Garden Centre

Sunday, February 28, 2010

February’s end in the garden

I suppose I should be grateful that it’s not snow – but there has hardly been a good working day in the garden the whole of this month and I really hope there’s not going to be a repetition of this horrible month in March.

We’ve finished clearing the front garden, but there’s been no chance to plant anything because the soil has been frozen or waterlogged. As for the back garden, I’ve been unable to do anything at all because of the weather. I have a tarpaulin covered in prunings and weeds in the middle of the lawn, a half-hearted new border design and a pond that needs a thorough clean-out.

What I need is a good kick in the pants to get me moving. Or some decent weather to inspire me to work!

Labels: bad weather gardening, february garden, garden pond

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:44 PM 1 Comments

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Friday, February 19, 2010

Greenhouse planting in February

Ten beef tomato seedlings have come up in the heated propagator, five sweet peas have split their skins but not put up shoots yet, four nasturtiums are well on their way, the marigold seeds are stirring because the soil is moving and even the early Nantes carrots that I’ve sown in a large deep container in the greenhouse look as if something is happening as the soil surface is minutely disturbed this morning.

I find this time of year almost unbearably exciting. Everything seems willing to come up at once, and it’s well nigh impossible to keep track of what’s happening. My seed potatoes are sprouting nicely and everywhere except my garden the crocus and snowdrops are blossoming nicely.

I have some snowdrops, but no crocus, because of my ongoing inability to win the battle with the squirrels. Even though I have two small dogs, the squirrels are contemptuous of their barking and simply wait until dark to come and dig up the crocus bulbs – they don’t like the snowdrop bulbs nearly as much. My neighbour (she of the fake allium) has a very large black and white cat which seems to inspire much more fear in the fat-tailed rats, and as a result her garden has lovely clumps of violet and gold crocus. Yes, I’m envious. Still, I have my carrots to look forward too, and the squirrels can’t get to them!

Labels: february greenhouse, greenhouse sowing, snowdrops, spring crocus

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:13 AM 1 Comments

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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Winter’s end garden beauty

Sometimes it’s not the new growth in a winter garden that creates the most loveliness but that which is fading and dying and vanishing away.

I’m really not a fan of hydrangeas – probably because I grew up on the Isle of Wight where they, along with rhododendrons – were everywhere, in massive and unmanageable profusion as a result of their enthusiastic planting by the Victorian’s, who tended to summer on the island and to like their big shrubs and fern gardens and grottoes. Familiarity seems to have bred contempt in me!

However, this one hydrangea does survive in my border, just so that it can produce this incredible display in January and February – I cut it back in March as I’m not at all fussed about getting a good early display of flowers, what I like this the fragile intricacy of its winter disintegration.

And the **** pond pump has packed in again this morning! It seems that the gurge is fine, but we need a new connector … so I’m ringing the distributor and asking them to send one – recorded delivery this time!

Labels: hydrangeas, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:27 AM 3 Comments

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Friday, February 12, 2010

February garden tasks

Apart from wandering down the garden every morning and delighting in the sound of our pond pump merrily causing water to trickle from the cascade into the pond, thus giving our fish oxygen to breathe.

We have a couple of trees and shrubs to be planted out – two lovely roses, for example, but as there’s currently a frost and the weather forecast is talking about frost for as far ahead as can be seen, they remain sitting in the shelter of the shed until the weather breaks. I’m also waiting for a frost free few days to prune some of our fruit trees that didn’t get done at the end of last year.

None of our container plants have needed watering yet, but if the sun continues to shine on the sub-zero ground, I’m going to have a dilemma – either water sparingly and hope the water doesn’t freeze the roots, or not water and hope the plants don’t get too desiccated.

And we’ve managed not to spread salt this year – although we did think about it a couple of times in January we managed to clear our paths instead of salting them, which makes me happy because I can see some salt damage on our neighbour’s lawn already (and that’s the neighbour without the fake allium, not the neighbour with, just in case you were wondering).

My peas and sweet peas are sown in the greenhouse – nothing showing yet but I can see the soil is stirring. The first beef tomato seedlings have appeared in the indoor propagator, which is great as we didn’t get any germination from last year’s saved seed and have gone back to packet seed this year. And the first hellebores are starting to glow in the borders – one of the nicest sights of the year, for me.

Labels: february garden tasks, greenhouse gardening, hellebores

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:18 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

How to maintain a pond

I should call this how not to maintain a pond, because we have failed horribly in pond maintenance in the past month. It began with the ten days of very cold weather, when our pump, like lots of pond pumps, froze solid. It did begin to work again, but at some point after the ground thawed, it stopped working again and we failed to notice.

In our defence, the pond is a long way from the house and so we don’t hear the pump unless we happen to wander down there, which we didn’t. And then the weather got rather warm, rather quickly and we did notice that the pump wasn’t working and the water wasn’t circulating, so we pulled the pump out and had a look. A thing, let’s call it a gurge, as I have no idea what its proper name is, had broken. We needed a new one.

No problem, I thought, we got the last gurge from a little pond shop down the road. But the little pond shop no longer exists, and the nearest similar shop is a huge national chain with about seventy different kinds of fish, and lots of fish-tank accessories, but no gurges. So we rang the manufacturer and they agreed to send us a gurge.

Fast forward a week. No gurge. The pond is starting to look cloudy, and no amount of nipping out and stirring it with a canoe paddle seems to help. I ring the manufacturer again and they say the gurge must have got lost in the post. So they sent another.

On Sunday we spent a couple of cold, stinking hours fitting the new gurge to the pump. But the time it took to get the thing means that the pond is now quite stagnant, which in turn means that we’ll probably have to do some remedial work to get the eco-system functioning perfectly again as the plants start to grow again in the spring.

Lesson learned – from now on I shall go and check that I can hear the pump every day!

Labels: garden ponds, winter pond

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:27 AM 1 Comments

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Fooled by a neighbour’s garden

I was wandering around my own plot, with its mixture of rain flattened shrubs and snow blackened grasses when I saw something in my neighbour’s garden that piqued my interest.

It looked like an allium. But it couldn’t be, could it? My own mahonia was about the only thing that had any colour or form in my garden, and two snowdrops, not even properly open yet, that I was watching with hawk-eyes to make sure the dogs didn’t trample them. An allium? Were there winter alliums? My neighbour does have a particularly good alpine bed, which I envy immensely. If anybody could grow it, she could.

Well no, when I managed to get close enough to find out, it wasn’t or at least not a living one – it's made of printed fabric carefully glued to a plastic stem - but for the few minutes I thought that it really was a flower, it cheered me up no end!

Labels: winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:51 AM 3 Comments

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