OneGuyFromBarlick

It wasn’t supposed to sound derogatory....when folk over there hear me speak, I’ve been referred to a certain comedian! Can’t think of his name now, and I had to look it up at the time.

plaques wrote: ↑18 Jun 2020, 17:26 Some people consider peonies a waste of space especially up here in Lancashire where the weather is against you. I've known people dig them up for this very reason. One big advantage is that their dark green leaves last until autumn so there is still a contrast of colours. With over ½ acre of actual garden we can put up with the odd failure.

Actually I forgot I had winter primulas and spring violas around the bases of them

Lovely Wendy.

This is what I have been doing over the last few days.
It all started because I couldn’t see the sky and I felt like everything was closing in on me, and I hated it.
I had my back garden ‘cleared’ by proper gardeners with all the right tools- happy happy joy joy!
Then I had some garden bark/mulch delivered and have spread it out , over the last couple of days. I bucketed the mulch, bucket by bucket full, then spread it out with my new heavy duty rake.
Because of my back problems, I really should have got someone to spread it for me. I’m paying for it . (I can hear a few of you...). But anyway it’s done now! I kept thinking about the weeds coming and had to get the bare soil covered quickly.
With Advil, Epsom Salts and my Heat Pack , I will be fine in a day or two.
Still have to get some edging to put around the ivy in the far corner. I’ve tried twice to poison it but it’s just too tough. It used to spread half way over the garden and up the fences.
I will get a screen to screen off my garden wheelie bin out of sight, at the carport end.
I won’t plant anything new until the soil has warmed up, come Spring.
I feel much better now that I can see the sky and I have some open space, and I’m looking forward to creating my new garden.

Well done Cathy, that looks so much better!

Fingers crossed, but it looks as if there may be some plums this year. That will be a first.
Note the cunning under planting of wild blackberries.

Our pear tree is looking like it will produce a good crop this year as well.

Big improvement Cathy!
David, plums are such fickle trees. I once had a very long and complicated explanation from an expert on why they behave like that but have forgotten almost all he said. Why does diploid spring to mind?

PanBiker wrote: ↑07 Jul 2020, 21:28 Our pear tree is looking like it will produce a good crop this year as well.

Not a single apple on our tree, last year the boughs were touching the ground with apples. In fact we gave bags full to our friend the pâtissière.

Cathy, Its easy to let flower shrubs get too big especially if they are the kind that flowers on last years wood. Cut them back and you lose the benefit of the flowers the following year. Some you can trim back immediately after flowering and with a bit of luck still get flowers the following year.

Stanley wrote: ↑08 Jul 2020, 02:56 David, plums are such fickle trees.

It helped that Mr Poet next door pointed out that the root stock the plum was grafted to had taken over the job, and was about 90% of what I thought was a plum tree. We took appropriate action, and now I mainly have just a plum tree. There's a lot could go wrong yet though.

Apparently, ear trees like hard pruning so that's what it gets. With us only having a small front garden we generally have to lop a few branches off each year after it has shed. It always comes back and tends to fruit biannually.

I once impressed a lady in California by pointing out to her that the lager branch that started close to the ground on her Avocado tree and only bore hard inedible fruit was the original stock. It was about a foot in diameter and almost as big as the main tree which never did much. She let me cut it off and after that she had more good Avocados than you could poke a stick at. If I remember rightly most fruit trees are grown grafted on to dwarfing root stock.
My dad showed me how to graft when I was a lad and we had a tree at Napier road with both cooking and eating apples on it. Magic process! I seem to remember hard grafting wax to seal the graft.

It saddens us to see that the council people responsible for our town's trees don't seem to understand about rootstocks or can't be bothered to check and prune out the sprouts. A lot of the roadside trees and those in small parks have rootstock sprouting out at their base and making a mess of the trees. The rootstock is vigorous and competes with the above-ground tree for nutrients and water. Another problem here is that some trees are overcome with mistletoe - I think I put a photo on here some time ago. Some of these trees are dying. Yet another problem - trees with variegated leaves need the branches that revert to green leaves cutting out or they will take over the tree. Again, the green leaves are more vigorous. The genetic changes that give the variegated leaves weaken the tree and the green leaves can compete better. There's one variegated maple about 5 metres tall that has a big branch of green leaves sticking out of the top!

Stanley wrote: ↑09 Jul 2020, 02:35 I once impressed a lady in California

One day we may find a topic that he isn't an expert on.

Tizer wrote: ↑09 Jul 2020, 10:14 some trees are overcome with mistletoe - I think I put a photo on here some time ago.

After seeing that photo, I spent most of last winter observing all the trees with mistletoe on along my route in Cambridge, and smugly thinking I was one of the few who knew what those mysterious blobs were. Churchill College has a particularly good example. Rather disappointed to see in early March that most of them had a pair of rooks rebuilding their nests.

David, I never claim to be an 'expert', just a nosey bugger who has picked up a lot of odd information as I have rolled around the world. Have I ever bored you with exfoliation of case hardened surfaces due to vibration? If not, a treat in store!
The story of the search for dwarfing root stocks for fruit trees is fascinating.

Stanley wrote: ↑10 Jul 2020, 02:15 Have I ever bored you with exfoliation of case hardened surfaces due to vibration ?

At risk of qualifying myself for the Eye's OBN - you''ve never bored me about almost anything. First signs of boredom and I'm off.

I mentioned earlier about trees here in Taunton needing some attention to root stocks sprouting. Here are some examples from today's walk - mostly cherry and crab apple.

I have seen a lot of that this summer. I want to get pruning. I have never quite recovered from my pruning lockdown in France

We don't seem to have examples as bad as that Tiz. Very good illustration of the point!

I eventually finally found the prunings photo. It was still on my phone from last September. No wonder the plum is doing better this year.

That's industrial scale pruning David!

Indeed - and I then slowly chopped it all up and got it into the green bin. The big bits are frying in the shed for next door's wood burner.

The enormous Leylandii just about visible in the back (on the non-poet side) have now been removed. they were over 60 feet tall, and it took some time.

The planting of Cupressus Leylandii should be made illegal.

PS I won't correct the typo - it made me smile. . . .

I knew exactly what you meant David....

The planting of IVY should also be made illegal!!