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Friday, May 11, 2012
Garden without rain
The parrot tulips have been extraordinary this year - the gales and hail and flood-level inundations have bothered them not a bit: unstaked and unfazed they have flowered magnificently. Soon these immense petals with start to drop and that will be it for the year, but for the couple of weeks I have them, parrot tulips are just a superb investment and a joy to observe.
I didn’t plant pink bluebells, in case you think I’m really perverse. They should have been blue, but they came up pink! And in the middle of what I thought would be a lively display of blue on blue on blue - a blue iris that has, for reasons mysterious to me, been eaten by slugs or snails. I've never had iris eaten by gastropods before ...
Labels: bluebells, pink flowers, tulip planting
The All Seasons Gardener at 2:52 AM 0 Comments
Friday, May 4, 2012
Garden Tasks for May
One thing that’s doing well is the dandelion crop. I keep finding new dandelions, mainly in the middle of other things (there’s one smack dab in the middle of my papavar orientale and another pushing its way out of the heart of a rock rose) which means the normal routes to removal are impossible. The bare minimum is to nip off any flowers that you see so they can’t set seed, and to trim back the leaves so that the plant finds it difficult to photosynthesise, and then mark the point where the root is, so that a bit later in the year, after the flowering season for the plant you want to preserve, you can try digging in with a narrow implement and get all or most of that dandelion root out!
Overwintering geraniums can be cut back and repotted now, but give them a week in their new soil, indoors or under cover, before putting them outside – watch the weather forecast too, as frosts can be (and are) predicted into May and will carry off tender plants if you are overenthusiastic or incautious.
Check your peonies and if they are budding, give them an extra liquid feed, and stake the plant if the buds look really heavy. Other perennials, like this crinodendron, may benefit from a feed too, as they prepare to flower.
Labels: crinodendron, May garden tasks
The All Seasons Gardener at 7:16 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, May 3, 2012
12 months, one garden, one allium
Falco was a cairn terrier who used to see things in the garden that nobody else could see, then run as fast as his short fat legs would carry him to the bottom of the garden, where the fence would stop his progress, usually with a thud, as his nose connected with it. In eight years, nothing every stopped him seeing and chasing things in the garden, apart from the fence. Borders certainly didn’t stop him. He ploughed through or over them all the time, causing more tender plants to die and others to be smashed, trampled and otherwise damaged before they could flower. We loved him dearly but it was a real surprise to see how many plants appeared, and flowered, when he was no longer with us.
The All Seasons Gardener at 5:25 AM 0 Comments
Friday, April 27, 2012
Garden shame blog post
Oh, all right then. Just because somebody emailed me to say I should. I will. This is what the pond looks like when it’s covered in duckweed. If we had space for a ghost carp I would have one, as they eat duckweed, but they grow to 2.5 metres, which is about the width of the pond, and that seems a little unfair on the carp!
Anyway, ponds apart, I’m happy with how the garden is going – despite the hosepipe ban, I haven’t had to fill the pond at all because all the rainwater we’ve had is keeping it brimming over. The lungwort (pulmonaria) looks lovely alongside the pond and works well with the white and green variegated euonymus – the huge ugly cotoneaster looming over the back of the picture is still in place at present, but the back half of the plant has been completely removed, along with a stand of bamboo that was alongside it. The front half will be taken out in a couple of weeks, when the weather calms down, as at present the shrub is preventing vast amounts of wind-blown debris ending up in the pond by catching it in its branches. When it’s gone, two lime green cornus will take its place, along with a winter flowering daphne.
Labels: cotoneaster, lily of the valley, pond clearing, pond fish
The All Seasons Gardener at 5:24 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
April tasks – the blessed pond
So instead here are pictures of the parrot tulips today – aren’t they fabulous? One of the reasons I love them is that they are highly mutable: they change colour and form every single day, unlike other flowers which can be quite static. Parrot tulips are always looking different, and that makes them fascinating to me.
So while I am looking at the tulips, what I’m doing is skimming the pond. It’s so boring! We have had a year when lots of soil has ended up in the pond: it’s not meant to, but it does. Sometimes the rain washes it in, and sometimes we end up chucking it in ourselves, by accident, as we fling compost and soil and what have you around in the garden. It’s daft but there it is – the pond is in a really central bit of the garden and has, from time to time had chairs dropped in it, footballs landed in it regularly when the boy was a teenager, Falco, bless him, regularly fell in and had to be fished out, and we’ve once dropped a large pot of nerines in it, resulting in an enriching of the aquatic ecosystem in a very annoying way.
If there are nutrients in the water, duckweed seems to go crazy. Skimming it is not highly productive, because it expands to fill the gap within hours, but we try to keep the centre of the pond clear so that it is oxygenated. We can't skim the edges anyway, because of the tadpoles. It does reach an equilibrium by midsummer but at this time of year we’re very aware that there are a lot of ‘breathers’ trying to get oxygen from the pond and that duckweed can really reduce oxygen levels. It’s boring, fiddly, monotonous work and I’m fed up with it.
Labels: pond clearing, pond wildlife
The All Seasons Gardener at 8:37 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Flocks of parrots …
Most of the time I’m a relatively restrained gardener, but the one thing that brings out my inner diva is the Parrot tulip. They are about the showiest thing possible: exotically coloured, heavily ruffled, with fringed edges, striped, splashed and opening out to huge drooping shapes like prima ballerinas performing a swooning solo onstage.The generous cup-shaped blooms are prone to wind and cold damage, so I only plant them in containers, and give them a certain amount of support, usually with fine twigs which vanish as the bulb opens. They also don’t like heavy soil and love to be mulched. Even with all the loving care I can muster, my Parrot bulbs shrink and fade after about five years, but they are my passion and my pride and despite their gaudiness, I am happiest every year when the tulip blooms are just about to open.
I never cut my Parrots, but I know other people use them as cut flowers, but with their heavy heads and long stems, they are likely to droop. The answer is to cut them, then plunge them into a bucket of water, up to about an inch from the flower head. With a pin, pierce three holes: one an inch from the bottom of the stem, one half way up and one just below water level. This allows the air in the stem to rise up to that point, and bubble out, so that the stem fills with water and remains more rigid.
Today they are battling gale force winds and rain, still furled and bearing only about a third of the colour they will eventually produce, and I still think they look amazing.
Labels: container bulbs, exotic bulbs, parrot tulips, spring bulbs
The All Seasons Gardener at 3:09 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
April garden tasks
If anybody else has just had extreme hail, this post is going to seem like a grim joke to them – but until a couple of hours ago I was happily out there, weeding, in a T-shirt and shorts, but now I’m huddled indoors in a jumper and jeans with the heating on! Usually it’s March that comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion but April has decided to be lamblike for the first week and is getting pretty leonine right now!Until the hailstones hit, I was considering whether to apply lawn fertiliser – it hasn’t been worth doing until this week, because the long period without rain meant no food would get down to the roots. Our old and tatty lawn gets a general purpose lawn feed that also contains a moss and broad leaf killer, and we tend to aerate when the soil is a little moist, but not waterlogged, then feed, leave a couple of days and then cut with the mower set a little higher than usual to allow the lawn to recover from winter damage. Not now though – it’s too wet and way too cold to be out there doing lawn work!
I’m also weeding a lot. We have a pernicious red clover that appears at this time of year and swamps everything if it’s not spotted and weeded out pronto. Unfortunately the emerging seedlings are tiny and very much the colour of our soil so its painstaking work.
We’ve also been pruning back clematis and staking our herbaceous perennials, which was good timing, given the affects of the hail! When staking perennials make sure you either have a safe cane (with a rounded top) or do something to ensure the top can be seen. Given how fast the plants grow, it’s very easy to lose sight of the stake as you bend to weed or water and poke yourself in the eye or mouth with it – not as funny as it sounds! Old yoghurt cartons are the simplest (and ugliest) way to protect your sight, but polystyrene balls from craft shops can either be painted green or decorated beautifully and then glued to the top of stakes to give protection and attractiveness.
Labels: april garden tasks, april lawn care, pruning clematis
The All Seasons Gardener at 7:50 AM 0 Comments
Recent Posts
- Garden without rain
- Garden Tasks for May
- 12 months, one garden, one allium
- Garden shame blog post
- April tasks – the blessed pond
- Flocks of parrots …
- April garden tasks
- Growing plants in raised beds
- Primula update
- Planter boxes in full bloom
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