It’s February, where is spring?

Tags

#gardenblog #wintergarden #snowdrops # gardenersyear #fruitgarden

Snowdrops in the rain

I said that I wasn’t going to take so many snowdrop pictures this year, as I have loads I from previous years, but the drifts are just reaching their peak and I can’t resist. The flowers are opening out now but the cold and wet weather mean that they are lasting well.

Mahonia in flower now.

Well, here we are in February and, apart from a few sunny days, it has still been mostly cold and wet. I am not able to work in some of my gardens due to the waterlogged ground, I am really hoping to get going again this month.

These are borders in two different gardens.

As I write this, I have enjoyed a couple of days of mild weather, with hints of spring, but we are forecast another “beast from the east” bringing snow and freezing conditions; so I have rescued a couple of plants from the floods and fleeced the seedlings in my polytunnel.

Old fruit cage

New fruit cage

On a more positive note, ‘my’ fruit cage is very nearly finished and the new fruit arrived and planted. I ordered it from James McIntyre and Sons and it arrived quickly. I have gooseberries and blackcurrants, saved from the old fruit cage, and a new selection of raspberries, strawberries and a redcurrant. It’s not really my fruit cage but the customer and Trev, who built it, both refer to it as “your” and I’m in charge!!

As well as the snowdrops, the hellebores are also putting on a good show and shoots of the peonies are beginning to show.

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Peony shoots.

I have got on well with the muck spreading at the pub with a bit of help from my son. I have also added to the fruit bushes there with red, white and pink currants and an Aronia. The loganberry from the old fruit cage has also been relocated here where there is more space for it to grow.

In other news, I have enrolled on a distance learning garden design course. I have so far enjoyed the buying of materials and setting myself up with some office space but I am finding the measuring and drawing difficult, which is what I expected. I am looking forward to getting to the plant bit and I will update as I go along.

Meanwhile, here’s some more pictures of a Daphne humming with bees on a warm day and more glistening snowdrops.

Daphne, the scent is amazing!

Allotment update

This is what I call my allotment, I have previously referred to it as the pub veg plot if you want to look back on previous year’s progress. I am still growing stuff for the pub although only for the pop-up shop and takeaway ready meals at the moment. I am also spending a bit of my own time there to grow things for me. My new, and favourite, project this year has been a cutting garden, which you can see here.

On the left hand side, I have six beds. Two are permanently planted with rhubarb and fruit trees (underplanted with wild garlic) and the others currently have squashes, potatoes, sweetcorn and brassicas, and my cut flowers. And lots of weeds!

Not sure how to caption now WordPress has changed but this is courgette and a giant pumpkin with lots of space to grow.

This is just another view, including the flowers. The nigella have finished but I am using the seedheads and the godetia is just coming out. The cornflowers have just gone on and on.

End of June bucket of flowers.

On the right hand side, another six beds, this time three with permanent planting. One with herbs, one with newly planted asparagus, established globe artichokes and gooseberry and blueberry bushes and one with strawberries. Considering how I neglected the strawberry bed, it is producing well, plants in their second year now.

In the other beds, I have given up on the broad beans, harvested a few and pulled up plants. The red flowered, spring sown ones never really thrived and covered in rust and black fly, it’s time to go. I have let last years leeks flower, just because I like them, and planted s new crop, sown earlier in the year.

Also on this side, some later sown salad leaves and spring onions. The peas have been picked and eaten, by us and the pigeons.

Salad seedlings.

Autumn planted onion sets are almost ready to harvest, not very big because of the dry spring, after the wet beginning of the year, and a bit of a lack of time on my part, hence my ongoing weed battle. I have more courgettes and squashes dotted about, first courgette harvested this week.

Weeds!

July tasks will include weeding and getting to grips with the blog. I also have dahlias to add to the cutting patch. I have learnt a lot about growing flowers so I will try to put it all together in another post. I also have some more beans to squeeze in somewhere.

May 2020

 

I can’t believe that it is the end of May already. I don’t know how other people fit in blogging with everything else going on in the garden, there’s still lots of sowing and pricking out to do but here is a quick look at, what has been a very dry May.

The lockdown has gradually been lifted and this weekend has seen lots of people making day trips. You can now visit RHS and National Trust gardens, if you book first. Meanwhile at work and home, the borders are filling up. The tulips have come and gone and the may blossom, hawthorn, has been spectacular.

It has been the month that the roses start performing, filling the gardens with their  beautiful scents and lots of other flowers too, and it’s still exciting waiting to see what is coming out next, year after year.

Really enjoyed sniffing this lilac!

Mine is always the first peony, left, I am afraid that I don’t know the variety as it came with the garden. There are so many different peonies, from dark red to pure white and from simple flowers to really frothy blooms.

These white ones are just coming out at the end of May.

Now a bit of real gardening where things go wrong. When I worked at a garden centre, I used to warn people not to plant out bedding too early because there is always a chance of frost until the end of May. This year I didn’t listen to my own advice and we had several frosty nights during one week in mid May. The dahlias suffered and it also caught my beans and squashes in the poly tunnel. Mostly they have  recovered but it has been a bit of a setback.

Apart from looking after the seeds and lots of watering, I  seemed to have pulled forget-me-nots up in all of my gardens throughout the month. Here is a quick before and after. They come up easily so it’s quite a quick fix job.

 

Towards the end of the month, there are bean pods forming on the overwintered broad beans and the climbing French beans are beginning to climb. I have now planted out all the squashes and courgettes.

The lack of rain has meant flower petals, like this poppy, have lasted well and having the family at home during lockdown, and in the garden more seems to have improved the chances of the alliums which usually get eaten by rabbits.  Here’s hoping the dahlias benefit too.

Just finishing off with this field of daisies in my village.

 

Easter 2020

It is mid April and everything is bursting into life, as it should be, but the reality for us is anything but normal. Across the whole world, countries, including the UK, are in lockdown because of the Covid19 pandemic. With a large percentage of the population confined to home, and a settled spell of fine weather those who are lucky enough to have one have been out in the garden. And I am no exception.

Looking back, the last blog was March 3rd so I’ll try and catch up a bit. This is Berberis Darwinii looking good in early March.

I have been managing to carry on gardening for most of my customers as I tend to be on my own and away from the houses anyway. Here are the daffodils at one of my larger gardens and a new garden structure which I am rather fond of.

The daffodils were followed by a fantastic show of other bulbs in the grass. Muscari, Anemone blanda, Scilla and Chionodoxa. They always are but that doesn’t stop me being excited and taking photos every year!

New Acer leaves.

It stayed cold for so long that I managed to hold off sowing seeds until the very end of March and beginning of April. But the weeds started growing so I weeded, gave  the lawn edges their first trim of the year and divided and moved a few perennials.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and it feels like it has been hot and sunny forever. The tulips are out at the pub which has temporarily morphed into a local shop. I have been sowing seeds in the greenhouse (not mine) to hopefully produce some crops that can be sold to the shop’s customers.

So far the cumin is doing well!

At home, we have moved the polytunnel  back a bit, here it is before and during the move, and put a replacement cover on because the old one was full of holes. This has created a bigger vegetable patch and honestly I have been sorting through my pots and it looks a lot better than this now.

Inside the polytunnel, I have sown most of my seeds now including the more tender vegetables like tomatoes and squashes and the half hardy annuals such as cosmos and zinnia. Dahlia seeds are inside on the window sill. The sunflowers, sown a week ago, have come up already. As you can see it is also used for storing guinea pig supplies which is not ideal.

Just the rest of the garden to do now before everything needs pricking out!

This cuckoo flower has sprung up in the lawn, quite a large patch, as if to emphasise how damp it has been, right near to the house.

Tonight it rained, which has filled up the water butt and hopefully gone down into the soil as far as the potatoes. I am so grateful to have my garden and live in such a nice place so staying hasn’t been such a chore and there is still lots more to do to keep me busy.

 

October Diary 2019

 

1st

So excited, those hardy annuals which I have sown at the allotment have started to germinate. It looks like there will be a lot of eschschlozia!

 

Also courgettes still going and baby leeks, bought as plants, planted out.

 

Oct 7th

Lots of rain so far this month and a good crop of parasol mushrooms on the lawn.

Oct 8th

 

 

Customers veg garden mostly clear now and liriope flowering in the borders.

Oct 10th

In this garden, I have been planting daffodil  bulbs. Much easier than when I started 2 weeks ago because of the rain. You may be spotting a weather related theme here! Anyway, I took this photo as I was planting at the top of the slope and I wanted to check that they could be seen from the patio at the bottom as that is where the house is. It helped me bring them a bit further down.

 

 

Flowering in the front garden, toad lilies and aconitum. And hey look the sun is shining!

 

 

Laybirds in the last of the helianthus and lovely skeletal poppies.

Oct 12th

 

 

Planted winter lettuce in the polytunnel at home and sowed some salad crops, pak choi, chicory, fennel (er, not sure why so much now) and kale. You can also see pelagonium cuttings and sweet William seedlings brought under cover. There are still tomato plants  but I don’t think that they will ripen out here now.

15th Oct

Spindle berries, very exotic looking despite being a native, Euomymus europeaus

 

 

Going back through the borders now for  more thorough cut back and tidy up. Also thinking what can be moved around  while the soil is relatively warm.

I am going to reduce these michaelmas daisies, because they can take over, but they do look good en masse and the bees were very happy to find some late flowers.

 

 

At the allotment, one side nearly done and the other with lots of work still to do.

 

 

Oct 16th

Nerines where they like it at the base of a sunny wall.

Oct 18th

More of the same, sunshine and showers.

Oct 22nd

They took their time but the cosmos are still flowering.

Oct 28

 

 

After rain every day in October finally a few dry ones. Today started with frost but then the sun came out. Time to get rid of all the courgettes and squashes on the allotment.

Oct 31st

 

 

Last day of October and still a bit of colour. Dahlias in one garden and fuchsia in another.

October has been a damp month, not much autumn colour yet. It finishes as always with the woodland group Halloween event, pumpkins and sausages round the fire pit.

 

 

 

 

September Diary 2019

Sept 1st

Sweet corn from the allotment.

Sept 2nd

Tomatoes

Much cooler mornings now, a great opportunity to have a tidy up in the greenhouse. Picked the garden pearl as they were flopping all over the place and tied up and trimmed the others. Note new ball of string!

September 3rd

This outdoor cucumber is Marketer. I can’t keep up with supply, luckily the guinea pigs help out.

 

Still picking strawberries from the allotment.

Sept 10th

Good haul of produce from a customer’s garden. Keeping the tomatoes under control this year has worked well.

The plums may be on their way out but apples are ripe now in the orchard.

Sept 11th

First conker!

Sept 16th

Gardening in the drizzle but it makes for dewy photos. I planted these dahlias in a different place this year and they have been quite successful, for some reason the rabbits haven’t eaten them as much as in the main borders. And a beautiful unnamed rose.

Cleared a bit more pink geranium, a bit goes each year, and planted these rudbeckia to add a bit more autumn colour.

Sunday 22nd

Went to the allotment to squeeze an hour in before tea, 15 minutes later the heavens opened but we managed to pick cucumbers, courgettes and strawberries and dig some more potatoes.

Tuesday 24th

Allotment this afternoon. It rained all morning but when I turned over the soil there were still dry patches.  Cut back a bit more lavender and planted my Higgledy Garden hardy annuals using hazel plant labels from Woodview Gardens.

25th

Shifting a leafmold pile for an elderly customer and then raking the leaves up and starting all over again. Cyclamen and autumn crocus in the same garden.

30th

Courgettes still flowering and the Muscat squashes harvested and ripening on the wall.

July diary 2019

1st July

Started the big chopping back. First the catmint by the pond taking care not to fall in!

 

3rd July 

8th July 

Good harvest of beans and courgettes from my Monday garden.

This was my only Rouge vif d’etampes pumpkin!

9th July

 

Having a good sort out in the rose garden. Pulled out the poppies and deadheaded the roses fairly hard.

10th July

 

Dieramas over the pond and magnificent Clematis at the back.

 

This customer really likes Clematis!

16th July

 

When the fence was renewed in the veg patch over winter, it was moved back along this edge, and I gained a new strip of earth. I have enjoyed using the space for annual flowers which wouldn’t stand a chance in the tightly packed borders. The sunflowers and sweet peas have done well and I particularly like this Nigella African Bride

17th July

First bean harvest from the allotment. The yellow ones were seeds from Lidl and the purple possibly Blauhilde. I’ve had the saved seeds in a jar for ages and I can’t remember.

18th July

 

Hot and sticky evening visit to the allotment. Pulled out lots of weeds. The artichokes look great in the late sun.

24th July

It has been so hot this week, in the 30’s everyday. I have spent as much time as I can in the shade and drunks loads of water. I don’t seem to have taken many photos. Just too hot!

27th July

And today the heatwave ended. It has rained much of the day. This is a self sown sunflower doing well at the allotment and the very late sown onions doing their best.

Sowed some seeds! I’ve never managed to do this before in July. Here we have Sweet William, saved seeds, various salad leaves, kale and beetroot.

End of the month.

Still cutting back and planting a few cosmos in the gaps. They may survive the rabbits, we’ll see. It’s a funny time of year with the first lot of flowers over and the late summer ones not quite out yet. All this rain and warm weather will encourage it back for a second flush. Had a quick look round to note what is looking good at the end of July.

 

Shasta daisy and Echinops. Verbena bonariensis and Echinacea.

 

Kniphofia and lovely, lovely Agapanthus.

 

By the way I’m on my third pumpkin seed, which hasn’t germinated so that’s it for this year.

June diary 2019

Lettuce

Broad beans

Lettuce and broad beans on the allotment

Sunday 2nd

Took Xand up to the allotment to water while I planted some very late potatoes and onions sets given to me by someone who had ordered too many. Harvested all the autumn sown peas, enough for a meal, and the first of the strawberries.

 

Tuesday 4th

No watering this afternoon as pouring with rain, good for planting out the lettuce seedlings. Also accomplished my mission of planting the brassicas and covering with netting.

Sunday 9th

Planted Cecil at the allotment.

Tuesday 11th

Warm and sticky but at least it has stopped raining. The rose borders are blooming abundantly and the peonies are magnificent too. Everything is growing  rapidly and there is a lot to do, I have to remind myself that I will get on top it and it will slow down.

Tuesday 18th

What a week, I’ve never worn my waterproofs so much! Finally got a proper sunny day yesterday and got tormented by horseflies and hayfever. Remembered the insect repellent today.

The garden is at it’s best, in the sunshine, with the sysirinchium out and the weeds mostly hidden. Still planting in the allotment, replacement pumpkins as Cecil turned out to be a courgette, and some celariac given to me by a friend. Not impressed with the seed company, they have not replied to my email, may have to tweet them.

Still lots to do, weeds growing like mad and a thunderstorm forecast for tonight. Picked broad beans and peas for tea.

June 20th

This isn’t gardening but I had to share this wonderful field of daisies.

June 25th

First courgettes and the second sowing of potatoes has survived. I still don’t know what ate the first lot but when I planted these, in May, I sprinkled the trenches with chives and blackcurrant leaves, to disguise the smell, and put netting on top.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are gettig bigger and, keeping it real, the allotment is fill of weeds.

June 30th

Planted Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds again. My friend gave me 2 but one died so I am hoping 3rd time lucky. Monty said it wasn’t too late on Gardeners World on Friday so here’s hoping.

 

May Diary 2019

Saturday May 4th

At home, dodging the hail showers,  planted out my poor sweet peas they have been neglected and needed planting weeks ago. Sowed salad seeds in the raised bed and planted out the watercress.

Weekend 11th/12th May

Reached that point where everything has to be sown or it will be too late. Struggling with salad in the raised bed. Although early sowings are ready to pick, nothing else has come up. There was a lot of heavy rain last week and now it is  supposed to be getting warmer so fingers crossed. Still those chilly nights though. Can’t get runner beans to germinate at all this year but have some French bean plants and more seeds sown. Lots of squashes and courgettes ready to go out soon.

Tuesday 21st May.

Last week we had cold nights and one frost but temperatures of 14°c and above in the day.  Quite a lot of moving plants in and out of the poly tunnel went on. This week is more settled so plants are able to stay out but there is more watering now.

The garden exploded into bloom and I wowed at all the new flowers and all the butterflies.

Today I saw the first few blackfly on the broad beans so I pinched out all the tops. They are doing really well with beans forming now.

Moved a lot of the dahlias from the greenhouse into the beds making space for the tomato plants. Used very sturdy supports this year!

 

End of the month

It’s getting full on now with the Irises, peonies and poppies in bloom. Lupins in full flower ready for the first wedding of the season.

April Diary 2019

Tuesday 9th April

In the greenhouse, the French marigolds are up and the Gypsophila, pricked out last week, are doing well.  Sowed more squash seeds.

Started checking the dahlias. I usually pot them up at this stage but I have decided to water the dry soil that they have overwintered in, and move them from there if they grow.

Outside, pulled up the last of the brassicas and planted the next lot of peas. Put pea sticks in.

Friday 12th May

Planting seedlings in my raised bed

Managed to get the teenage daughter into the polytunnel to re-sow the failed sunflowers and also start the giant pumpkins. Planted spinach and lettuce seedlings into my raised bed. Still a bit cold at night so hoping they survive.

Found vine weevil in pots so tipped out completely in the chicken run.

Easter Holidays

Made use of the light evenings to sow squash, courgettes and beans in the polytunnel while learning Macbeth.

Visited allotment to water, first potato up so starting earthing up. The broccoli are too infested with aphids now to bother eating, so gradually bringing a couple of sticks home at a time for the chickens. Car also has aphids now!

Tuesday 23rd April

After a hot dry Easter break, it is back to grey weather and chilly nights.

Ready to eat, rocket, radish and baby spinach. Broad beans, not really but I can see the little beans forming.

The dahlias, that I bury in the bone dry greenhouse beds over winter, are beginning to shoot. I have been storing them like this for several years and it is really successful but you have to have a large, brick built greenhouse to do it! My customer is very lucky.

In the orchard, the apple blossom is divine, see top photo,  and I love the quince flowers, above, too. Saw my first speckled wood of the year.

Monday 29th April

Not a single potato left at the Hall. Not sure what has eaten them, possibly rats. The squashes are doing well, no germination on cucumbers, maybe the seed is too old now.

Tuesday 30th April

Saw the first damsel flies emerging from the pond. It is still cold though.