a greenhouse full of fat red tomatoes...so next season I am buying a small greenhouse instead. Squash and pumpkins seem to do fine.
you cut a bit of it and pierce the foot of the "tomato tree"
sides. Apart from that, I feed then with the tomato fertilizer from the garden center. I've had great crops since doing this.
In the back garden we end up having a swampland in the wintertime. In the front strip it's so bad that even my mums died off.
I think the snails love it though. Maybe rather than consider myself a gardener who plants flowers to make the house look nice, I should consider myself a food producer for our local snail population.
Not much I can do about the whole back garden, but I think I might dig up the front strip, pull out all the assorted, jumbled up bulbs, separate them and replant them somewhere else. And then lay down some gravel and a proper topsoil mix (the soil there is rubbish now, as it is everywhere in our yard).
Whew, just typing it is tiring though.
Garden is a restaurant for them.... free and open 24/24....
I tried several things from ash to egg shell. The best is beer..... they just love it.
you can also buy some stuff to kill them all...
they are also food for hedgehog....
a resident hedgehog.
just by the way .... mrs and I met Hester MacDonald ( she has a gardening show on WRS ) at the expat expo last week and she is coming over Monday to give us a little garden evaluation.
(( ok ok.."give us" = Chf 500.-- ))
Also, here in SZ a Tomatohüsli is essential because of all the water we have. If I'm still here next spring we are going to expand the tomato house to make it more greenhouse-like so that we can start the tomatoes earlier, and give them a bit of protection when the temps drop in June.
I've got a question for you. We don't have a garden of our own, but there is a shared space which is cultivated by our upstairs neighbour. She has some herbs in there, some rhubarb, a clematis and various other plants, but there's one in there that neither my wife nor I recognise.
It is about six feet tall, with a trumpet shaped flower at the top, inside which is a curled up sticky thing that seems to attract flies. It has a big bulbous root with three woody things sticking up that sometimes rattle against the plant's stem. I'm guessing it's the wind that does that, although I'm sure I've heard the noise when it has been still outside.
Anyway, the weirdest thing is that I'm convinced the plant has moved. I know it sounds bizarre, and my wife tells me that I'm imagining things, but I'm absolutely sure that it used to grow up against the fence, whereas now it is a good six feet away.
Do you know of any plants that would do that?
(It's funny... as I've been typing this, that rattling noise has just started again. It sounds really creepy... but I suppose shouldn't let my imagination get to me. )