My garden hasn't done too well with flowers this year, my lillies gave a poor show and bedding plants were slow to flower, but look lovely now and my veg has done well. 

I've harvested the garlic I'd planted around the climbing roses to keep greenfly away, it seemed to work and I've got two dozen good sized garlic bulbs to enjoy.  I'll be planting more for next year.  Beef tomatoes are looking promising after an initial problem with blossom end rot, no doubt due to the early summer rain and overcast days.  I've had a constant crop of mixed salad leaves throughout summer and my herbs have given a good show and produced well.

Schmee - I got a dozen runner bean plants for £1 from a local garden centre in their end of season sale and I've grown them against a South facing fence.  I cooked the first of the crop last Sunday and it looks like I'll be freezing some before the week's out.  My raspberries haven't produced a lot, but my cranberries are well established and should produce next year.  The blackcurrent bush died, so I'll be putting another one in.

I'm really pleased with this mixed border idea and I plan to expand on it next year. 

Yes me, Ive grown them for years and for the last three years I've used 'Moonlight' their supposed to be self setting white flowered variety and  apart from one tub where I think the white flower has been attacked by sparrows all the rest seem to be doing well with lots of 8-10 inch juicy stringless pods coming ready for the pot.

Bear with me, I've just bought a new house and have inherited all sorts of shrubs and trees and which I'm not sure what flavour they are, Caz has kindly agreed to help identify what they are and apologies in advance for the standard of the piccies but if anybody else wants a stab guessing what they are be my guest. The soil here is very very sandy and the front garden is only about 300 feet away from the sea and is North facing.

1/. No idea what this is, it stands about 8 feet high and I gave it a haircut yesterday.

2/. I think this is a form of Yew, again it's in the front garden and is another victim of my attempts with the shears.

3/. Another one in the front, a type of pine, but no idea what type. It looks quite old but not overly large standing at about 10 to 12 feet tall.

4/.Last one from the front garden, oddly the variegated form is coming back on the new growth which is usually the other way around as far as I knew. This one hasn't had a haircut yet, but this is because I was beaten by the rain.

5/. These are all taken in the back South facing garden. I think the one on the right is a lime but not sure. The one on the left is quite common over here and is very silvery when the leaves are moved by the wind. Ignore the overgrown eleagnus hedge on the left.Loads of lichen growing on the branches and approx. 25 feet tall. Not a very good piccie, light was very flat and it had just started raining.

6/. This is one of the biggest trees I've inherited and I think is a Yew, quite tall and I would estimate it to be about 40 feet tall.

7/. This is another shrub I hacked away at yesterday, I should know this one as we had a hedge of this when I was a youngster. Evergreen.

8/. Looking for confirmation, I think the one on the left is Russian Sage (another one I hacked away at) it had blue flowers. The one on the right looks like Myrtle but I would like this confirmed.

9/. These are the trunks of two palms, I think the thick hairy one is a date palm and the other one you see everywhere in the Islands ( a bit of a pain as they drop their swordlike leaves which make a mess). Some of the plants already mentioned are in the background. This is the last one and thanks in advance for your help.

Hmmm!  Well, you did warn me! 

Some look fairly obvious, but most are not easy to identify from the photos and I'd perhaps need to look at leaf shape and form, bark markings etc.  but here's what I can make of it so far.

1 - Can’t really tell and nothing comes to mind

2 – Yew (Taxus) variety

3 – Pine, possibly a variety or cultivar of Pinus Sylvestris, which is the Scotts Pine

4 – Looks like a Euonymus, which in your neck of the woods should be evergreen.

5 – Does look like a variety of Lime, Tillia.  I think the silver one is an Aspen.

6 – Looks like a Yew. Taxus Baccata, which grow to a ripe old age and size, the ones you find around churches.

8 - I think you're right with both of these.  Has the Myrtle flowered?

9 – Possibly date palm, which is a Phoenix palm and has stiff dark green, very spikey leaves borne on a central rib.  The leaves on the right one look like Cordyline leaves but the trunk doesn’t look thick enough.

Caterpillars! The cabbage whites are making lace doilies of my summer sprouting broccoli, despite a careful pickover and squish each evening. 

I think each time I've picked the plants clean, but fullsize caterpillars are back the following evening. Wher do they hide? Surely they can't go from egg (or tiny caterpillar) to full size in a day.

Thanks Caz, I should have known the Euonymus. I see you ducked no.7.  I really should know that one, it's evergreen and is used as hedging. The Myrtle has flowered, small white flowers. It's another one that needs cutting back but not sure when to do it. This garden at one time must have looked brilliant and a lot of time and effort has gone into it. We discovered an ornamental pond with a lion heads fountain now redundant. The house belonged to an elderly lady who sadly passed away and the place has lain empty for nearly a year. I need to get the hedges sorted and have cut back the Eleagnus off the 12 foot greenhouse which is completely empty and now repaired. In the front there is a very tired old hedge of Escallonia taken over by bramble and honeysuckle, it has to be at least 8 feet wide. I'm going to take it out completely this winter. There are also a couple of sycamores which I'm guessing have self seeded and need to come down. Thanks again.

Ahh, yes I missed number 7 an easy one.  Prunus Laurocerasus, commonly known as the Cherry Laurel or English Laurel and it makes a good dense evergreen hedge!! 

Oh of course it is.  I knew I'd kick myself once I heard it. Thanks again. Interesting to see various things coming up. There has been an impressive display from a Rock Rose and there are masses of Agapanthus and Red Hot Pokers, a type of variegated flax which has just finished flowering. A few big clumps of pampus and there were masses of poppies including a pink version which I hadn't seen before. We've kept some seed from these.

I need to make use of this greenhouse which is a decent size at 12 feet long. We're away at the end of September but might have a go at growing something in there over winter on our return. I remember a work colleague of mine growing new potatoes over winter under glass and started off in November by using redundant aircraft tyres on their side then as the plants grew just added more tyres for earthing up, he had a fantastic crop ready for eating at the back end of February.

Chillies are very easy to grow although I brought some up from Guernsey and they are doing well in the sun lounge.    

Grant, the hairy trunked palm, is likely a Trachycarpus. They're very hardy and probably the safest "real" palm to grow in the UK and Channel Islands without fear of frost killing them. Cordylines are like weeds in the southwest!!! They're from New Zealand and not palms, but of course they get called palms due to their exotic look.

This summer has been dreadful for growing plants here. Yesterday was the last straw. The gales destroyed my tomato and chili plants that were doing well outdoors. All my cosmos and dalhias have their flowers shredded, giant sunflowers gone, greenhouse was damaged, garden waterlogged and looks dreadful, part of an old stone wall toppled. What's left, the slugs and snails (and there are a lot) have devoured all other plants.

Sick of this crummy summer

The caterpillars of the Cabbage White start eating  as soon as  they hatch.Will shed their skins 5 times before becoming a chrysalis...They do not like Curly Kale so much as it is harder to hide the eggs...Some people grow this instead as they get fed up with holy cabbage...

Holy cabbage as in 'Lettuce pray'?

The beetroot and onions have done OK but the tomatoes are very poor this year.

Thanks for the info Bob.

Yes, there has been a lot of slugs and snails here as well. The only upside is the amount of thrushes we've got in the garden. I suspect some of them are this year's fledglings and we get up to four or five at a time in the garden and the amount of smashed snails is testament to their best endeavours.

Oddly enough, I was going to say I've only seen those palms widely growin in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles!  I'd go with your identification of the Trachycarpus.    

After salting yet another enormous slug on the patio, I thought I'd look up on t'internet to see what kind they were.  I found a fair bit of info about controlling them, the usual beer traps etc but one that I didn't know about and would be useful to those of you living on the coast.  Seaweed used as a mulch around your plants repels slugs. 

I thought at first it must be the salt in the seaweed that would repel them but that would soon wash off with the rain, I reckon if it's the bladderwrack variety it could be because when it dries it goes very brittle with sharp edges and that could be it. Copper tape around the base of pots works very well in repelling slugs/snails.

If you use filtered coffee ,then use the grinds round base of plants...

Anyone else growing grafted tomatoes? I usually stick with Gardeners delight' but thought I'd bung a grafted one in the green house too..just to try..cherry type I forget the name but the thing has gone ballistic and we've been picking sweet juicy toms for a month now and still they come. 

I've completely dug the 2 affected pots. I'd initially planted 5 seed potatoes (3 in one pot, 2 in the slightly smaller one) but only 3 plants came up. Very poor crop - in total around 18 spuds from 3 plants. The sizes weren't bad, but most had scab. Really disappointing and hope that the remaining (more healthy) pot (which has 2 plants from 3 seed potatoes) fares better.

For next year, can anyone recommend a good cropper that gives waxy potatoes?

Incidentaslly, found a Cabbage White flutterby lurking on my cabbages on Saturday. Gave the plants a few squirts of pesticide after it had flown off, just to be sure.

My best potato crop seems to come from odd potatoes/sliced-up-with-the-spade ones I leave in by mistake from ones that were in the ground when we bought the house 3 years ago. Every year I curse my attention to detail as massive potato plants crop up amongst my carefully planted onions... and yet this year as in previous years, they give more potatoes than the seed potatoes I plant and nurture!

BTW - Does anyone want 4 and a half metric tonnes of mint? That's how much I feel like I've got in the garden at the moment.

Caterpillars (mostly Cabbage White, some Small White) squished yesterday - 145. Not content with ravaging my broccoli, they'e started on the adjacent nasturtiums, which is odd: I thought they were sipposed to stick with one food plant, or at least plants from the same family