Gardening: Hints and Help!

Our barrels are very near empty, I'm very sparing in their use I rarely treat garden planted plants to any of it - tap water from the hosepipe is good enough for them!

However I'm wondering whether to fill up the water butts and allow it to stand - that'll make it rain quicker than you can say knife!

We've not had a hosepipe ban for some years, thankfully, they increased the capacity at some resoviours, probably topped them up with other folk's water 😱, buy I fear this dry spell and the amount of new house building, over 3,000 on just one site on the outskirts of town 😱😱, they will return before long.

 A few years back folk were offered free water butts by Essex and Suffolk Water, can't remember full details, but you had to sign to say you'd empty your waterbutts into your garden when rain was forecast so they'd be empty to save run off and floods. All seemed bizarre to me so didn't apply, anyway hard pushed to put another in neatly!

We’ve had no rain here for a while , I’ve got 7 waterbutts and all of them are empty ! , hoping for some rain soon ( but only over night) 

Our water butts are empty, I expect the water meter is spinning around but will hate to see the warm weather depart, can't win. 

Delighted to see the red poppy seeds given by a neighbour are beginning to flower. Rather different, I'd not seen them, she offered them in exchange for seeds of my pink ones which escaped into a tub in the front garden.

I love them with the pink, totally accident of seed scatter.

Takethedogalong and brue there are buds on that rose. Fingers crossed it is mum and dad's birthday rose 😀. I will post photo regardless. Timing seems right dads birthday would have been 21 June.

It appears the lovely lady rose is alive, but suffered a shock - surprise surprise 😉. I'm 99.9999% certain my daughters rose has died, heyho, the survival rate still exceeds 50%. 

Bargain basement news! This was a £2 sell off from Lidl a couple of years ago, neglected and unwanted etc. Saved by OH it's an olive tree and it's flowering, wondering with this early warm weather if we'll see any fruit later? 

Wow brue what a bargain! I love it fingers crossed it'll fruit probably more likely if the lively sunny weather returns. Congratulations to your OH

Yes a true bargain buy, they usually cost a fortune. Our water butts are half full now from last two days. Not been bad today, plenty of sunshine, but a couple of sharp showers as well. OH says I am grumpy because it’s raining on the roses......

Good news about those roses Bakers. I have one that’s struggling at the moment, put into ground after a couple of years in a pot, and doubt it’s going to do much this year, a couple of small buds have come out. Fingers crossed🤞

Waterbutts full again 😀. Not particularly noticeable on the pond level still about 5 inches down.

Awaiting germination of my runner beans.

I have several fruits on my cherry tomatoes, outside grown from seeds from supermarket tomato 😀. My brother also passed on, as well as cherry tomatoes, 2 beefsteak tomato plants same source for seeds. He also  bought over a butternut squash plant, that turned out to be 4 😱 so gave 2 away. They're all looking good.

Might have to cut the grass again 😱 but it needs to recover a bit!

Another dull day here, but at least it is dry. We have another big outdoor project on at the moment. Ivy is invading my greenhouse, so we are going to take all glass out, get to the ivy through the frame and try and cut it back so it doesn’t invade again. Suspect we shall lose some panes doing it, and just emptying it will take some time, but got to be done.

(Hope this post makes it out there, never known website as bad as this.)😡