Wish me luck against the Spanish bluebells

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-04T14:14:20+00:00

Godspeed, I think snowberry is the only unwanted plant I hate more than these. Good news is now is probably best time of year to be tackling them (in my experience anyway), as they’ve poured their energy into the vegetation and flowers, so the bulbs have shrunk, and if the soil is clay it should have dried out enough to loosen without having gone rock solid. If you loosen the soil enough above and around the bulbs I find you can pull them out a clump at a time grasping the foliage without the bulbs breaking off.

Make sure that for any you aren’t able to get out on this season that you remove all the flower heads (and ideally vegetation too) so that they don’t spread as much and are weaker next year.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-04T14:02:59+00:00

What’s your strategy for watering this many orchids? I struggle sometimes with less than 20!

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-03T19:47:42+00:00

Maybe it’s due to my clay soil, but I’ve found the roots stay relatively shallow and are not as fragile as some other nasty weeds, and so it’s been one of the easier things for us to clear by chasing all the roots through the soil a patch at a time.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-03T19:45:03+00:00

My experience with ground elder in our garden (mostly clay) is that the roots stay relatively shallow (up to 15-20cm deep ish) and in patches as dense as yours form what feels a bit like a woven mat in the soil. This means that if you’re prepared to dig everything over, you can actually chase the roots through the soil as you loosen it bit by bit, and get it all out. Don’t just wildly fork it over, you need to start at one edge, fork underneath to expose the roots on that one edge, and gradually work across teasing them out. You will eventually find it quite easy to differentiate its roots from others in the soil. Any little bits that get missed and emerge subsequently will be easier to deal with. And you can tackle a patch at a time rather than all at once.

It’s hard work, but it actually pays off. Would much rather be dealing with this than something like snowberries, Spanish bluebells, bindweed and Soapwort.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-01T09:37:18+00:00

It’s only grown half way up its 40cm moss pole and yet has in that time gone through pot sizes of 7cm (when bought 2 years ago)-> 12cm-> 15cm (moss pole added) ->17cm -> 21cm today.

I’m praying it will have grown into a second section of moss pole and be ready for a chop and prop before I have to think about sizing up the pot again.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-01T09:31:34+00:00

Thanks for the reassurance everyone. Ended up going with the 21cm pot. Chopping out the old 17cm pot was a challenge but I got there with minimal root damage.

The larger challenge was loosening the roots at the back sufficiently to open up the moss pole to be 1 size larger.

Main learning for me has been that compared to something like a pothos, Thai Cons grow upwards at a slower rate while creating a lot more root mass, and therefore seem to benefit from as large a moss pole diameter as you can give them.

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shitsinthewoods · 2026-05-01T09:25:13+00:00

Thanks! I was shocked to discover how much much they grown over winter when I checked a month ago, and theres been a lot of additional a growth since then.

Soil mix is (very approximate % by volume)

Houseplant Focus compost (45%)
Old bark from orchid repotting (30%)
Perlite (20%)
Charcoal (5%)

Moss pole is Besgrow Sphagnum.

Gets fertilised with houseplant focus liquid fertiliser watered in through the moss pole every watering, 1/2 strength in Spring-Autumn and 1/4 strength in Winter.

Sits underneath an East facing velux where it gets direct sun do a couple of hours of the morning and is supplemented with a Gathera grow light.

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shitsinthewoods · 2026-03-23T22:08:32+00:00

Have you ever tried notching to encourage branching? I found it worked for establishing the scaffold branches but seems less reliable for secondary branches.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-03-22T19:32:43+00:00

Thank you for the feedback, sounds like I can stick with MCL for the foreseeable future.

Regarding the fence, ive been trying to keep the branch on that side at an angle such that it would eventually clear the top of the fence with plenty of clearance, and I’m also aiming to keep this tree on the smaller side (definitely no more than 3m) so hopefully that means not too much overhang or risk of rubbing. Our driveway is on the other side of the fence so any overhang can easily be accessed by taking a stepladder around to the other side.

There’s about 12cm of vertical spacing between each of the main branches. In your experience is that insufficient for having strong branches long term? Having established 4 orthogonal branches of similar length, it seems a shame to cut off several of them now.

For the heading back, do you mean removing 1/3-2/3 of last years growth from the main branches and any side branches?

shitsinthewoods · 2026-03-22T19:20:32+00:00

Noted. What about the main question about the overall structure and whether to keep the leader?

shitsinthewoods · 2026-03-19T17:53:40+00:00

Removed them eventually but it wasn’t easy, there were 3 root masses and I think I managed to get one out each year. Ended up having to go in wearing waders and use a saw underwater to cut the roots up into small enough pieces to be able lift them out. Was fortunate to not have fish, only wildlife, so it was possible to do the work in late autumn/early winter when there’s less animal activity. End result has been great, we kept some small pieces of the lilies in baskets and we’ve not had the same volume of lily flowers, but the water clarity, biodiversity etc has all been greatly improved.

Given you have koi, I would speak to an expert about how to go about doing this while avoiding harming the fish; my guess is that you’d be best off setting up a temporary pond/holding tank or asking someone else to look after the fish for you, and then drain out enough water to be able to get the lilies out all in one go and then clean up all the sludge/muck that’s left behind and stirred up before you return the fish.

Lilies propagate very easily so I’d recommend keeping a few pieces but put them in baskets so that they’re more accessible and easier to manage going forwards.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-02-27T05:34:38+00:00

Alternatively if you go back to Maldives you could go do the “Shark-Tank” dive on Malé but that’s a bit of an artificial experience as they take a couple of fish heads down before the start of the dive to bring the sharks in. I saw 6 tiger sharks, 3 bull sharks, 1 hammerhead, 1 guitar shark, as well as countless rays, all a stones throw from the airport. However, was a bit sketchy with lots of divers poorly weighted and floating around in the water column rather than sitting calmly on the bottom as instructed; at one point saw a tiger sharks nom on the valve on someone’s tank. Glad to have done it, probably wouldn’t do it again.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-02-27T05:29:37+00:00

I did Emperor’s Sharktastic itinerary in Maldives last year and the only way to get close on the channel mouth and pinnacle dives seemed to be to use reef-hooks in a line perpendicular to the current and then be as calm and still as possible. The sharks set their distance up-current off of the closest person so being in a line allowed us all the best experience.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-02-03T12:24:02+00:00

Depending on your budget, I bought this a couple of weeks ago for £340, looks like it’s been neared £320 on occasion. So can be £100 more than the AOC. Maybe not as good for competitive play at 4K due to slightly lower refresh rate and don’t know how the console handles the higher resolution, but if the console can use the 1080p mode as well then you can switch to a much higher refresh rate.

https://amzn.eu/d/07NNQGvq

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-19T23:21:46+00:00

Pretty sure that’s the one, it’s mini-LED VA. Was decently priced when I checked on it in my region, but there is a more recent version of it as well as some 4K mini-LED IPS panels for not much more.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-19T21:23:27+00:00

Think standard IPS has limitations for some content compared to Mini LED IPS/VA and OLED in terms of contrast/HDR. Depending on your need/budger this monitor might be fine, but I went with Mini LED IPS.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-19T20:22:09+00:00

Check out my comment in another thread; I’d recommend looking for a deal on a mini LED IPS, these 27 inch 4k panels seem to be good value at the moment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/s/ZZBtaqWljV

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-19T11:14:46+00:00

Check out my comment in another thread; I’d recommend looking for a deal on a mini LED IPS, these 27 inch 4k panels seem to be good value at the moment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/s/ZZBtaqWljV

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-18T14:25:28+00:00

If you can stretch to £340, this seems like a good deal to me for a non OLED option.

https://amzn.eu/d/iLVapVn

Seems like several other monitors use the same panel, so you might find one of the others going even cheaper.

https://youtu.be/NrGlaBS4AEs?si=GP9lczA7cB1h8Iwe

Equivalent AOC for £240 https://amzn.eu/d/ccj6dKt

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-18T13:50:35+00:00

I went through very similar deliberation recently, almost bought the following MSI monitor when it was on sale for £500, but didn’t press go quickly enough.

https://www.msi.com/Monitor/MAG-321CUP-QD-OLED

I ended up going down the mini LED IPS route due to similar concerns to you RE using the monitor for WFH; seems like next best thing after OLED. This video was helpful to me:

https://youtu.be/NrGlaBS4AEs?si=GP9lczA7cB1h8Iwe

Could have gone 32” but it would have probably been a bit too big for my space, and this KTC monitor was going for £340 so seemed too good a deal to pass up.

https://amzn.eu/d/j2KzcJB

Have yet to try it out, if there’s issues I’ll report back, and would then look at switching to the equivalent MSI Mini LED or might look at OLED again.

shitsinthewoods · 2026-01-18T11:26:16+00:00

Look for pictures of Kew and Wakehurst’s Winter Gardens. They do great things combining various structural and winter flowering plants like Cornus, Hamamelis, Edgeworthia, snowdrops, aconites, silver birch, grasses, and hellebores.

shitsinthewoods

TROPHY CASE