Gyn_Paul

Last Spring (and the previous Autumn as well, I think) I planted a collection of fruit trees: all the usual suspects - as they can along in Aldi and Lidl. Also a pair of Bramleys from a (not so local) supplier. So they've all been settled in the ground for 10-14 months and this is their 1st real Springtime. So my Q is, What - if anything - should I be applying to them/treating them with? And what pruning, if any,  should be done to 1st year growth? paul 

Just looking at my back garden from the elevation of the velux in the roof, it strikes me that a sort of southwest - northeast axis is probably going to suit me for mine: after all, you're after the max heating effect in late winter/early spring,  and - for me- presenting a side to due East is no good because of the number of trees in the way. Once the sun's been up for a couple of hours it clears the obstacles and hits the part of the garden where the PT will be. Also, with that orientation, it then presents a corner, rather than a flat end, to the prevailing west wind roaring up the field. I'll let you know if the practice matches the theory! p

Last year I looked at my embryonic gooseberry bushes and they were in fine fettle. Then I wandered down the same bit of the garden about 4 days later and there was hardly a leaf left on any of the six of them. What is devouring the leaves? What do I zap it with? When do I apply it? Then perhaps this year we'll manage to get at least one gooseberry crumble out of eight plants (bought another two!). p

Does anyone know if it is possible to buy online a UK - to UK rail ticket with a (French) Senior+ discount? I did try to add St P. to Bedford & ret. to my La Souterraine - Londres ticket but - quite frankly - I lost the will to live somewhere around the middle of the second hour of battling with the lamentable SNCF site. I know I'm hardly the first to discover that it is quite possible to book tickets on french trains using the DB or Belgian rail sites which -according to the SNCF site - don't exist. There is a Direct TGV service which runs from Limoges to Lille which I needed to use to get to Belgium, but the SNCF site insisted it didn't exist and I could only get to Lille via Paris. Useless piece of cyber-junk! It seems the most efficient way of planning a journey is to research it using foreign sites, then troll to the station, queue, queue a bit more, then debate your needs and findings with a booking clerk. France in the 21st century ! What rail sites do the rest of you use? p

[quote user="Gengulphus"][quote user="Jo"]what HAVE I got ?[/quote] Nothing at the moment.  Wasps and hornets to not overwinter as colonies (as honeybees do).   If all is well, then a few dozen fertilized queens will be holed up in a variety of secret and convenient crevices and until they have the opportunity  -  if successful  -  to found a number of new colonies next year. [quote user="Jo"]when I told the Pompiers they weren't bothered at all. [/quote] I cannot imagine what action they could take on the basis of an anecdote concerning a deceased hornet.  In order to take action they would, at the very least, need to know where the nest was situated. [quote user="Jo"]I've never seen a nest.[/quote] There will certainly be a nest.  In order to discover its location :  catch one of the insects and dredge her in flour.  Release her and follow her assiduously.  The flour naturally renders her more visible.  Unless she has other business to do she will lead you back to the nest.  I have only used this method with feral and domestic bees, but my father assured me that it works equally for wasps and hornets (for whom he used, in his childhood, to receive a bounty of 6d per colony from the local toffee factory). I do very much hope that you will find a hornets' nest.  I had them for several years in my orchard, and found them a never-ending source of instruction, entertainment and interest.      [/quote] I suspect your definition of what constitutes all being well is a little different to many if not most people on this forum, my personal definition would run more along the lines of hoping that every last fertilized queen is comprehensively frozen to death in the first frost ! p

I know this is an old posting.. I found it after a search for 'fouines', but thought it might be a good place to start - the title is certainly apt : something  is living in the small flat part of the cathederal roof of our living room (steeple you fingers together, then flex the top knuckle joins and you'll get the idea). It is noisiest in late afternoon when the room is quiet, although it's clearly active at night as I came down the other morning to discover not only the usual light dusting of dead wasps falling out of the ventilation holes in the recessed lights fitted in this bit of flat ceiling, but evidence of what I first took to be a water leak, but now suspect might be urine (something under a half a cupful from 5m up, dried as dark brown splashes all over the new flat-screen TV oh good!). My late cat caught a lerot in the adjoining room a few weeks ago, but this sounds w-a-y more noisy. Incidentally, I thought lerots hibernated.... yet we were troubled by them (deafened more like) in a stone wall in -10C in February.

When the smoke clears, would somebody like to tell me how I can tell the difference between a native hornet and its Asiatic cousin? A picture or two would be nice. We had hornets living in the barn wall couple of years ago. Fortunately they were exiting and entering by just one hole so one calm evening when I estimated that all gone to bed I did for them with the aforementioned aerosol. My God they're powerful, the jet propulsion effect nearly blew me off the ladder! That was the last we saw of the hornets but this year we are inundated with wasps. Most mornings there are 10 to 20 corpses to brush up in the living room. Since the middle of September, I must have disposed of several thousand corpses. And good riddance too, three things that if they didn't exist, we wouldn't need to invent them:  wasps, hornets, and nettles! p

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what is afflicting my cabbages?  The ones nearest the path are showing blown spots which I initially took to be mud splatter, as they are exactly the same camel-colour as the soil when it dries. But on closer inspection, these spots prove to be discolouration all the way through the leaf rather than just on the surface. There is no signs of any part of the plants having been eaten, nor any sign of eggs of any sort..... curious. Not that it matters, yesterday was 25C, entirely without a breath of wind, and about 95% humidity, so I confidently expect to find everything covered in mildew, so a few brown spots will be the least of my worries. On the plus side, I picked my first strawberry (note the use of the singular!). p

I use the well-know process of  'auto-chitting' whereby you buy the potatoes with every intention of wasting no time and putting them straight in the ground, but by the time you get round to clearing the land, digging, and generally preparing the place they are going in, you discover that the poor things are trying to make the best of a bad job and are already filling the sack with shoots and roots. Suffice it to say that when I plant my potatoes, there is seldom any doubt as to which way up to plant them ! Am I alone in being almost two separate people where the garden is concerned? - there's this one person who goes to garden centres and buys plants, who also pick up endless packets of seeds practically every time he goes to the shops. And then there's this other person who says, " where the hell are this lot going to go?" and, "when am I going to find time to plant all these seed? and - assuming even half of them actually germinate - see question 1 above." p

Don't talk to me about bloomin' tomatoes... a packet of v.expensive f1-hybrid toms of the grape variety. All 12 of the seeds germinated in my warm loft room, then got a bit leggy as there isn't a whole heap of light up there, just 4 velux, so I put them outside yesterday to get a bit of sun and air, and when I came to bring them in late yesterday evening (still showing 13 C on the thermometer) the lot had fallen over and not one seems inclined to stand up again.... I'll wait until the plants are in Dun Le Palestel market, I think, like last year, and hope for a dryer, less rot-inducing summer! p

Ah.. yes. Thanks for that, Clair. V. interesting. Sounds like just the way to go. Clearly, it's bucketing down where you are, too, and you're NOT out in the garden either! p

I've grown lots of other stuff in the past, but I've never grown potatoes before this year. On my new vegetable garden (wrestled root-by-root from its former existence as part of a sheep field) I find - having cleared and dug the space and finally planted the potatoes (not to mention the rest of the stuff) - the one thing I'm short of is soil !  Soil, loose, earthing-up for the use of. Since earthing-up seems to me to be essentially keeping the light from the plant stems, could I use grass cuttings ? - not the newly-cut green stuff, but the brown stuff cut a few weeks ago. Not much bare earth in my field, but plenty of grass... oh yes.. no shortage of that stuff. In fact, looking at the grass piles, I could probably bury each potato to a depth of about 6 feet! I don't envisage it being either sufficiently deep or dense around the plants to rot down in that runaway, high-temperature way a big grass heap does, just enough to form a light-proof blanket. I imagine it will continually settle and sink, so there will be almost continuous topping-up to be done, but, as I said, I'm not exactly short of the raw material. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were. Just so long as it doesn't kill the pots as well. Any down-sides to this idea? paul

I bought some of the above at our annual fete de pommiers. Five in all, Apples, and Claude Rains (as they are know in our house). They have all been soaking in buckets of water for the last few days, and I've managed to get one of them in the ground, but now it %***%$-ing down, and the light is going, and tomorrow we are away until the middle of next week. Question is... will the trees be ok in water (not out in the open so no fear of frost) for that long? Should I let them dry out again? Or have I really got to put on a waterproof and dig a hole to heel them in? paul

We've had a succession of digital cameras which have a disappointingly large 'lag' (the time from pressing the shutter to it actually capturing the image) so when we went in search of the latest one we were determined to be satisfied with its performance before parting with money. Have you ever tried to get a French assistant to help you in an endevour like this? Impossible ! They'll reluctantly get the keys and open the vitirine, (although they'd far rather you just looked through the glass, and said "yes that one looks pretty, I'll have it. Here's 400 euros.") and let you actually hold it in your hand, but that's as far as it goes. Getting the box and fitting the battery so that if works is about as likely as getting the president of the Lumix division of Panasonic to personally pay a house-call to teach you how to use it. In one particular store - where perhaps they concentrate rather too much on sponsoring F2's weather) I was in a similar position to an earlier poster whose partner was reduced to uncoiling my fingers from round the idiot's neck. paul

just to balance things a bit, I've been using a Decathlon tent (Quecha) for a month now. it's one of those which you throw in the air and it unfurls !  And I've no complaints with it. sensibly designed; good quality; keeps out the rain...   the only problem I had with it was when I put it on the drive to dry out while I carried on packing the van (it's a demenagement project requiring me to sleep in the garden), only to have my kind neighbours knock on the door about half an hour later to say it was last seen high-tailing it across their field. So then it was not only wet but muddy. p ps Anyone else been 'locked out' of the forum today?

[quote user="Dick Smith"]Careful, Paul, I got a warning for being condescending and confrontational over things like that! [/quote] Oh, excuse us for having a standard !

[quote user="Ford Anglia"][quote user="POTBELLYCAT"]wont to buy bathroom suit from uk as there is far better choice any problems with soil pipes and tap fittings [/quote] Personally, I've found the French bathroom suites, showers, toilets etc to be superior in choice, colour choice, and price than in the UK. Taps are almost certainly cheaper and superior to all but the most expensive UK ones, IMHO of course. You should have no problems with waste/tap fittings, but DO buy them in France as the sizes of wastes differ, and the UK taps aren't all suitable for the high pressure sytem in use in France. You could also have problems fixing French pipework to a UK toilet inlet. Oh, and DO check spellings, punctuation etc before posting, and don't use text speak. There are pedants about[:P] [/quote] Yep !  I'm happy to be counted amongst the pedants ! To my mind, it's an ordinary common courtesy to write in whole words and with sufficient punctuation to enable the reader to understand what it is you are saying. I'm not saying everything posted here should be A-level standard Eng. Lang, far from it, it's just that I'm basically lazy and reading unpunctuated  textspeak is a pain in the butt. p

or cut to the chase: http://www.ducatillon.com/materiel-d-elevage/logements-pour-animaux/poulaillers/lensemble-aviduc-tout-confort.aspx

Thanks all, Yes I too am picking them off one-by-one.  But anyone got any thoughts on why the others are going rotten ? p

Can anyone get cherry tomatoes to ripen in a whole set? if I leave it until the bottom ones are ripe, the top two are past it. Is it only the commercial growers who can manage this or am I missing a trick? Also, some of the sets on the lower branches are going from green to black with no intervening edible point:     help!  p

Peeling the outer green husks releases something (an oil I suspect) which oxydizes. If it happens to be in contact with your skin at the time, the resulting brown /black pigment is absorbed into the epidermis AND STAYS THERE !  In fact it stays there until that layer of skin sloughs off. I know this from personal experience. ! p

[quote user="chris pp"]I'm not sure which bit you are referring to, the taking of cuttings or the method, Pun has views on this and it's not about which way is correct, personally I wouldn't do it at this time of year, especially in parts of France where the climate is hotter and dryer. I think that I would also approach the opening out and shaping of currents somewhat differently as well. Anyway, red currents, white currents, black currents and grapes all take very easily simply by taking a length of  ripe growth, 30 cm or thereabouts would be fine, ( in October / Nov in my opinion ) , cutting just below a bud and inserting directly into the soil about half / half but it really doesn't need to be too precise unless you enjoy using a measure and a spirit level. In the spring they should start to grow, but it may be as well to keep well watered initially as the roots will be rather fragile, again in warmer / dryer parts of France this needs to be considered more. Chris. [/quote] Chris. Do red and White currants fruit on this year's growth like blackcurrants, or on old wood? I only ask because I was about to lay waste with the cutters and snip/pick the reds (as above for blackcurrants) when it occured to be that they might not be of the same habit and I'd be nobbling the poor things for next year. p    

I've used Sodium chlorate on weeds in open ground and on weeds in gravel and have been less than impressed with the results: yes, it's cheap but it requires exactly the same amount of labour to apply it as glypho which is 10 times more effective. Incidentally, I know it says you should apply it only when there is at least 6 hours befoe it's likely to get wet but I sprayed a patch of nettles and assorted MH's the other eveningm only to look up and see a thunder-head about to dump on us. I retreated indoors and sat out the deluge, bemoaning the wasted 1/2 a tank of mixture. Imagine my utter astonishment 4 days later when these weeds turned up their toes every bit as permanently as those treated in dry weather! The latest formulation must have a powerful wetting agent in it !

[quote user="Pun"]Thank you for your reply, I asked what other people did, and the grass grows  slower in the heat but we do have rain! and I do understand the ownership of the hanging baskets, the question was how did people with gites arrange watering, I wanted an experienced reply, but thanks for yours, [/quote] You had rain ???? Which bit of 23 are you in ? We haven't seen a drop in our part since the storm blew through about 4 or 5 week's ago !

If compost dries out to the dust stage the best thing is to dump the whole pot in a bucket of water with a little washing-up liquid added. This lowers the surface tension and ensures the compost rehydrates thoroughly, rather than just float off the surface. I usually make it a bucket of Miracle-gro + washing-up liquid; that way the poor thing gets a feed as well. p