Not sure its necessary to have a moss stick for ivy, unless you're using it to train the ivy upwards rather than trailing. The only way I know is to spray it - buy yourself a polysprayer, one of those you pump up and then trigger on and it sprays automatically.

thanks *s*

i believeyou can get battery powerd sprayers asswell . your handsare obviously disabled . im guessing arthritus but not sure . you should get in touch with a disabled society to help you as they haveall special inventions for opening jars and holding knives and forks . im sure they will havean answer . if not you could always get rich with a new invention lol xx .

thanks Noseypotter! I have an injury to my lower spine, hut that left me with very little shoulder and arm strength - and hand strength - those "trigger" spras are painful to use for more than a few squirts. I've got a pump sprayer but it takes about 30-40 pumps to get the pressure up enough brings its own probs *s*. And it seems to take forever to completely cover a moss pole with one of those.

I hadn't thought of disabled charities for equipment, I have a list of links that I keep meaning to go to for advice and ideas for raised gardening. I'll check out their garden equipment and see what else they have while I'm at it.

Thanks for that very helpful suggestion!

x

your more than welcome fran . i have all raised beds in the back garden as i have spondiloses of my lower spine . check out my blogs if you want to see my garden or search on utube under the name noseypotter and see some film of my garden etc . good luck and take care x .

nods, have been checking out raised bed options for ages, but couldn't do anything until I actually got a garden. now I have and so I can plan something - eventually!

i would put some serious thaught into your design etc . a stitch in time saves 9 well more like 109 lol. its horrible when you gert your garden basicly finished and wish youd done something another way or getting nearly finishedf and realising that youve made know provission for your pet dog or something . its worth collecting plants now but dont rush into planting them . also worth drawing some sketches of what you want and maybe get a scrap book of things you like that youveseen . did you look at my raised beds etc . its much easier with raised beds if ya got a bad back . id say its better without a dissabillaty myself .anyway if i can help then feal free to get in touch and im sure everyone else feaLs the same x .

oh, the layouts I dreamed! I used Word tables as grids to plan and replan and re-replan. Most probably they'd all have been terribly impractical, I knew even less about actual gardening then than I do now, and I know damn little now! *s*

But I assumed that any space would be at least 20 feet long, and I've got exactly half of that - 3 metres on one side, 2 metres on the other, and all paved except for a tiny strip round the edge which are unusable for anything except weeds since there's a layer of bricks all along them about 8 inches down. I posted a scale plan with the layout so far, that'll be added to or changed completely as I go on.

So, given the size of the space and the non-usable beds, I'm having to build up. I found some tables on eBay, about a metre square, rated to take up to 300 kg, and they're going to be the basis of my planting design.

which has already changed about three times, lol. I've got about thirty plants in separate pots and three troughs with 40 petunias in - and a box full of seeds - and - and - and ... It's going to take me a while to find something that I'm happy iwith from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view, but at least everything's portable - and how much I can lift and carry is very much in my mind when I think about buying more plants or planters.

I'm working through your pictures and blogs - lol I didn't want to flood you by commenting too much all at once (done that before!), so I'm trying to ration mysself and take them in stages.

well realy even with planning your only doing the basics to your garden as gardens are never ever finished as thats the beauty of them realy as theres always something you can do in your garden to keep you busy . trust me once your properly involved in your garden you wont be able to leave it alone . this is why planning is everything . even keeping the plants in pots for now is realy some great planning . keep up the good work and anything you want to ask in future feal free x x

Been thinking about your moss pole problem - isn't there some way you can scoop out the moss at the top and insert a pot with holes in the bottom, then push moss back in to disguise it - then you can pour the water into the pot and let it drain into the pole, as you sort of suggested yourself.

wow, Bamboo, so simple and yet so brilliant! I did sort of think about taking the moss out and putting it back with a perforated tube down the middle, but that would have been a lot of work and mess. lol I'm going to try your suggestion - I've got some tiny flimsy plastic pots that should nest, with a bit of encouragement. thanks so much!

The only thing I'm worried about is that the drainage holes might be a bit large, and the water will just pour everywhere. I'd be inclined to find some way of partially blocking them off so they're much smaller.

lol Noseypotter, planning is half the fun, doing is another half, and enjoying the result is another half. Gardens that are finished are dead, if there's nothing more to do they lose interest.

Luckily that's never going to happen! there'll always be something to do, even if it's tidying up the plants once the arrangement is exactly how I want it - and that's probably never going to happen either, as my ideas will evolve as I learn more, from both practical experiment and GoY.

The first thing I need to plan is what plants to buy - I've been sort of random so far, and that's ok as my "starter fo ten", but ... As I've got such a small space, I was thinking of dwarf plants to make a miniature landscape, with contours and changing levels; I want to work in as many dimensions as possible.

My vision's not good enough for really miniature plants - I've seen a mini-garden site [Two Green Thumbs] where they get a whole "garden" into one pot and "garden accessories" are scaled to fractions of an inch! Even if I could work that small, I'd want the results to be big enough for me to see without a magnifying glass.

I'm going to be just as gloriously impractical with these plans as I was with full-sized ones; I've never done it and never seen it done by anyone [pictures don't count *s*] and so I'm going to have to learn from the ground up.

But, oh, it's going to be fun!!

Thanks for the ps, Bamboo, that probably wouldn't have occurred to me until after, if then!

I did something like this for the garden at DITO: there were a couple of very large plants, so when I rearraned the planting I took some 5-litre water bottles and put a hole in the bottom and buried them beside the plants to get water down to the roots. But the holes were too big and the water didn't stay there very long! Still,at least there was water at that level.

I went out to check my tiny pots after reading your post, and they do have as many holes as pots usually do, but then I had a thought: I buy yoghurt drinks in small containers; I've been saving a lot of the empty bottles on the "they'll come in handy someday for something" principle. I think they'd fit neatly, and all I'd have to do would be to pierce the bottom - making sure the hole[s] were a lot smaller this time! as the plastic won't be as tough to get through as water bottles, and as I can do it at home, a skewer heated over th gas should mean I won't need to use brute force.

Thanks again for your thoughts! x

Shoving a small sharp knife through them might work - it'd make slits, through which water would seep.

nods, we used a knife on the water bottles, had to, nothing else would go through, but then turned it to make a hole. Slits would be a lot better. Luckily I've got a carrier bag full of the drinks pots so I can afford to make mistakes

Just make sure the 'mistakes' aren't on your hands...

lol been there, done that ... I'm a tad paranoid about safety, knowing how limited my vision is - and then something happens that I totally failed to take into account! but i think if I heat the tip of a knife I'll just have to press gently, no pressure needed - and a round-ended table knife would do the job just as well as a sharp-tipped one - better, maybe, because there's more end to touch the plastic at one time.

*s* I'll let you know how i get on

You could stuff the tube with oasis. It would hold the water there and let it seep out a little at a time. I used spent oasis - used stuff with lots of holes where the flowers had been, to keep my hanging baskets wet, before I discovered the water retaining crystals. I now hear that the water retaining crystals are not as environmentally friendly as they could be so I will go back to using my chopped up oasis again.

never thought of using oasis for this, thanks, Scotsgran x