Gardening questions and chat!

Does it have flowers? If so, what colour? Are they yellow? If so, I think it might be hypericum. St John’s Wort. If so, worth looking up info on it as a herbal remedy.

Yes it does have yellow flowers at some point, you are so clever Sue!!! Funnily something I’d looked at getting seeds for to grow :rofl: Its still a bit annoying as it is creeping out into the lawn ect! I’ll do some research on how to use it not as a tablet!

I was about to suggest hypericum hidecote… very pretty spreading plant with yellow flowers .

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I’ll look at both, thanks Stella :smile:

:rofl: it’s the same thing!!

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Hmm I’m thinking it can’t be that, mine is a real ground cover where that grows to 1.5m!

Ha ha…
HH is the only name for it that I know… we used to have it growing under the lilac trees formed a huge carpet betwixt them and the paths… helped suppress the weeds (hurrah)

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Rose of Sharon is perhaps more groundcover than shrubby… it’s another Hypericum.

I was about to say that HH can also be a low, shrubby hedge if you don’t keep it cut back.

Hypericum Calycinum…Rose of Sharon… take a look

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“Rose - of Sharon” always sounds to me like a brand of perfume released by one of the cast from The Only Way Is Essex.

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Telling me it’s a hibiscus!

And quite frankly not that beautiful - prone to rust and looking scruffy. Treat it brutally, mow it if it’s in the lawn. Best used in places where not much else grows - eg dry areas. If you need solid ground cover I’d rather go for something like vinca - pretty blue flowers in spring, some varieties have variegated leaves. Again, can be treated brutally and comes back for more.

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I’m back with more questions! So just watched last weeks Gareders World or whatever it’s called with Monty. There was a segment with a lady growing Dahlias, which I love. Remembered I had a cloth shopping bag hidden near the front door with some stuff I’d bought ages ago :blush: . I went and found it and there are 2 dahlia bulbs and a pack of gladiolus. All say plant march to May! Opps missed the boat :rofl: . What do I do? The dahlias seem to still have not totally dead shoots and the other bulbs a bit soft but not desiccated (which I’ve done to bulbs before!). Plant them? Overwinter them somehow???

The dahlias wait till spring. A lot of people lift their dahlias over winter and leave in sand (I think) - too much like hard work for me so I just leave them but you do lose some due to cold/damp. I tend to use them as semi annuals but I only buy the clearance ones cheap
The gladioli - again given temps are dropping fast I’d save for spring. Or bung em in a pot and then hide the pot somewhere dark and cool till spring.

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For the moment, place the Dahlia tubers into separate brown paper bags, loosely scrunge the top together, and keep the bags somewhere dark, cool, and dry. In January / February pot them up separately in some decent compost with the top of the tuber about halfway up the pot. Use pots that are as deep as possible. Place them in a slightly warmer place and keep the compost moist but not overly wet. Slugs and snails just love new Dahlia shoots, so guard against them. Once the shoots appear make sure that the pots have enough light to keep the shoots green. Then plant out when all danger of frost has passed and you will have earlier blooms than if they were in the ground all winter.
Dahlias can be left in the ground all year round IF you have very well drained soil. In constantly wet soil they tend to rot over the winter, which is why many people have to lift the tubers out of the ground for the winter.

For the Gladioli, you may be able to rescue them if you plant them into a big pot now and keep it somewhere with a bit of warmth and no frost. Again, keep the pot moist but not wet. They grow tall, so put some canes around the edge of the pot to stop them from flopping over later.
A frost free greenhouse would be good if possible. As the bulbs have been ‘stressed’ you may not actually get any flowers the first year. Just let the foliage wither in due course so that the goodness goes back into the bulb. Once that is done, then lift and store the bulbs in brown paper bags, and then plant out in the garden the following year at the usual time.
Good luck. Hope that you can successfully rescue them.

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I’ve done similarly with geraniums… dirt-free and brownpaper bag… works a treat and saves space indoors.

We’ve planted a fair bit of hedging privet eleaganus red robin laurel Portuguese laurel and a few bay tree plants all in strategic areas but we still have about 70 metres left where there is less need for evergreens. Because of the cost we’d like to get some bare root plant. Haven’t seen any yet. Is it still too early and where is the best place to find them? I get the feeling that the smaller garden centres such as the gamm verts might be the best place to go. In the UK we did try mail order but that was a disaster so that is not an option

I think you are right in that it’s still a bit early. Our Point Vert (now MaMaison I think) usually has quite a few but I would imagine Gamm Vert might be better. However, 70 metres is quite a stretch so for bulk buying you might try to find some local nurseries? Even our neck of the woods has a local nursery specialising in trees. They’re not always that easy to find but if you have plant stalls at your local market, you could ask them about finding hedging plants locally. That’s how we found our nursery!

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Thanks Angela. There is a plants fete coming up soon nearby so could be worth trying. We have one neighbor where we have planted most of our hedging. On the other side we have a nice looking field ideal for building on so just in case we’d like to get some hedging plants in.
Our other main problem is a kind of bindweed on the paving and around the plants. It does strangle the plants and its roots go very deep. I’ve read the threads on pesticides and the conclusion seems to be that the only solution, apart from patiently digging them up which we do anyway, that does not harm the soil is vinegar. What I didn’t know is that there are different strengths of vinegar. So any ideas on where we could get the strongest which could be used on the paving?

Don’t buy vinegar products sold as weedkiller in a garden centre without careful examination of the label. As may well be just 10% strength vinegar which you can buy for a € or two in supermarkets in the cleaning section,

As for your hedge best to wait until near St Catherine to plant. You want them fully dormant, so not before mid November.

Plant fairs are unlikely to sell what you need as everything will be in pots. Gamm Vert and places like that are more likely. What you are looking for are bundles of what look like dead sticks - known in the UK as whips and maidens, ie one and two year old seedings/cuttings. They will be submerged in a heap of soil, which must be damp. They don’t appear before the end of the month, but you can ask if they are likely to have them or whether you can pre-order. They should be no more than a couple of € each, and if you plant them carefully you should get 100% survival and in a year or two will be bigger and bushier than something you bought in a pot for ten times as much. We planted 300m+ of hedges and lost none.

This is a link to a website that explains what I mean. I am not recommending it, as never used it. But just to give you the idea

We have a lot of pépinières around here, look up for your area, nay be cheaper to go direct

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