Garden 2013 no 8

Garden 2013 no 8.

First thing to say is that when I came home from France and walked through the gate, I was astounded at the amount of colour in the garden. I thought after almost 2 weeks of neglect in the sunshine, every thing would be wilted and brown. Happily it wasn’t. The nasturtiums were in bloom at last, not the masses of flowers I’ve had in previous years,  but there were a few nice big bright orange flowers hiding amongst the leaves. 

The Buddlea bush looked about   10 inches taller and full of blooms, (also full of butterflies). I can see why it’s called a butterfly bush, it really is. 

Just before I left I filled the old strawberry tub with some inexpensive bedding plants and when I returned……………the old strawberry tub was transformed into a mass of blue and white, it makes a very pretty addition to the garden for next to no cost or effort.
 

The Lavateria has done very well this year, I had a mass of bright pink flowers before I left, and I returned to even more flowers. This particular shrub had flowered so prolifically, I had to stop and dead head it before I even reached the front door, and its continued to flower ever since then.

 It must be  2 or 3 years old now and they’re only supposed to last a few years,  I’ll have to remember to prune it vigorously next spring to try to keep it going. 

I also need to prune the Spiraea Douglasil back next year because that has had more flowers this year than ever before. I’m a bit undecided about this plant, it looks very pretty with its soft pink spiky flowers but after a short while in bloom, the flowers go a horrible scruffy shade of brown and don’t look at all attractive.
 
I think the biggest flower success this year has been the Montbretia, the lovely bright orange flowers that grow from dense clumps of upright sword-shaped foliage.

I love the story behind this plant; it originated in Southern Africa but has become naturalized in (of all places) the Western Isles, off the northwest coast of mainland Scotland. There they grow in great colourful swathes along the roadside, in country lanes and beside the lochs. Considering this plant originated in Africa its amazing that it can acclimatise  to the harsh climate of the western isles. 

This is the first year they have grown in my garden, last year I put a couple of the little corms in the ground along the border, and this year, I have lots of flowers in 2 sizes (2 varieties). In a couple of years, I should be over run by them.
The yellow tansy is still in flower, it’s lasted for ages this year and it still makes an impressive sight as you enter the garden. And last but not least is the Campion, I had Rose Campion, (which is what this is), pink Campion and white Campion in the garden this year. The white and the pink are the wild flower variety and the rose is the cultivated variety. The white and pink flowered earlier in the year but the rose still has the last few flowers of the year.
Next year I intend to carry on with the fruit, it pretty much looks after itself and I love making the jams and chutneys, I’ll also do the radishes and spring onions in tubs because they are easy, delicious, don’t take up a lot of space plus you get crops every 6-8 weeks. I’m not sure if I will carry on with the veg though because at the moment, I want to reclaim my lawn and enjoy the flowers and butterflies. I'm in the middle of repainting gates and fences and after that, there is fruit pruning to be done in the Autumn, and thats about it until next spring. 

Garden 2013 no 6

Garden 2013 no 6

As I said in the previous garden update, I spent the month of May in France. It rained a lot while I was in away, but this is Scotland, and I’m pretty certain it rained even more here. Thanks to the heavy rain throughout May, I came home to a jungle. I’m not complaining, every thing I planted before I left had grown, but so had every thing else. 

The grass was knee high and took several attempts at cutting and there were more weeds than my little veggie plot had ever seen.

The pond looked lovely with forgetmenots all around and the water marigolds spilling out of the pond. But the water was so high it was overflowing at one end.  On the plus side, the radishes were ready to eat as soon as I arrived home and the strawberries will not be far behind, they already have lots of flowers.

It took me a couple of days to cut the grass, weed the shallots and then weed the little plot behind the pond. I planted garlic sets, red onions sets and beetroot there before I went away.

The garlic and red onions have done very well but needed weeding and the beetroot, which was planted from seed,  had done so well in the rain they needed thinning out as well as weeding. 

This little chappie was my constant gardening companion for a few days.

The bags are all doing ok, the radishes are ready to eat. The rocket seems to be slower, I just hope it didn’t get too wet, the spring onions are looking good, they needed thinning out but they are fine and the beetroot I planted in bags also looks good. The carrots are coming up very well in the tubs. It looks as if I accidently left some potatoes in there because I have potato plants growing in there with the carrots, which I wasn’t expecting. I resorted to buying some little lettuce plants last weekend because the rocket is no where near ready and it would take too long to grow lettuce from seed. I bought a tray of green lettuce and a tray of red lettuce, the type where  you can just pick leaves and leave the plant in the ground.  I need some green to go with my radishes.
And on the ‘non eating’ front, I came home to find the London Pride and the Bluebells in full bloom down the side of the garden. 

Lastly…………….this beast of a plant nestling between the Pink Campion and the Bluebells is Mullein. I scattered seeds from wild Mullien on the ground two years ago and when nothing happened I thought the seeds were dead. 

I didn’t know Mullien takes two years to grow. They are fantastic plants, described on good old Wikipedia as; ‘’a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 metres tall or more. Its small yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which bolts from a large rosette of leaves’’. I first saw this plant growing outside a ruinous, abandoned farm building in rural France and fell in love with it straight away. I’m so pleased I now have these in my garden. Its old fashioned herbal name is lungwort which reflects mullein’s traditional use as a treatment for relieving cough and congestion of those with minor respiratory ailments. Mullein is recommended by herbalists for treatment of cough, sore throat, and colds. Not of course that I intend to use it, I just like looking at it and as it grown to its full height, I’ll be posting more pictures of it.

Introducing my new blog.

Introducing my new site; The Paint Shed

This is my Gallery.

It's a collection of paintings and drawings produced by me over the last five years. After much encouragement from many, many friends, I decided to collect most of my work and post them all together in one place. And this is the place.
When you visit, start with the introduction (tab at top of the page), then take a look at the work. The work is posted separately making it easy to comment on individual pieces and before you leave, there is a guest book at the top of the page for you to sign or comment in as you wish. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a 'work in progress', and it's obviously going to take a while to get all my work photographed and posted but; the general idea is that this is the online gallery for my own work. I’ll try to get as much as I can posted before I go to France but I suspect this is going to take a while.


I've looked for the 'join this site' gadget and it has been removed and replaced with a 'Google+' gadget. I really don't want to do this, it entails filling in a new profile that displays your real name and is used on all Google sites including blogger and YouTube. If I fill this in my blogger profile will disappear and be replaced with the new one.

Anyway..........I have a plan, I've left the 'follow by email' gadget in the right hand column and suggest those who want to ‘join’ this new site use the email alert to keep up with new posts and leave their name in the guest book to say they are following. That way I know who 'follows the site', followers get regular updates and I don’t have to join Google+ Hope this is OK with every one.



introducing

THE PAINT SHED

http://thepaintshed.blogspot.co.uk/

Garden 2013 no 5

Monday 15th April was a rare day of sunshine and I took advantage of this all too brief window.
The shallots I put in last week were virtually unearthed by the heavy rain, they all needed bedding down in the soil again.
I dug over my other small bed and planted out the red onions in neat little rows.
After the onions the garlic went in. Or at least some of it did. I have another whole garlic to split into cloves and plant out individually.
There is a space left at the side of this small bed for my beetroot. I didn’t have time to put the beetroot seeds in because the weather started to turn but that is the next task on the list. Hopefully I’ll not have to wait too long for another window of opportunity. The important thing is that I get these few basic tasks done before heading off to France.
I put some carrot seeds in my big potato barrels late last year and left them to over winter. I wasn’t expecting much because I thought I’d left it too late, and then we had so much awful weather I thought what ever was there would be ruined, but to my surprise, I’ve now got more than a kilo of young sweet and tasty carrots. I intend to replace some of the compost, re-fertilise it and then grow more carrots in the same barrels. I think if I can keep this going, I could get two crops per year.

The ultimate plan is to get the beetroot seeds in, plant the rest of the garlic, prepare the barrels and get some more carrot seed in. Then I’m going to  prepare a couple of the containers. The containers will be used to sow lettuce, radish and salad leaves before I leave, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll come home to fresh salad. I’ll also come home to weeding, grass cutting, tidying, fence painting and all the other routine jobs that badly need doing. Of course on the plus side………….being a retired lady I’ll have the time to do all these little jobs.

Garden 2013 no 4

Garden 2013 no 4

The picture says it all. The shallots are IN and hopefully we will have pickled onions for Christmas. There was a window of opportunity yesterday morning, having studied the weather forecast as if my life depended on it, I knew there would be a few hours yesterday morning free from snow and rain with an average temp of between 2c and 3c . I grabbed the opportunity and was out there by 9.30. By 11.30 the blue sky disappeared and huge snowflakes fell from above. But my task was already complete. I dug, I fertilized, I dug again and I planted. I have 4 rows of 15 sets, last year each one separated into about 5 / 6 individual shallots, if I'm lucky I should get about 80+, more than enough for every one. My favourite gardening book says shallots should be planted out in March before the last frost……..think I can guarantee I’ve not missed the last frost.

A small favour

I've posted this on my main site and now I realise, maybe I should post it on all three of my sites, it just makes my life a bit easier. 

I've been here a while now, but being a little slow sometimes, I've only just realised its possible to follow other blog sites via email alert. Oh that makes life so much easier, I've added the little gadget that allows any one to follow this via email alert, and if by chance you have not added it to your page.........please, please do. It makes life so much easier for me. If by chance I was not the only one not to know how to do this, go to layout and then to gadgets and then click 'follow by email'. 
  Thank you for making it easier for me to follow you.  :-)

Garden 2013 no 3

My garden is the only cloud on my horizon, except the many rain clouds that constantly hang over it. We had a wee window of opportunity in February when the sun shone and the ground was dry. I did go out there a couple of times and began getting the garden ready for planting, but before I could actually plant any thing, the window closed. First we had snow, wind and ice and that gradually dissolved into steady rain. Now I find myself half way through March, nothing in the ground, the shallots and garlic should have gone in by now but I haven’t even done the prep digging. It has rained on and off for a couple of weeks, the ground has never dried out enough to get any thing done and I’m seriously behind with every thing. I’m not sure how long it will take me after eye surgery to be well enough to start gardening.
But…………..the need to be positive tells me maybe a year off growing will do the soil good and things like lettuce, radish, nasturtium, rocket, the what I call ‘pick and eat collection’ can go in any time and usually only take about 6 weeks before they are ready. 
I find myself looking for frogspawn every day and worrying that the ice has prevented the frogs from spawning, I hope not, I loved watching the little tadpoles last year. I’m spending most of May in France so I guess the modified plan must be to utilize containers as much as possible and plant things before I go that will be ready when I get back.
But, since I have nothing of interest to report on my garden, I thought I would share a link passed onto me by my sister.


My sister has alerted me to a fantastic ‘new’……………not exactly new but new to us, garden blog. As far as I can see this lady is doing every thing right. I especially love her post about composting. She composts just about every thing from dog poo (somehow I’ve never liked the idea of composting ‘poo’ but maybe I’m wrong). to egg shells and she does it every where from pits in the garden to little pots that she plants directly into. I also found the post on garlic interesting. I’ve book marked her site, joined the site and intend to visit regularly, recommend any one who is interested in gardening does the same.


http://averysmallfarm.wordpress.com/page/2/