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My aunt gave me a few plants for my garden, though I'm not sure what one type is.  It's supposed to be a shasta daisy, but I bought another, "snow queen", and it has rounded leaves instead, and my google image search also seems to show rounded leaves for shasta daisies.  It's growing well, but it does seem to wilt from lack of water very quickly, more than any of my other plants, which wouldn't seem to be what should happen with a shasta daisy since they're supposed to be tough plants (right?).



This is another of the same type which is not looking as happy:
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Suttons are selling Japanese wasabi plants in the UK. Which is a first as far as I know. Has anyone had any experience growing this? What conditions does it need? Obviously I'm tempted as I like a bit of spice in my food and unusual plants so this is a golden opportunity to blend the two. I'm just not sure how difficult it is to grow, and whether I'd just end up killing it.

I bought a little start of Egyptian walking onions two years ago this spring.
I looked at my start yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised to realize that my "little" start ain't so little any more!
As a matter of fact, it distinctly looks as though my walking onions are putting on their track shoes judging by the number of bulblets they look like they're putting on!

Does anyone else around here grow them?

My mother wants to give me a quince tree for Christmas, and I think I've found the right place for it in the garden. However, before I go ahead and say yes, to her offer, I need to know a little more.

The place I'm thinking of is in a raised part of the garden, about a metre higher than the level below, and contained by a stone wall. My concern is that if the quince has invasive roots, such as some trees have, it might end up breaking the wall.

Does anyone know if that's likely to happen?

(I live in the UK, in the east midlands.)

A couple weeks ago I bought a big bagful of lily bulbs which isn't a great thing to do when you have squirrels hanging around your yard. I was determined to have lilies though so I decided I should try my luck with using hot sauce as a deterrent.
I soaked my bulbs overnight in water and then gave them a good dowsing in Louisiana hot sauce from the bulb all the way up the sprouting stem (I used the house brand from MuleWart).
My Hubby was a lot stingier with his bulbs. His only got a few drops splashed on them.
The squirrels dug his bulbs up but then left them alone. (I had to go back and recover his.)
They didn't even bother to dig mine up!
And the moles haven't come anywhere near any of them either which is a good thing since apparently I have the Vigo County franchise rights on mole reproduction in the state of Indiana.
(It's so funny: The moles won't cross over into the Lawn Nazi's yard next door in spite of him telling me that he doesn't use lawn chemicals!)

This spring, something I've been waiting for for years has happened: the laburnum, AKA golden chain, tree is blooming. This is a big deal to me because I grew this plant from a seed. Then, when I put one in the ground, the gophers ate it. I put another one in the spot. The deer ate it. It survived, but now instead of a regular tree shape with a single trunk it's a giant multistemmed thing. But that's all okay, because it's now taller (barely) than the house and it's doing this:

Has anyone ever grown watermelon vertically or trained them onto a fence?  I just prepped a section in the back (that actually gets enough sun) for some edibles.  I've had to get creative as my garden has lots of shade.  Anyhow, it runs along a chain link fence and has a walkway, so the growing section is only about 2 feet deep and about 20 feet long.  I have some watermelon starts to put in, but I was thinking that in order to make use of vertical space, staggering the plants and having every other one trellised to the fence, high enough to get it off the ground but low enough that the fruit won't have to go into slings.  I hope.  Has anyone done something like this and did it work out well for you? 

I know that at least some of the people who are members of this gardening community dislike Monsanto and would avoid buying its products if they could. According to this article I found, there's a new app called "BUYCOTT that shows you a product's corporate family tree while you shop" and thus lets you avoid buying products that put money in the pockets of corporations you dislike.
(BTW: The comments section that follows this article has some interesting comments that might be worth reading too.)

Here's the name of the article and the website if you're interested:
New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto and More by Scanning Your Shopping Cart
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/app-lets-boycott-koch-brothers-125701452.html