A dry weekend

 

A few dry days – at last – over the past weekend allowed us to get on with jobs in the garden, especially the first cut of the lawn.  The cowslips are in full flower so that area was left uncut, and the grass around the plum tree was also left to allow the orchids to flower later in the year; but the garden always looks tidier with the main part of the grass mown.

Ahead of the mowing, I dug into the pile of old grass clippings (not dealt with for about three years, I think) and moved some of it under the apple cordons, to help keep the weeds down.  I’m slowly working my way along the row, removing weeds and grass as I go, and pondering what to do about the soil in front of the cordons.  I’ve hit upon a solution, which may or may not be a wise move.  There are a lot of self-seeded oregano plants in the garden, especially in the old herb bed where I’m planning to plant out the dahlias this year; I’ve been reluctant to get rid of the oregano as it’s pretty in flower, and useful in the kitchen, but moreover it attracts huge numbers of butterflies and bees in summer, which are very welcome.  So I’ve started moving some of it to the apple bed, which is in full sun and ought to suit.  Am I creating another problem for myself, with the oregano taking over under the apples?  I’ll need to be ruthless about cutting it back, even though the seedheads attract goldfinches in winter; I won’t be able to allow it to seed, and I think I’ll have to renew it periodically to stop it becoming too woody.  We’ll see.

I also found a couple of bags of old leaf mould and rotted sawdust, and spread them on some of the veg beds.  The birds enjoyed this; there were blackbirds, a thrush, goldfinches and a wren picking over the area once I moved away.  There is a lot of nesting activity at the moment; the sparrows are collecting grass, and the thrush has been picking up mud from the pond for her nest.

Tulips 'Dreamer' - and 'National Velvet' ('Havran' in bud in front)

The tulip pots are continuing to brighten up even the dull days.  The ‘Dreamer’ pot is developing nicely, and, despite what I said in my last post, the dark pointed tulips are in fact ‘National Velvet’; ‘Havran’ is not yet in flower, just in bud.  In the biggest pot, ‘Prinses Irene’ is starting to come out, with the much taller ‘Black Hero’  and shorter ‘Uncle Tom’ still to come.  The first of the ‘Doll’s Minuet’ is out, and the more I see of this tulip the more I like it; the colour is glorious, and the petals twist outwards in a very elegant way.  I’m thinking that it might work as a partner for ‘Prinses Irene’ in a future planting, perhaps with a dark tulip to provide contrast, and to damp down the colour clash; while orange and pink is a combo that I would normally back away from in horror, the darker markings on the backs of both tulips combine well, and the effect would be – how should I put this? – striking.  Shocking, even - but certainly colourful!

Tulip 'Doll's Minuet'

Tulip 'Prinses Irene'

After the dry weekend, the weather has turned showery and windy again, and quite chilly.  In fact we’ve just had a brief snow shower …

In the cells

I have a love-hate relationship with seed cells.  They can be great for raising seedlings up to potting-on or planting-out stage: easy to fill with compost, and more convenient than lots of individual small pots; the seedlings can be easily moved en masse rather than the fiddly business of transporting several little pots.  It’s not so easy to get the seedlings out with all their roots intact, mind you; much of the compost tends to get left behind when you prise them out, but with a little care they can be extracted without too much damage.

On the other hand: well, there are a number of disadvantages.  My success rate with seeds isn’t all that it might be (too many old packs of seed!), and often I find that each set of cells ends up with only a very few actual seedlings in it, and I’m taking up space in the greenhouse / cold frame / propagator with a number of empty cells.  Then, all the seedlings have to be dealt with at the same time; if some seeds are still germinating and need the extra heat or protection of the propagator or whatever, while their neighbours are further ahead and are ready to be potted on, I have to hold back the latter or sacrifice the former.  I can create a problem by sowing two or more different lots of seeds in the same cell-pack, as not all will necessarily germinate at the same rate.  Likewise if – as has happened with my lettuce seedlings – some are eaten or damaged by slugs or snails while the rest are growing away fine, I have to give house-room to cells with no viable seedlings in them.  (The lettuces had been germinated in the cold frame, with no pest damage; then, once pricked out into the cells, they fell prey to a snail that got into the frame.  The snail was removed and thrown into the field across the road.)

Lettuce seedlings - grazed by the snail!

At least the propagator is pest-proof.  But here’s a conundrum.  In there I have a cell-pack containing three different sets of seeds: spring onions, dill and coriander.  At least, that’s what the plant labels say; for once, I did actually label them, but did I label them correctly?  The seedlings that are rather patchily coming up all look the same.  The two in the ‘spring onions’ cell are definitely not spring onions (and there are no signs of the actual onions – in fairness, that was probably old seed).  There are two ‘coriander’ seedlings, one of which has the remains of the outer seed coating still stuck to its leaves, and that does indeed look like a coriander seed, which is fairly distinctive.  The ‘dill’ seedlings seem to be doing well – but why did I sow dill in here, when I have other dill seedlings germinating successfully in the cold frame?  And those look different to – and much more dill-like than – the propagator seedlings.  A quick nibble of one of the propagator occupants tells me that these ‘dill’ seedlings are indeed herbs, but they don't taste like dill; they may be more coriander, which is useful but puzzling.  Did I sow two rows of coriander – and spill some seed into the ‘onions’ cells – and mislabel one row as dill?  Time, I suppose, will tell once the true leaves appear!

Conundrum

Most of my dahlia tubers got separated from their labels in storage, but they are starting to sprout nicely in the greenhouse.  Perhaps the weather will warm up enough to plant them out later in the spring!  The weather continues to be depressingly wet, although the forecast is for a dry weekend, which might allow us to mow the lawn at last.  A windy few days knocked the ‘Exotic Emperor’ tulips about, but the ‘Orange Emperor’ ones (in a slightly more sheltered position) are still standing, and tulips ‘Dreamer’ and ‘Havran’ are coming up together in one of the larger pots (there ought to be ‘National Velvet’ in there too; is it a later variety?).  ‘Dreamer’ is pretty, but not multi-headed as the catalogue suggested (which is a pity as it was a more expensive variety). 

Dahlia 'David Howard' starting to sprout

Tulip 'Orange Emperor'

'Dreamer' and 'Havran'

And there’s always one rogue bulb in every order: a lovely delicate little, mutiheaded, soft yellow daffodil has appeared in the pot of ‘Elka’ daffs.  I wish I knew what it is, so that I could get more for next year!

'Elka' - and an unknown yellow interloper

At least I did better than a friend in the village, whose potful of tastefully selected pink tulips has turned out to be a mixture of red, yellow and purple.

Down in yon forest ...

With all the February/March pruning tasks (wisteria, buddleja, apple tree) out of the way, despite the soggy weather (and occasional hailstorm), I’ve been turning my attention and my loppers to other hacking back jobs.  A dry day (there haven’t been many) on Easter Saturday was ideal for getting into the Forest.

My original idea for this area was to plant up a mini woodland glade, with small trees and shrubs, and a path running through it.  As the shrubs (too many, too big, planted too close together) have grown, and been invaded by ivy, brambles and other unwanted plants, though, what I’ve ended up with is less a glade and more an impenetrable, Tolkein-esque forest, albeit on a very small scale.  So I scrambled into my mini-Mirkwood with loppers and a saw and set to work.

The oldest plant in this space is a small tree, a purple-leaved prunus which was in the garden when we arrived, over 30 years ago.  It is showing its age, covered in lichen and, less desirably, in ivy, and suckering prolifically at the base; I’ve tried in the past to get the suckers out, but they are rooted too far below the surface.  It’s too early in the year to prune it safely, so I’ve left it alone for the moment. 

Lichen and ivy on the prunus

Alongside I had planted a winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii), which has a spreading habit and has spread its arms much wider than I expected; a philadelphus, which has never done well and which I’ve been threatening to dig out for as long as I’ve been writing this blog, and probably before that; a Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, which was originally one plant and now has somehow turned into three (large) shrubs; another small tree, a Euonymus europaeus ‘Red Sentinel’; and a Viburnum tinus ‘Gwenllian’.  (There was originally a magnolia as well, which didn’t last long.  Why did I think that was a good idea?)  Oh yes, and there’s also a rose, Rosa ‘Old Blush China’, which I always forget about because it’s now underneath the honeysuckle.

Viburnum tinus 'Gwenllian' (the healthy bit)

The main problem, apart from the age of the plants, which are becoming rather elderly, turned out to be the Viburnum tinus, planted at the centre of things.  Some people find them foul-smelling, but I can’t say I’ve ever noticed.  I have two V. tinus – there’s another at the side of the house, donated by a friend who had no space for it – but ‘Gwenllian’ is the more attractive of the two; it has pink-tinged flowers in winter, followed by shiny blue berries.  I’m hoping to keep it, but to cut it back to a more manageable size.  It has several large, spreading branches, some of which have died back, and all of which were host to swathes of ivy.  Being squeezed into a too-small area, it has shot upwards and out, across what was originally intended to be a woodland path.  This part of the plant is flowering and berrying well, and, although it will have to go in due course, I’ve left it for the time being, concentrating on removing the dead bits and cutting back some of the spindly shoots struggling up towards the light.  There is still more to be done here, but the weather has turned wet again, leaving me with a large pile of dead wood to dispose of and a lot more ivy to rip out!

This is meant to be a path ...

Meanwhile, out in the less congested parts of the garden, the daffodils are doing well, including ‘Jenny’ in the front garden, and last year’s ‘Exotic Emperor’ tulips are flowering impressively in their pot.

Narcissus 'Jenny'

Tulip 'Exotic Emperor'

Waifs and strays

The new small bed by the patio, reclaimed from the lawn a couple of years or so back, has been sitting empty since I removed the plastic covering that was helping to suppress the weeds.  I’ve been meaning to do something with it, but have been hesitating partly because of having other things to do and partly out of indecision as to what to plant where. 

The weed suppressant has been pretty effective, I have to say; nothing much has tried to come up in that space, but you can’t keep ground empty for too long otherwise something less desirable is likely to take over.  And I have plenty of plants, waifs and strays, sitting around in small pots waiting for a new home.  So the other day I gathered them all together, and got planting.

Waifs and strays, in their new home

They’re a bit of a rag-bag – plants picked up at plant sales, or cuttings taken in this garden, and never planted out.  Their number tends to reduce in summer (drying out when I forget to water them!) and occasionally in winter (cold or, more usually, excessive wet).  Some of them have been hanging around for a ridiculously long time.  When I looked to find my little Paeonia Mlokosewitschii (known to most gardeners as the Molly-The-Witch peony) that I was given by a neighbour more years ago than I care to think about, I found that it was sharing a small pot with an enormous self-sown foxglove plant, and needed to be separated from it.  Other pots had moss and other weeds that had to be removed, and dead bits to be cut off, but eventually I got them in reasonable shape.

Then, how to group them?  Most are deciduous, so there’s a risk that the new bed will look very bare in winter.  There are a couple of sages (a purple, and a Salvia icterina which is green/yellow) which will provide some colour, and a purple-leaved heuchera was moved up from another bed to provide more winter interest; there are also a couple of dianthus that keep their leaves all year.  I’ll put in some early snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii – they need dividing) to give some early flowers.  I suspect, though, that it will look a bit meh until the new growth gets going, and possibly rather blobby once it does.  I’m also not sure how much room each plant will need; but they can be moved as necessary once they outgrow their space.

The bed itself will be expanded as time and effort permit, and certainly the edges need defining to prevent the grass from creeping back in – so plenty more work there.  But for the moment, it will do.

Spring flowers are getting underway: the first cowslip is in bloom in the lawn.

First cowslip

Soap and water

A clear view from the greenhouse!

Mid-March, and so much to do.  With the buddleja pruned, and the prunings taken to the compost bins (emptied and refilled for the coming season), I earmarked Sunday for the other big pruning job, the cooking apple tree.  The forecast was for a dry day – ideal for getting on with it.

After much consideration of what to take out, I started to make the first few cuts – and it began to rain.  Only light, but enough to make me retreat indoors, and to listen to Gardeners’ Question Time on the radio instead.  One of the subjects covered was that this is a good time to clean the greenhouse.  This is a job that I don’t enjoy and rarely do, but (like so much else in the garden) it badly needs tackling.  With the clouds promising intermittent drizzle during the afternoon, I reluctantly took myself into the greenhouse with a bucket of hot soapy water to clean the green-filmed windows.

Promise of rain

To my surprise, it took less time than I had expected (although, admittedly, I still haven’t done the roof), and the results were gratifying.  Even working around the various obstacles, such as the pots where the dahlias are being started off and the assorted junk in the way – and the self-sown antirrhinum, which is still in situ and looking very healthy (I don’t have the heart to pull it up) – it proved quite easy.  I also cleaned the lid of the propagator, which had become opaque with grime, and now I can see the seed trays inside (maincrop broad beans, parsley, dill, coriander and salad onions), and whether or not the seeds are coming up!

The propagator - newly cleaned!

The antirrhinum - and dahlia pots

My efforts obviously disturbed a ladybird that must have been hiding in there – I found it crawling across an old pair of gardening gloves.

Ladybird on my gloves

Although the weather was damp, it was the first day this year that was warm enough for me to work outside without a jacket; and today the first butterfly of the year – a male brimstone – fluttered through the garden.  There will no doubt be chilly days still to come, but spring is in the air!

Into March

What a difference a couple of weeks can make.  We were away for just over two weeks, in February; we left with everything feeling and looking ‘late winter’ (snowdrops, hellebores and winter shrubs in bloom, low temperatures and lots of wet) and returned to ‘early spring’ (daffodils, pulmonaria, crocuses, and light until well after 6pm).  February was mild and very wet, with ground waterlogged in many places, but March is being typically unpredictable – one day of wet snow (not forecast) and a couple of frosty nights, then bright sunshine and even a little warmth in the sun, then damp and cloudy.

Pretty but unwanted!

Time to get gardening again.  There’s a lot of cutting back and pruning still to be done, and spreading of compost in the veg patch, and of course weeding.  One cutting back / weeding job that I’ve neglected is to tackle a big sucker from the plum tree that came up in the border near the summerhouse.  It has been there for two or three years, and it’s one of those jobs that I keep meaning to do …. but it has almost become ‘part of the furniture’ so gets repeatedly ignored.  I wandered down to take a look with a view to taking out one or two of the stems, only to find that it is in full flower.  It’s really pretty, but it shouldn’t be there!  I’ll leave it for a week or two – I have plenty of other jobs to be getting on with – to allow the bees and other pollinators to enjoy whatever nourishment it can offer, before setting to and trying to cut the stems out.  I doubt if it will be possible to dig it out.

Another neglected job was to deal with one of the fruit cage posts.  We still speak of the ‘fruit cage’, although there has been no ‘cage’ since we moved into the house over 30 years ago, but the six large posts that supported it remained.  Gradually they have rotted away, until only two were left.  Recently I noticed that one of them had rotted completely at the base, and was only being held up by a large ivy plant growing over it.  I left it alone, not being quite sure what to do about it, but the last strong winds brought it down, landing on the blackcurrant bushes.  I heaved it upright again, leaving it leaning against the wall until I can find the time to do something better with it (I’m not quite sure what ….).

A posy in the porch

My two plastic tubs of miniature daffodils were in full flower on our return, and the first of the big daffs were ready for cutting on St David’s day (1^st March), a good week before they usually bloom.  The miniatures and some pulmonaria made a nice little vase for the porch.  The sweet violets are also in flower.  The newly planted crocus angustifolius were rather past their best by the time we got home, sadly – perhaps the sparrows had been pecking at the blooms? – though the Narcissus ‘Elka’ with which they’re sharing a pot are now just opening.  Also in flower are the little Crocus tommasinianus ‘Whitewell Purple’ down near the summerhouse, although as usual they’re looking rather tatty; I keep meaning to dig some of them up and move them to the grass verge opposite the house, where they will get more sun and look better.  They’re good in grass.

Crocus angustifolius - rather past their best

The garden birds mostly seemed pleased to see us back and providing breakfast on the patio again.  Lefty the lame pigeon has been hanging around a lot, and is often waiting for us in the mornings, but the patio robins took quite some time to come back – they had presumably become accustomed to finding their breakfast elsewhere, and are still rather standoffish.  The birds are not yet nesting, but at least some of them seem to have homemaking on their minds; a sparrow managed to get into the porch one morning (via the roof, we assume, although we haven’t found the entrance), presumably scouting out a nest site under the tiles.

Covering up

One of the questions asked by the RSPB when you send in your Big Garden Birdwatch results is whether you have a wildlife area in your garden.  Do I?  I answered that I did, though it’s not so much an ‘area’ as the whole garden.  To be honest, most of the garden is more than a bit wild.  In fact some of it is overrun with weeds.  Every year I vow to get on top of this, with mixed results.  So I’ve taken an opportunity to take at least some steps towards improving matters.

We recently received a very large parcel (a painting) sent from abroad, which had navigated its way through the Christmas post and, eventually, two months later, turned up in our village (at the wrong house, but that’s another story).  The senders had wrapped it lavishly in several layers of bubblewrap and packaged it up with a number of large sheets of cardboard.  The bubblewrap was salvaged to be used next winter to insulate the greenhouse (which has had no insulation this winter, and the temperature dropped to minus 3.9C at one point).  But the real gold dust, from the gardening point of view, was the cardboard.

Cardboard, as any no-dig gardener will tell you, is wonderful stuff in the garden.  I have been known to scavenge in the supermarket for old wine boxes to flatten out and add to my stash.  It has to be carefully chosen, with no shiny plasticky coating, which will flake off and leave a trail of coloured confetti across the garden that won’t break down.  Laid out on the ground, cardboard can be used to smother weeds, at least temporarily; the longevity of this effect depends on what else you put on top (and you need something on top, if only to weigh it down and stop it blowing away, at least in this windy garden).  This year I’ve managed to collect quite a lot of it; some was used in the autumn to cover the path along the long hedge, with the hedge clippings just dropped on top of it.  There’s a fairly dense layer of conifer prunings covering it up and keeping it in place.

The fruit bed path

Another such path – which had been allowed to get overgrown in the past couple of years – is the one through the fruit area, between the raspberries and gooseberries.   I don’t think I’ve ever covered up the whole length of it before, but the new cardboard allowed me to do exactly that.  The far end, round the fig plant up against the wall, got a layer of compost on top of the cardboard, to keep the weeds down and to feed the plant, while the rest of the run now has a covering of more evergreen hedge prunings, including some quite large chunks.  I hope it’ll keep the grass and other things at bay, allowing me to do more targeted weeding among the fruit bushes as time allows.

Some other, smaller, pieces of cardboard are used from time to time on the veg garden paths, with woodchip on top, making a more decorative effect.  There’s more work to be done here, but last week I tackled a job that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, which is to lay a new entrance path to the veg plot.  The old entrance was halfway along the outer bed, which had the benefit of symmetry and looked good on paper, but in practice meant ducking and diving under the apple tree, especially when this was fruiting and the branches were pulled down low.  The new plan is to have two entrances, one further down past the apple tree, which is already in place but not woodchipped, and one this side of the tree, where I naturally want to enter the plot most of the time.  So a new pathway was dug, edged, lined with cardboard and finished off with woodchip (as was the other path).  The new one is just visible in the photo below, on the right.

Ready for courgettes?

Alongside this, the outer bed had become seriously overgrown as the neighbouring grasses had moved in.  So: a layer of more cardboard, another layer of compost (old hotbin contents, mostly composted but quite suitable for this purpose), and a covering of black plastic, well weighed down.  The plastic will stay there for the rest of the year, though I might plant courgettes through it in due course.  This is the full no-dig way of dealing with weeds and, although it doesn’t cover the whole of the bed, it should make a big difference.

The biggest pieces of cardboard were reserved for the gas tank bed.  This area is A Problem.  The ground is seriously stony, even for this stony-soil garden – probably builders’ rubble from the house extension work that the previous owners had done – and you just can’t dig or even fork it.  There’s a mahonia which suckers half-heartedly through the soil, a few cotoneasters which have self-seeded from other plants in our garden and the neighbours’, and a philadelphus; they were probably intended to screen the gas tank (but don’t).  Fortunately a couple of holly plants have seeded themselves at the edge, which will eventually provide a better screen.  And the whole area is completely overrun with ground elder.  I’ve had some success hand-weeding the ground elder in the past, but it’s a laborious job and too much work in such a large area.  It can be knocked back with glyphosate, but I’ve stopped using this and in any case it’s always on the verge of being banned.  The young ground elder shoots are supposed to be edible, but how much can anyone eat?  So I’m hoping that a layer of cardboard will, at the very least, curb its enthusiasm.  The presence of the shrubs makes it impossible to cover the whole area, but I’ve made a start.  The top layer is a messy heap of old plant material and wood ash, and more conifer prunings; it’s not pretty, but it will buy me some time, and allow the gas man access to the tank!

Not pretty, but ...

Colourful sunsets last week – caused by dust from the Sahara, apparently.