Month: September 2008

Got two hours weeding and clearing done before the predicted rain arrived. I’m rather pleased with that! Some plants that have outgrown their spaces and virtually hidden their less aggresive neighbours will have to be moved. It’s a good time of year for taking stock. Yesterday in the sunshine i noticed that some nasturtiums, that tumble over the side of a pot, giving great colour, are being devoured by caterpillars! The voracious little creatures are really enjoying what must be for them a delicacy! They are the larvae of the familiar cabbage white butterfly and will, when fully fed, climb up the wall of the house to overwinter under the eaves as pupae, that is if they are not drowned in the meantime. Nasturtiums must taste a whole lot better than cabbage! I love the smell of their bruised stems and leaves-it evokes childhood days when everybody seemed to grow them

Caterpillars feasting on nasturtiums.

A dry weekend …at last… and guess what .. .I’m not feeling the may west!! Even the kids couldn’t get over the fact that there was no rain and I’m in bed!

So made up for it today!! Packed the 2 eldest ones off to school this morning, rang my aunt to look after brat number 3 and spent the day digging, lifting, moving?? and mowing!

Probably killed half of my garden, I was warned not to move anything till October….but ….. I have that much to do that I thought I’d take a chance…. Thankfully it’s raining tonight!!

My Island .. work in progress

After three lovely sunny days the rain is back but it was nice while it lasted. A plant that is at its best at this time of year is Helenium (sneezeweed). It grows to six or seven feet and produces lots of bright yellow flowers. I acquired this plant at a plant sale some years ago and it divides easily but the slugs will devour the young shoots in Spring if given half a chance! They really go for it! The photo shows Helenium (or at least I think it is).

Thanks to Casakelly and Frana for your nice comments.

Helenium under birch tree.

Well, it’s high time this attempt at aubergines found its way into the dinner!

Aubergines

There are still flowers in the garden to enjoy despite the bad weather. I saw water lying in the garden I never saw before.

The wild back garden full of ‘Devils-bits’

These bulbs take about 3 years to settle down. Have patience, they are divine flowers.

Nerines soon to open

This lovely delicate & tasty fennel stood up to all the heavy rain.

Fennel

This is the ugliest plant in the garden! It may be effective in an arrangement or if it is dried.

The ugly Eryngium Agavifolium

There is plenty for the birds to eat here. I throw a lot of my grass cuttings near the base of this rowan and it has more berries than the other rowans.

Plenty of berries on the Rowan tree

Just in from mowing some of the grass. The birch leaves are everywhere! I have a lot of native birch and four of the white barked Betula Jacquemontii. Its bark is magnificent in Winter – some people scrub it in Winter to bring up the brilliant white – I’ve done it myself, despite the risk that my neighbours might think i’ve gone crazy! The native birch does not shade out everything else underneath because its leaves are small, but it does mess up the lawns at this time of year. Does anybody else notice that the mower lifts leaves better when one pulls it backwards? Mine does but maybe its just weird! Birch also seeds freely on my stone paths and I sometimes pot up some of the seedlings.
Hundreds of crows descended on my apple trees today. They launched their attack from a nearby plantation but I heard the racket from the house and repulsed their assault with hand-clapping and waving. Maybe I am crazy! I then assembled my cruciform scarecrow complete with goggles and hat. It later startled me when I was mowing the grass, so it might just scare off a few crows.
Everything is looking great again in the sun today.Maybe this time we’ll get a few sunny days!!
MY daughter borrowed my camera so I’ll insert a random photo from my picture files, not the beautiful Schizostylis (kaffir lily) I planned to snap. It’s flowering beautifully at the moment and produces blooms from now right through Christmas in the right conditions. Will add the photo when I get my camera back! PS. i’ve registered for a series of four digital photography night classes which should be useful in the garden. Bye.

Irish Yew beside pond.

Well this summer was a very difficult gardening season. Last year I learned to Hoe Hoe Hoe from Jim cronin at the organic centre in Bridgetown. But alas July and August gave us very few dry days to dry out the hoed seedlings so the rain just washed the roots down into the soil again. So now its time to weed weed weed. Much more difficult altogether.

The potatoes are now dug up and in storage but the crop was not as big as I would have liked. Bumper crop of carrots and raspberries though. We bought a chest freezer and it is filling up. There will be plenty of bably carrots for the Christmas dinner this year. And I’ll keep some back for carrot cake too. My favourite.

I planted another bag of daffodils for daffodil day – Well I take it back – Bob did. We’ll be picking them for our friend Gerry Morrissey to sell in Ennistymon next March and for many more daffodil days after that.

The autumn raspberries were and are delicious and huge this year. And believe it or not I finally picked my first apple and ate it from my own tree. Delicious. The tomatoes are lucious, the basil a disaster and the melons didn’t get half a chance with such a cold summer.

The cutting patch was magnificent and is still pumping out the punchy dahlias. There are sweet williams ready to go in this week also.

Weeding and mulching is a priority now. And planning all the moves from nursery beds to garden.

crisp autumn morning

Not a huge amount of gardening going on at the moment. Lucky to get the grass cut on a fine day, when we have a fine day that is. Everlasting Sweetpea is looking very pretty climbing up through the Apple tree. As for the Apples. Theyare great. We have loads of them and they taste fab.Princess lilly is on its second flowering. Funnily, its a different colour this time. The strawberry tree is getting huge. I got this from my nephew David about 6/7 years ago. Never thought it would get as big as it has. It was only a tiny thing in a pot. Dont know what the yellow flowers are called. Amaryllis blooms are on their way, so should have pictures of them soon. Cant see any flowers yet on the Red Hot Pokers. We usually have a good display. However, I did split them and move them so we may not get any flowers this year.

September 19th – See photos

hey ma pimps and hoes. the names tulip, and dont laugh, where i come from it meanspure hard, but not the erect hard as in a penis, but hard man. i have a huge garden fetish and flowers turn me on(hehe). i grow alot of flowers, most commen grass. my grss is healthy cuz it is the same colour as grass so thats a good thing. i have this huge tree which i love and it fantastic. i has pretty flowers on it. i consider it my greatest achievment even tho i didnt grow it. i jus love green stuff that grows in gardens so i joined this. drop me a line cuz im a sad single reclusse and want love.

It’s a great time to take stock of the garden and see where improvements can be made. Currently i am widening some borders and experimenting with shapes of my grassy paths. The soil is wet and sticky and needs the addition of some organic material.
My delphiniums, which were disappointing earlier in the year, are looking great now. I cut them back after their earlier poor showing and their new shorter and sturdier shoots now need less support.
I’ve got my camera back so I’m including photo of schizostylis and a selection of others, including bark of Jacquimontii, in album.

Schizostylis – Kaffir lily.

The leaves on the Fatsia are very spectacular when used in flower arrangements. Did anyone go to see Richard Haslam in Galway garden club last week. He has some terrific ideas. I’ve also just won a €25 voucher to spend on the Bakker cataloque. ( loads of perennials in it). Anyone can enter the monthly competition on www.bakker.ie

Fatsia

This past week has made up for the wet and dismal summer we had. I am not very well at the moment but in spite of that I spent hours outside today potting on, watering, pruning and even some weeding. My grandmother came to visit this weekend and as I was proudly showing her around the veg garden I noticed that she nearly stumbled over some of the paths. We definitely need to tidy those up this winter.

Warm sunshine, buzzing bees chirping birds and scented flowers. Heaven.

wallflowers for spring

The rugosa is loaded with hips. I would love to make rosehip syrup, but how?( the hips are extremely hairy inside). I was reading an article about a man in Belgium who makes rosehip jam and says it is great for arthritis!

rosa rugosa hips

This Myrtle nearly died on me 2 years ago. I moved it to a more sheltered place with a wall to the north side of it. The smell off the flowers and leaves is beautiful.

Myrtle bush in flower

great excitement!my musa (banana) plant which has been in my sun lounge for a few years sent out a weird looking protruberance during the week. it opened today and lo and behold a hand of babanas! two more to come . have uploaded a photo more to follow. must dash ., work

banana

Just a quick update, the landscaper has marked out our new beds, but alas the weather is delaying the rest of the work, but at least the first step has been made. Spring bulbs patiently awaiting planting. Bought wooden planks for our raised veggie beds. Hope to plant some winter veggies when they are ready to go. Got rid of some of the summer containers as they were looking very sad. Need to make a trip to garden centre to buy some new over winter plants to brighten up these rainy days. Ever optimistic, lets hope we’ll be busy soon with the new beds and veggies. Talk soon!!!

hi everyone

not been on line for ages or been able to do much gardening just keeping it tidy as illness in the family didnt give me much chance, now i am able to get out there yes rain rain and more rain, so please watch this space i will be out there soon.

Sunday, 21^st September, I saw a hedgehog in the front garden. He/she was going into the corner up at the house, which has no way out. I didn’t let the children see him/her as they would have been too curious. I left him/her alone and a couple of hours later, there wasn’t any sign of him/her. I was very surprised as I never expected a hedgehog in an urban garden.

Apart from that, the back garden has filled out. Mind you, why wouldn’t it with all that rain! The front garden has all the hot colours and the back has the calming colours. A dahlia came up in the middle of the main border which will have to go out to the front, along with a couple of gladioli. I have to give the lawn a good feed as it is starting to turn slightly yellow. I have the spring bulbs bought and some of them planted up.

The front garden needs a serious tidy-up. The evergreen tree in the front is going – I am in two minds as to take it out now or leave it until next spring. It gives a bit of shelter to the acer behind it so the jury is still out. I need to get trailer loads of manure for the front. I had a look at the website www.tumbletown.ie and there is horse manure free to a good home available in Swords/Ballyboughal which isn’t a hundred miles away. There is one small problem – well, two actually. I neither have a trailer nor a hitch on the car! Would it smell out the car if I put it into containers and loaded the containers into the boot? Do I dare to try it?

A fellow “Irish Gardener” recommended www.seedaholic.com for seeds. I logged on and was amazed. I ordered 9 packets of seeds for the price of €13.87 before postage. Postage was €0.95 so for the shockingly affordable price of €14.82, I have all the seeds I need to revamp the front garden. Certainly can’t beat that. And to add to that, it is an Irish company, based in Westport, Co. Mayo. Thanks for the tip, “Irish Gardener”.

I have recently moved into our new house. The garden is large and set mostly in lawn. I would love suggestions as to how to go about planting it with various shrubs and beds. I have discovered it is quite stoney. It is also very exposed in a lot of areas.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Thank You.

Newcomer

I had a great day in the sunny garden yesterday due to the clutch going in my car allowing me to spend a day clearing rather than driving to Dublin and back! The sweetpeas are now all gone and in their place spring bulbs! We thought about putting some Jasmine in the boxes to climb up and over the trellice but as we want to paint the exterior of the house we thought it best to be able to move the boxes and attached trellice with the least amount of disturbance. So I cleared, dug two feet of root out of boxes and painted the garage door red!

Pruning is next on the list!

Well, the weather, the weather, the weather, is it me or are we even more obsessed with it? Today I could be out in the wind and scattering rain trying to start the shaping of the labyrinth and planting out the 1500 camomile plants lodged in my garage….but how can I face it? The ground is a swamp, camomile does not like growing in a swamp. It cant go on, the reluctancy I mean. There is only so much comfort eating one can do!There is one last WWOOFer here with me and we will have to start that tomorrow.

The paving, (stone retrieved from around the farm land,) is nearly finished around the garage. Just a patch of stones to lay and sand to fill the gaps. I put the stops on the cement between the stones, its just too permanent and there is enough cement here without contributing to it all. So a few things will grow there, so what? I plan to put the adelviese in some cracks and some creepers in others. I would rather see it as living surface. If a person, animal or car goes over it…well so be it!

The list of things to do grows…the windbreak is the most important, why oh why a house on top of a hill? He says after years of living in a hole behind one, he wanted to see some views. There is about 200m of some sort of wind break needed, the storm in march all but killed most of the planting we started in Jan. It is coming back, but half the size it had blossomed in to.

The grass is wild, I cant cut it, I will not put weed killer on it, the donkey idea seems to sound more and more the solution. It will take years to sculpt and grow the self seeding planting, but at least it is not the sea of mud it was for the past two years, and the cats when they come in, they be soggy, but not mucky soggy.

The mature apple trees up the farm yard are dropping there not-so-quite-ripe yield. I have been making Apple Butter from them – a firm fast-disappearing favourite here. Contrary to its name, it has no butter in it and is more like a spicy thick apple jam.

I saw a nastersian, just one single flower popping its head up near the young apple trees. Three days ago a pair of kestrels were screeching at Jasper (king of the hunting cats).

Must move cattle now and check on our new lodgers, the ducks (Daisy & Doris) my first.

Month: September 2008

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