I want one! I used to have a huge thing that we
Managed to hook onto the lawn mower when moving big piles of tree clippings etc around. It eventually fell apart but I used it often.

Now I would like one, but I would like it to pick flowers. At the moment I either carry a bucket half filled with water, pick and walk back to my shed where I store flowers. This does mean I am wandering around quite a bit and carrying the water isn't ideal.

So I would like something that's solid and will last , my old one was mesh metal, I would like a good solid flat, bottom? Easy to manoeuvre over grass and big enough to carry 2 buckets. 

Anyone else use one?

I know 100% nothing about water lilies. So I have lot of really silly questions which I could probably look up myself. But where’s the fun in that ?   
How deep does the water need to be?
Can you get dwarf varieties?
Does the water need to be flowing at a reasonable rate?
Do the spread quickly/ are they thugs? 

I’m thinking a couple in the ditch at front of our plot. But it’s not very deep. Depending on the weather it’s a very general trickle to not quite a raging torrent. I’d like them to not take over and have their offspring disappear off down stream. 
Is this a possibility or Should I forget the idea?

I have a 3 year old albizia, about 1.5m tall that had a lot of the bark eaten by deer in the spring.  There were just 2 thin strips of bark left, still attached top and bottom but no longer connected to the trunk, over about 30cm. My attempts to reattach and reinforce them have been fruitless and the tree is clearly slowly dying above the damage. 
There is one happy and healthy branch below the damage and I am wondering if this will become a leader if encouraged more vertically, or if a new shoot will come from the junction of the trunk and this branch?
Poor thing was just about to flower for the first time!
Thanks all

The Butterfly Count started today - ends 7th August.  All you need do is sit for 15 minutes and count butterflies and moths. 
More info in the link about what to do next!

https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-cons...224842843d

Afternoon folks,

Firstly can we have an Everything Roots section, apologies if there is one and I've missed it! ( New section opened just for you, Broadway.)

Anyway, everywhere I've read you can't transplant carrots or parsnips so has anyone tried?

Anyone got any remedies for blackfly on dahlias and beans.  I'm resorting to squishing. The ants are having a lovely time farming them. I'm thinking of sprinkling some semolina on the ground beneath the plants, supposedly the ants take it as food and when it gets eaten it swells in their tummies.  I'm not sure I believe it but if the ants aren't farming it might reduce the blackfly. Then again at least the ants put the blackfly all on one place ready for squishing   so I might be making matters worse.

Just a few shasta daisies, a bit of alchemilla mollis and some golden rod foliage.
All garden thugs that need to be cut back,

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I'm going to convert a wired enclosure (the old pond) into a fruit cage.
Can't give you measurements but it quite big and high. 
My question is, if you were starting a new fruit bed for soft fruit, what plants would you grow in it and how many of each. Not cherries!!!

I aim to get it converted and planted over winter and to be picking fruit, safe from the birds, next summer.

Do you ever come across a saying (or make it up) that is meaningful, perhaps motivates you to do or think about things differently.

For example, I read that 
"Nothing is waste until its thrown away". 
So those plastic pots that are reused every year are not waste until they're cracked and useless. If they're thrown away immediately after purchase, they are definitely waste. Made me feel better about hoarding them.

Another one, when I was in the garden and didn't know where to start weeding. Everywhere I looked there were docks that needed to be dug up. The more I thought about which ones to start with, the less time I had to get on and do it. Then a thought came into my mind:-
"Every journey starts with a single step" so I grabbed the nearest dock and pulled it up. There was no stopping me then because, it just didn't matter which ones came up first as long as some did.

Any words of wisdom to share please?

Since our council stopped taking food waste to the anaerobic digester (it all has to go in the black bin which goes to the incinerator instead), we had a few small recycling bins sitting around doing nothing. Over the last few years I've become last enamoured about growing in containers, particularly plants which have high watering requirements, as they dry out too easily. So I was looking at designs for self-watering containers to see if I could make some easily, then came across this chap's YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qIlyMco40k . 

In that video he makes a wicking container with a big tub and plastic bottles. You basically create a reservoir of water at the bottom of the container, making sure to arrange the height of the holes so that there is always about 1 inch of air between the top of the water and the potting mix to avoid anaerobic conditions. All I did was drill a small overflow hole in the side of a recycling bin, poked some holes in the top and bottom of 330ml drinks cans, put them upside down at the bottom of the bin, cut a diagonal at one end of a bit of PVC pipe and stuck that cut end in to the bottom of the bin, then filled with potting mix. If that's confusing, I've added a drawing as an attachment. 

I've never grown such healthy tomatoes in containers before and don't think I'll grow them in normal pots again. All I do is top the reservoir up with water once a day until water runs out of the overflow hole. My neighbour has two more spare recycling bins which I hope to pinch. Next year I'm also going to convert the bigger, rectangular bottle recycling bins which we grow cucumbers, celery and tomatoes in by lining them with plastic sheeting to create a 6 inch holeless sump.

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