Whats your favourite plant ?
 

So what is it then ?

My favourite plant for the garden has to be an 'Astilbe' (goats beard) - lovely red plooms in the summer months.
My favourite houseplant is the 'peace lily' (spathythilium) deep green leaves with pointed white flowers.
So what are yours.....?








For others questions please start new thread.

Hi Doc.
Saw some nice snowdrops today at Salmsbury Hall, theres a rhododendron in bloom as you drive in?
I remember rhododendrons when i was a kid in our local park but they were never blooming in February?

Any tip's for the indoor gardeners? Sodium or Metal Halide? a friend of mine has asked me if you can shed some lite on the matter?

" shed some lite" ha ha ha - no pun intended ???
Now theres something I havent been asked about for a few years , it really depends on the grower themselves.
I prefer the natural light that wont run up my electricity bill (keeps the wife happy!)
But some will use Metal Halide over Sodium because (MH) has more of a balanced spectrum of colour where Sodium has a red/orange tinge from it, now in some cases it can have different effects to certain plants But some gardeners will use Sodium for its low useage of electric.
In the winter months some people will use BOTH lamps as the hours of light are far less and skies are more greyer.
The only thing wrong with a sodium lamp to me is that you can have 'tall' plants from them where as plants grown under a 'MH' lamp dont as they have a more normal colour coming from them, I would use (if forced) a 'MH' lamp and would use them on propagation - but thats just me ,
I know that you can buy a 'conversion bulb' where you can switch from Sodium to 'MH' and back again so you can have the best of both worlds.
Hope I have been some help to you, if not just ask !
Thanks

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

I'm not much of a gardener but if I did grow it would have to be Cannabis plants, I'd genetically modify them to grow into ready made joints... any tips to get me started ?

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

You beat me to it, Wez. I was gonna say Gange plants. :rolleyes: :D

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

Any plant that is amde of plastic...... they are the only ones that don't die when I even just look at them. Kiss of death to plants......banned from botanical gardens!

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

Amarilis................for me

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

In answer to your question, Garden Doctor, my favourite plant would have to be a red rose, a Lancashire Rose; like the one you have used as your avatar, purloined from Lancashire County cricket Club. :)

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

I'm with Margeret on this one, plastic plants that you can't kill off.

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

like you sparks it has to be a rose, not nessasarily the red rose, but neither do i like white rose, i have a rose in my garden that starts out looking black but then turns into the most gorgeous crimson.

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

Good to see what peoples fav plants are - even if they are plastic - which isnt a bad thing really - just cheating slightly ! - but what i will say is that there is only one thing worse than plastic plants and thats plastic plants that have a layer of dust on them ! - I have seen a few like that and I just wonder what the point of having them is if you aint gonna clean them !
and as for the smokers above - I know absolutely nothing about that subject but the only advice I could give you would be to make sure you have good industrial lighting and that the police dont find out !

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

lol!


Cheers mate =)

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

Pink carnations and BlueMoon rose bushes are my favorite.
I also like snow drops.

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

Those cactus kind i like no point having green fingers for them. I think the flowering cactus would be an ideal gift for those in hospital after all what else can stand the heat in them places?

I only have one plant a dragon tree ive had it for about 3 years now its still not dead even though when my son was a baby in his high chair he knocked it to the floor and knocked one of its heads off i thought it would die but it didnt it grew another one to the side of where it should be it very rarely gets water but i think it likes it like that.

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

o i grow my little herbs-not dodgey lol- corriander, parsley n basil- yum -only i eat em regularly and have to watch I don't eat em completely, they are just gorge! Mr corrie tis the best of course! :p

Re: Whats your favourite plant ?
 

I love gardening and I have loads of different flowers, shrubs, bulbs etc. in my garden. It's quite a small garden and I suppose it's a bit overcrowded really. My great passion, though, is growing plants from the seeds of fruit that we eat. I have a grape vine (from a pip) growing round a kitchen window, orange and grapefruit trees, 2 pomegranates, a passion flower, 2 lychees, 3 date palms and an avocado that is, as yet, just 1" above the compost. I also have a baby apple tree in a pot in the garden, grown from a braemar seed, but it's only 6" tall yet. I grew some acorns, 3 years ago, and I am growing little bonsai oak trees. Again, these are in the garden in a small tub.

Last year I grew cucumbers in my little mini greenhouse. I had 6 plants and got about 12 cukes from each one. I tried growing loofas from seed and they came up but didn't really thrive. I suppose England's too cold.

I also like cacti and in '03 I brought a couple of prickly pair fruits home with me from Malta (my spiritual home - I go twice a year). I planted the seeds (with advice from the internet) and got 6 babies growing. They are now about 2" tall but it's odd because they don't look like prickly pear cacti (opuntia). They look more like the ones you see in cartoons (with arms) but I know what their mum and dad looked like 'cause I picked them off the plant.

Anyway, after all that waffle, now for my question. I have a fair sized patio, part flags and part crazy-paved, and after all the weather it looks really dingey. It was covered in green film (algae) and I've got that off with a proprietory patio cleaner and a deck brush but I can't get it looking really clean. I've even scrubbed it with bleach but it's not a lot better. What can I scrub it with to get rid of all the black-ish colour, bearing in mind there are flower and shrub borders round it. Any ideas?