Sometimes when I read messages on this board, as well as many other sites, books, etc about gardening, I start to think I'm learning a whole new foreign language.
Just in the top tips forum, I encounter skanking and riddling. Now I know what a skank is and I know that riddling is a medication for hyperactive children, but I didn't realise they had anything to do with gardening.
I love how specialist areas always have their own language.
Any other terms I should be aware of?
Aquilegia, I am just off up to me lottie to use my Swap and hooker! DP
OK DP - now I have a very strange image of what you do at your lottie! So to stop my overactive imagination - what is it?
I spent the afternoon cutting up Elizabeth and tying up Jacqueline Du Pres.
Eric reminds me of the story of the fanatical rose grower who always referred to his dear wife as "My little Dorothy Perkins". Â She got so fed up with this that she finally looked it up in a rosegrower`s catalogue and found the description...
"no use in a bed, but does very well when standing against a wall"
Sorry!!! Should that have been in the Watershed?
Lol Hugh ;D
Swap is a small hand scythe, and the hooker is a bit of wood with 2 prongs to pull back to weeds so you can chop em! (think it is a local term for them)
What are you suggesting Hugh? !! that i spend a lot of time against the wall! :o  dottie P.
Aquilegia:
Skanking is I think scavenging, skip digging or whatever. Riddling is seiving (usualy soil or compost).
Heres another one, Spit: the length of a spade )to do g a spit deep, means to dig down one spade depth).
Dont know about the others though. :-/
....and never be without your dibber - for dibbling of course!
AC x
When my partner's dad started talking about chitting on the windowsill I nearly choked on a cuppa (this is before I had an allotment and had learnt the lingo a bit).
I absolutely love the fact that stray potatoes are called groundkeepers or even better "volunteers" -
Potato 1: come on, we're getting dug up and eaten tonight!
Potato 2: (wearily and with an air of martyrdom) no, no, you lot go on ahead, I'll stay behind and guard the plot.
hehehehe!
Ten x