Newby Gardener

Try one of the weedkilling gels, Barrow. They come with an applicator which means you only spread it on the foliage of the plant you want to get rid of. If you are worried about it touching other plants you can put a plastic bag over the top once you have treated it.
If you don't have any fresh foliage to paint you need to cut the stem so you have a clean surface then paint the surface with brushwood killer. You might need to give it more than one treatment but it should do the trick. You can buy these weedkiller in any garden centre. Good luck

Alternatively mix glyphosate weedkiller with wallpaper paste and brush it onto the foliage.

Can anyone help me please. All my tomatoes and cucumbers in my new greenhouse look very sickly with the leaves going yellow.
Anyone know what might cause this? We water regularly with water from our rain butts.

Are you feeding them regularly as well? They need a liquid tomato feed once a week (follow the instructions on the packet). Greenhouse soil is likely to be very lacking in nutrients, and just water isn't enough.

Yes MrsJamJam, we give them Tomorite but it doesn't seem to have helped!

If its not watering or feeding - I am blaming all garden failures on the weather this year. Too cold, too wet and often too windy.

Thanks for your advice. I have just read on line it might be lack of magnesium and to try a mix of epsom salts, think I will have a go at this! Anyone else tried it?

Many thanks for the tips - will no doubt be back with more questions!

Try Maxicrop - seaweed and sequestered (whatever that is) iron. Worked wonders on my little lemon tree.

Barrow - I hope whoever cut down your ragwort wore gloves and safely disposed of the plant as it is highly toxic. It is important not to let plants set seed so you need to make sure new growth does not reassert itself. The roots are big and difficult to get out but the plant is supposedly a biennial or short lived perennial so you might be able to just keep cutting its head off until it dies off naturally.

Barrow - forgot to say... good for you tackling the gardening. It's a very rewarding activity, both physically and mentally. I've enjoyed growing stuff for nearly 60 years now. Always happy to share my knowledge and experience, but sometimes quite a lot of detail is needed to get a full picture, eg what kind of soil, size of flower bed, location, etc to be able to offer the best advice.

Hope you're managing to deal with the ragwort in your garden, barrow. It isn't all that toxic really. Poisoning is actually very rare. When I find some in my garden, which I do frequently, I pull it up with my bare hands.

Here is some information

It's actually quite valuable to invertebrate wildlife so I was quite pleased to see that it is thriving on roadside verges as we drove north from Wales on Saturday.

It's not good for horses! I hope barrow doesn't have too many in her garden?

The person who cut down the ragwort is an experienced gardener (he comes in to cut the grass for me) and would know about disposing of toxic plants. I could get him to do the rest of the garden for me but I am trying to save money!!

Jeni - don't have horses in the garden but sometimes do have cows and deer in the field behind me!

Ragwort is only toxic to herbivores when dead (the plant not the animal ). They tend to give it a wide berth when it is growing in their fields.

It is also the breeding ground for the cinnabar moth.

I tend to be very wary of toxic weeds since we have lost several sheep grazing on our SSSI land. And poisoning is not a nice way to die It took me ages to figure out the cause. The culprit turned out to be Dogs Mercury.

Young regrowth of ragwort amongst grazing pasture could be ingested by animals. IF Barrow lives adjacent to fields with animals it's wise to get rid to stop seed spreading but otherwise, yes, leave odd plants for the moths, if they are not in prime flower beds We have many such 'weed' plants in our wild garden for the benefit of insects and wildlife.

The field is at the back of the house and the ragwort is in a planted area at the front. Thought I had read somewhere that is is not good for animals so when I found it I did check that part of my garden which is next to the field and there is none there. Will keep cutting it down and hopefully it will die off.

Another good way to see it off, Barrow is to cut it down to ground level then stick a large pot or suitable container over the top. You may have to leave it a year but if you plant the container with something that complements the border you can hopefully forget all about the ragwort. I often do this with large docks which suddenly appear in a mixed border as trying to dig them up is futile.

The trouble with ragwort is that it's very pernicious and once it gets a hold it can take over an area smothering everything else. Even a plague of cinnabar moths for the next ten years wouldn't make a dent in a neglected field near us.

I saw a whole front garden full of it today - and it wasn't mine!

I want wild flower seeds from the wild! As I'm disabled, I can't collect them myself. If anyone is coming to the midlands meet and has access to seeds, would you please bring them with you?
I'm trying to stablished a meadow at the bottom of my garden and packet seeds are not working!
Anything except convolvulus, ragwort and that tall purple thing(can't remember the name) gratefully received!

Masses of it around Argyll at the moment. Ragwort and meadowsweet are the dominant wayside flowers with a few umbellifers thrown in and the occasional other goody like harebells or a clutch of toadflax. All very lovely and the herbivores are fine – at least we didn't see any keeled over

www.kingsseeds.com/Ko-Bespoke/productlist.asp?cat=1/WILD%20FLOWERS/

Have you tried this firm, Jeni?