finally my ANSFG book arrived !!

Now I can read and stop asking silly questions

2nd thoughts, I am sure I will be back

ANSFG BOOK ARRIVAL!

AnnD wrote: Now I can read and stop asking silly questions

2nd thoughts, I am sure I will be back

There are no such things as silly question they just seem it once you have the answer in an understandable form.

Now you're almost there ....don't forget the knowlege contained within the book cannot pass from the pages of the book into your head by osmossis . It will need to be read it many times , for each time you read it you discover a little more that you missed first time round .

If your pushed for time try 15 min a day either in a straight shot or 3 x 5 min , a 10 & a 5min or 5x3 min sessions per day ... convert the easily wasteable time in your life into great worth.

thanks Goosegirl and Plantoid!! I spent a very enjoyable day, rain lashing down, dog walked, indulging myself in an all day reading frenzy. I will re-read it slowly over the next week too as things seem to go in one side of the head and out of other these days. My first thoughts were firstly, thank goodness I am not an experienced gardener, there is enough to learn without having a lot to "forget" as well and secondly thank goodness for the sowing/planting/ schedule around frost dates. How simple that seems to make things in my mind i cannot express. I am on clay soil, and definitely a frost pocket, (even last night it went down to 1oC but I was there with my fleece!). So I now know that spring time I will definitely always need to start seedlings indoors/under cover but am looking forward to sowing direct in the autumn. Direct sowing appeals to me so much, and not just laziness !! I love the fact that I can due to MM and that would be impossible on my soil previously. I is all just so less daunting now, baby steps and mistakes are just lessons are my new mantra!!

My mistake has been to build my cages, I made one really tall (7ft) and 1 short (3ft) both covered with netting. With hindsight I would have made the cages small, to fit the front 12 squares and left the back four against the trellis to be covered separately with a net (tomatoes and cucumbers and peas and beans) because they will all be difficult to get to. Oh well I enough time on my hands to change it all around. !!

So Mel is now my new hero - and I have taken his advice and printed certain parts out and am getting them laminated - my RHS planting shedule is going in the bin !!

So Mel is now my new hero...

He's mine too, Ann! I think he's everyone's hero on this forum, lol. His book is so simple and easy to follow that it makes gardening actually FUN rather than a chore, and that's huge!

Congrats on getting and reading the book I always have my book laying out because I'm constantly referring to it.

I'm into SFG my 4th year and I still refer to The Book now and then. Keep it handy.

I know!!! Mel and his mix are right up there on a pedestal and I am going to try to convert everyone!! We have finally had a sunny and warm day, just perfect for my lovely clay soil in the flower beds to have formed an inch thick topping like concrete, whilst underneath an unpleasant squelchy mud. I have spent all day weeding, bending and breaking my back, while on the other hand I just kept looking over at my SFG, smiling, not having to do anything but enjoy seeing some little green shoots popping up, in fours and nine's, and 16's and ... just given them their little drop of water because the surface was drying a little and that was it!!!! aaaahhh, bliss If I could find a cost efficient way of building curved beds for my whole garden I would start again the SFG way for everything.....and thank goodness I did not attempt vegetables in that backbreaking stuff I called soil!!

"The Book" was worth waiting for and this is me This is the first book I have ever read that included instructions that I have read only once and not ended up scratching my head and it is not leaving my side !!

signed Happy from Hertrfordshire !!!

Hello Happy from Herts .. Hi Ann ,

Don't bin the RHS chart just yet , it is very useful for a quick glance at the UK average season to sow and stop sowing. & average cropping.



Frost ..... It is fairly common to have a late May frost in the last five days of the month even at your location , so aim to sow with say 21 st May as your last frost date. Anything sown forward of the last frost date will like as not need you to provide cover of some sort unless it is a frost hardy plant.

I'm still putting seeds & stuff in MM in the glasshouse just to be sure things don't get killed off. Today I wheeled out three trollies of seedlings to get them on the hardening off sequence 7 puit thenm back to bed at 19.00 hrs.

Last night because of the elevation of the bungalow at 117 mtrs above sea level I had to fleece over the dwarf beans and wrap three outside hanging baskets up like they were about to do the dance of the seven veils . AS a simple rough equation every 500 feet above sea level drops the temp by about about 2 oC between 01.30 and sunrise ,so when any forecast indicates 6 oC I prepare a frost.

It's a delicate balance and a race to get the timing right .. I have several runner beans in 4 inch pots three plants are giants ones & are in old florists buckets ... they have all taken of like rockets in MM .

I could have done with sowing them a whole ten days later , same with beefsteak tomatoes and several herbs.

Either I've made the MM better than I'd hoped & / or the megre heat in the glashouse has helped more than I'd hoped.

WRT your flower beds being curved.. I have four 3 x3 foot & four 5 x 3 foot extra deep linked brick built flower beds in MM but the regimented organisation ( Mel is ex US forces ) does not lend itself to an english flower garden where things are planted in 3's , 5's , 7's or 13's as the spacings & intigraqtion aspects dont work too well .

I have clump planted the flower beds with bulbs , corm, tubers and groups of early beding plants like primroses , in several areas I have the clump split either side of a bed dividing wall .

I just got my book today too. I have been reading this site and finally decided I had to bite the bullet and "buy" the book. Sometimes being a cheapskate just doesn't pay. So now I will "really" be ready for next spring.

hope you enjoy your book as much as I am Vee - I am sure you will

Plantoid what can I say ? A tonne of helpful information again, thank you so much! and glad you added it is a bit of a guessing game to get it right, I don't have a greenhouse unfortunately, but i have a spare bedroom with two massive deep bay windows with 3ft by 3ft windowsills at just about chest height and they do an amazing job of behaving like a greenhouse and provde a good excuse to keep unwelcome overnight guests away So I am hardening off beans and tomatoes,

Brick would be perect, I wish I could build brick raised beds all around, I would love it but the cost would be horrendous. Oh well the MM won't give me any exercise so perhaps i will just have to suffer the clay and the exercise!

Can you tell me what you use for frost dates, is that experience? I looked on-line and put in my postcode and it said last frost date mid April which is way off. I assume the first frost date will be equally out. Point taken about the RHS sowing times, I have that laminated so it hasn't made it to the bin yet and won't - cheers!

Ann , Try these UK frost maps ,they are some of the better ones I've found http://www.keirg.freeserve.co.uk/diary/tech/frost.htm

Re brick laying .. it's not difficult if you do it one brick at a time .

It's like gardening ... get the plans right and well thought through then do a bit at a time often very often but don't over do things to the extent of making yourself ill.



I saw an 84 yr old man ( Bob ) struggling building a skin around his 1912 ex MOD wooden billet that had housed troops in WW1 ..offered to help him and he said " Thanks but no thanks ..without me doing this I'd have been dead years ago ".

He was making a single bucket of mortar by hand in the mornings then laying six or seven bricks and doing the same in the afternoons .

I cheated and purchased two sets of tower scaffolds and told Bob he could borrow them for the higher brick work instead of him having to stand on a ladder to do one brick at a time , set them up for him , laid in extra saftey boards etc and used pully's & rope to haul his mortar & bricks up for him because by now I'd managed to get him to accept my help and the use of my cement mixer.

A lady friend I knew or should I rephrase that as " Lady fiend " well into her 70's was halfway through her project of laying a massive 40 x 40 foot patio in crazy paving set on 4 inch thick compacted dry sand and cement mix . She too was doing a yard a day in most weatyhers and had even drawn to scale a master plan showing the shape of what piece she was going to smash up and lay down to make her modern day concrete mosaic . She'd been on her project for just over a year.

It's like gardening ....get the things in the right order and do a wee bit at a time often ..very often .

vee wrote:I just got my book today too. I have been reading this site and finally decided I had to bite the bullet and "buy" the book. Sometimes being a cheapskate just doesn't pay. So now I will "really" be ready for next spring.

Welcome to the site V if you start makin g your compost fairly soon you'll be miles ahead of those that start their new to ANSFG season next year.

I and many others cannot say often enought that Mel got it right with his setting out how to make your own composts . There is also the " Berkley 18 day composting method " if your really serious about getting ahead of the wave . If Rolls Royce made composts it would be using the Berkley method.