New to gardening, overgrown garden

[vapd]

Thanks for the info everyone and thanks for the link to the lawn care site.

[Feral007]

How's it all going Vapd?

[vapd]

Thanks for the advice. The lawn is about 40 square meters. I've been mixing in browns with the greens that are going in after finding the recycle now site.

Has anyone used a Bokashi kitchen composter?

Blackwall Twin Pack Kitchen Composter HomePage

[vapd]

How's it all going Vapd?

Not bad. Everything seems to be coming up! I've got purple carrots, cauli, spinach, kale, thyme, parsley and scotch bonnet all germinated. The other stuff I planted after and am still waiting!

Getting the garden gradually looking nice as well.

[vapd]

Hmmm. A lot of my seedlings, including all my Kale have gone yellow and died

Seem to be a lot of small flies swarming all over a lot of them. Are these the cause?

[veggiechicken]

Are the plants in pots? Too much water perhaps?

[vapd]

The ones that have died/are dying are in a raised bed. Thats where the flies are to.

[rustylady]

Raised bed? What did you fill it with? Alarm bells sounding - fresh manure?

[vapd]

It was advertised as a mix of top soil, compost and rotted manure. Got it from compostdirect.com.

[veggiechicken]

Anyway I'm more interested in the veg patch to be honest. But a nice lawn would be great! I think I did something stupid though. I knew it was daft, thats why I didn't mention it before but I was in a hurry. You see today I had a 900l bag of compost/top soil/rotted manure mix delivered. Where I could leave it was not suitable, it had to be shifted today and before the predicted rain at 3pm (started at 2pm). And so after I dug over the complete raised bed once and pulled as many roots out as possible, I filled it. Does this mean its going to be forever sprouting forth with weeds?

Raised bed? What did you fill it with? Alarm bells sounding - fresh manure?

Don't know if the answer is there or not

[vapd]

I am having a problem with what I think is bind weed coming up in the bed. I have, where possible, eased the plants root out but a lot of the time it breaks off.

[rustylady]

What else have you planted or sown in the bed?

[vapd]

I had some purple carrots (two rows), some marigolds, one row of kale, three rows of spinach, one row of beetroot, one onion, one lolo rosso, in that order from left to right. Then some cauli that I had started in a seed tray has been stuck in hear and there where there is room, a couple in the middle of the marigolds in a space I had left for that purpose and a row of four in between the kale and the spinach where I had left quite a gap and then another four after the lollo rosso.

The kale started well but now looks finished. Most of the spinach was looking great but some of it is now looking a bit faded, some of it fine and one is going great. The carrots appear to be struggling and I'm not actually sure what are weeds and what are carrots. The onion and beetroot are fine I think but the lettuce seems to be doing very little.

I'll get a photo up tomorrow.

[Two_Sheds]

I am having a problem with what I think is bind weed coming up in the bed.

That's a very persistent weed ~ it's harder to control than couch grass because its roots go very, very deep in the soil (almost impossible to dig it all out).
Keep pulling it as it appears, or let it grow up some bamboo canes. When it gets 2ft tall, remove the cane and you can dip the whole plant in a "bath" of glyphosate, if that's something you use (it isn't organic).

[vapd]

I would rather grow organic but the trouble I'm having with the bindweed is too much and I'd been considering glyphosate. Even though I've heard very mixed opinions about it. I'm sure I've seen glyphosate stuff that says you can put it on the leaves of bindweed and it kills the roots but it also says you can't use it in veg areas.

Anyway here are some photos. The first is my veg area looking due North:

Well I was going to upload the images but they are all too large apparently! I'll have to figure that out as I uploaded an image before on here.

Okay, I've used photo bucket: This is the garden pointing due North


This is a savaged (but by what) cauli with marigolds:


This is a healthy enough cauli but with flies:


This is Spinach with weeds in foreground and beetroot in back. Note more flies: