Month: February 2010

Today was great for working in the garden, the ground is drying up nicely and I did some more clearing in the front border. Also moved an old rose that is too tall for the position it was in and as usual didnt have the heart to throw it out so planted it up in the wilderness. Greenway, if you had been around today you might just have got yourself a rose! I divided and potted up astilbe and some lupins, so some plants for the plant Stall for June!

Last night I had the first group book for a visit to the garden so the pressure is on! Afraid there wont be much time to garden tomorrow – must go to work! Anyway Im glad to get so much done and the forecast is for more of this lovely weather.

I went for a walk when I finished in the garden to help straighten the back! Beautiful sunset and such a clear sky, could see the mountains in Mayo. 

It has taken me ages to type this journal entry as I am using my new laptop for the first time! Its great really and Im sure I’ll get used to it. Practice makes perfect, and all that!!! 

I bought some red hot poker roots in heatons. I’m wondering should I plant them in the ground or in pots to start them off. If I plant them in pots…how many to a pot?

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this journal but checking in to website every now and then and seeing the progress that people have made, makes me more determined to do better this year. Talk about one step forward and two steps back….The guy I got in to clear the site really wrecked the soil matrix and I now have no topsoil, just sterile subsoil with lots of stone and the weeds have all taken root again. As well as that, I planted loads of bulbs, not really realising that I was planting them into a sterile mess and there’s no sign of anything-the bad weather probably didn’t help either. Although I am really against the use of weedkiller, the garden was sprayed, which didn’t work. I’ve now decided to cover the area with black polythene and hope for the best. Also, a section of my old stone wall collapsed last week (see pic)-so that’s just another flippin thing to add to my to-do list. Who said gardening was good for the health!

As the weather has been very cold there is not much new interest in  my garden.   However I Have added some photographs under today’s date, which you might like to look at.

I added a new picture of Camellia ‘Inspiratiom’ to replace the previous one I had.  There was some doubt about whether this was ‘Donation’ or ‘Inspiration’.  There is a ‘Donation’ beside it and when it comes into bloom it will be interesting to make a comparison.

I also include a photo of Abies koreana, which is mainly of interest because of its cones.

The ‘Tete a Tete’ look bright at present and there are more bulbs to come.  But I think my garden is a bit slow, as my snowdrops are not in full bloom yet.

The Astelia looks well, the colour of its leaves are the main interest.

My wife like to put hellebores in dishes, where one can see their faces.

It is a great afternoon now and there are a number of buds and bulbs waiting to flower, so  I hope to add more photos fairly soon.

PS: I had some technical problems with garden.ie, which were my fault.  Justin sorted out my problems for me, so I would like to thank him here.  He was great. NF.

While clearing the south border this evening I removed the dead leaves from my Arum Lillies and discovered a smelly rotten mess! I have this plant for years and it always makes a good show all summer so very sad about that. I cleaned it up and put some peat over it in the hope that something might still be alive in there! Hope springs eternal! I bought a new Arum lilly last summer with a purple inside- there is nothing to be seen there so no doubt it too has died.

Are we allowed to mention other magazines? If so , Amateur Gardening has free Viola seeds this week.  If not….??

another  lovely day :)) another bit done :)) as a novice need some advice on dahlia tubers — when to plant out ?  is it to early to go to ground now ? should i start them in pot first to plant out later ? appreciate any tips …. thanks

The tuberous roots of vining sweet potato plants are what produces the "fruit" of the sweet potato. The vines take root wherever they touch the ground and, as they spread, can produce a bumper crop of sweet potatoes.

If you have a garden that is too small to allow accommodate spreading vines, you can plant sweet potato bush varieties. As soon as the ground is warm… and danger of frost has passed, you can plant your sweet potato slips…the small rooted pieces of a tuber. Here are a few more tips about how to grow sweet potatoes:

• You can plant sweet potatoes in raised rows. This allows the soil to warm faster and gives the plants good drainage.
• In cool climates, spread black plastic on the soil to help it warm faster.
• Space sweet potato plants 12 – 18" apart and with 3 – 4′ between rows. This allows the vines room to spread. If you are planting the bush variety of sweet potato, they can be somewhat closer together.
• Over-fertilizing sweet potato plants causes them to produce lots of foliage but few sweet potatoes. If the sweet potato vines are started in good, organic soil they do not need further "feeding."
• To prevent the maturing sweet potatoes from splitting, don’t water them for 3-4 weeks prior to harvest. Sweet potatoes can also be white, yellow or even purple. 

 

aldi have fruit trees coming in at €4.99 each  they will be small but less trouble no big staking or watering and no big loss if a few don,t come and in a few yrs fruit i am going to get 4/5 cherries and plums for the wild area at the bottom of my garden fruit for me and the birds.  got apples plums cherries and pears all had fruit last year also apricot and nectarines flowers last year no fruit a bit hopeful for donegal but at the price nothing to lose and they are nice trees.

No time to garden this evening and too cold by the time I got home. However I did the usual walk around and the first clump of crocuses were looking cheerful in the evening sun! Fed the birds and they were havung a great time. Earlier I watched, through binoculars, a sparrowhawk perched on a tree overlooking the Wilderness, dont often get such a good view of one, maybe he was watching for a mouse near the bird feeders?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I know some of you bought these berries last year. Like myself, there was some concern about them during the cold spell. Today I checked mine, it is covered with fresh green buds just breaking out, hope yours are ok, also. Mine is in the shed over the winter, not sure if I would leave it out all winter.

My lawn is a cause of concern to me.  I only have a small area, in the back which was newly laid, via grass sods, in April 2008.  It does suffer from water-logging and to add to the problem, the water from the roof of the children’s playhouse ends up in the lawn too so it gets a double whammy.  In order to get to the glasshouse, I have to walk on it so add compression to the equation.   

The other day, I noticed thrushes on the lawn, beaks in the lawn.  I didn’t take much more notice of them and left them to get on with finding the worms.  The lawn is now punctuated with holes, approximately 1/2cm in diameter and about 2 inches apart all ways.  The amazing thing is that they searched the lawn in almost precision fashion as you can see the holes are roughly set out in lines.   Nice work!  

How To Grow Sweet Potatoes

 

They’re truly lovely plants,  And incredibly easy to grow. The slips are basically mini plants.  Plant them after the last frost, in rich soil with some well-aged compost, 12-18″ apart Water regularly, but otherwise they need almost zero weeding, and they dont have any bugs or disease.  You can stop watering them during the last 3 weeks before harvest, so the roots are dry when you pull them out, and so that they don’t develop any molds. They are related to morning glories, 

 

 

 Pull Them Up! They’re basically on the same schedule as Irish potatoes:  when they start to yellow in the Autumnl, it’s about time to pull them. You can also feel them beneath the soil and get a sense of how big they are.

 

 

Seriously, that’s it Jacinta well worth a go! if you grow them into slips i will try 1 or 2! so no excuses!! now grow them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Jacinta, got this info from a friend of mine, she is a lady living in New Jersey and has been using this method to get the shoots for her Sweet potatoes for years! her email reads as follows……………………….  Choose a potato that already has some "eyes" on it if possible, which are buds of the slips that you will grow. Push four toothpicks into the sides of the potato, one north, south, east and west. These toothpicks will hold the potato in place in the jar. Fill a jar about 3/4 full of water. Place the toothpick-filled potato into the jar, with the pointed end down. Make sure that at least the top 1/3 of the potato is sticking up above the water. Place the jar in a sunny location. Check the jar every day, and replace the water when needed to keep it at the same level. Your sweet potato will sprout in about two weeks, with white or pinkish growths growing out of the potato surface. Turn the jar daily after the potato has begun to sprout, to make sure that each side gets the same amount of sun. when the sprouts, or slips, are about 6 inches tall, use scissors or a sharp knife to cut them from the potato. These slips are what will be planted in your garden. Fill peat pots with potting soil. Place one slip into each pot, making sure that the end that was closest to the potato is in the soil. Water thoroughly and keep in a sunny windowsill. In about two weeks, roots will begin to grow on your slips and more leave will appear. You may now plant them in the garden.  

I- at long last got out in the garden today!!! Can hardly type I am so wrecked. Oh boy was it a mess. I was almost sorry I started. The amount of work needed is over whelming!!! But i have to say – even with the general cut back /tidy up I did today, the place looks so much better!!!!I just hope I wont be sorry that I removed alot of the leaves etc that were covering the ground. Although I did find loads of plants coming up underneath, I am worried that I removed the blanket too soon!!!I just removed all the dead leaves and flower heads etc that were left there all winter> There are many suspect plants that I don’t know if they will come back or not after the cold spell, but I left them alone – We live in hope!!!!I removed all the Gunera leaves that I never got a chance to – not only were they rotten but they were also frozen up through the inside of the stems. The boot of the car is overflowing with stuff to go for green recycling!!! Compost bin already overflowing. It’s an industrial size skip I could do with!! I am off on Mid-term from school for the next week so hopefully the weather will be nice to me and I can get some more done. Delighted to see so many daffs and tulips up!!!

I was working today, and passed a book shop in town that was closing down, not much discount on gardening books. I did buy one book. ‘ A Collection of Gardening Wisdom’ it is full of quotes and words of wisdom taken from everything from the Bible to comments made my Alan Tichmarsh, most of the names I have never heard of but it will put a little colour and class into my journals. These are the first one that caught my eye.

‘There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw, The other is the seed catalogues’ Hal Borland

‘Designing a garden is the beginning of a series of mistakes’ Mirabel Osler

Get used to these popping up from now on, hope they give thought and a laugh along the way.

February 13 2010

The winter had quite an effect on my garden. Cordylines, which I planted about 1978, do not look good. The leaves are hanging down and I wonder will they come back again. One of them seemed to be dead after the 1978-79 winter but it came back. Senecio greyi is not looking great but should come back. Hypericum hidcote appears very brown unlike other years but I notice the young grren shoots opening so I am optimistic here. I have pruned the roses, about one hundred of them. I did the pruning immediately after it became mild after the very cold spell in January and they look good. The grass looks poor and has a lot of moss but very soon I will give it fertiliser and ferrous sulphate to kill the moss which comes every yearl late in the year. Hydrangeas look good and the buds are about to open. Very soon when it gets a bit milder I will prune the mopheads. Snowdrops are looking good and crocuses are about to show flowers but the daffodils are slow to make progress surely due to the low temperature. I look forward to feeding the birds, robins, bluetits, sparrows and some bullfinches which I did not see in recent years. I hope these bullfinches will not do much damage to the buds in the fruit trees. I noticed a big rat climbing up to the bird feeder so I have set some poison inside a plastic pipe under a shrub. I hope the birds do not go in. My favourite among the birds is the robin. At this time of year there are two, surely male and female. They come near me when I am working in the garden especially when I am doing some digging.

Went to Tullow today and drove through your area Rachel and everywhere I looked there was freshly ploughed fields. They looked so gorgeous, like dark powdered chocolate. Oh I love spring, so exciting and full of hope and new life. 

A lot of us have had frost damage to our terracotta pots this Winter. I was thinking about this recently, and I am going to try something with some new pots I have. In another life I was involved in the decorating trade for years.

There is a product we used for sealing porous surfaces, it is a water based clear plastic coating. Terracotta is porous, so if I can seal the inside of the pots this will help with the problem of these pots drying out in the Summer to quickly, it may also help with moisture getting into the Terracotta, and then freezing and expending causing some of the damage.

I also think some of this damage was caused the extreme low temperatures freezing and expanding the soil, hence splitting the pot completely. Not a lot can be done about that. The other thing I need to check is, if this coating will harm the plants, this is down to a test on a few pots. Worth a try I think, will keep you posted.

Managed a couple of hours on this border again today and cleared some debris and moss and ferns. It must have something to do with the wet year that there is so much moss in the borders and I know ferns are lovely but in the right place. Does anyone have any suggestions for avoiding more of same?

Im so pleased to get so much clearing up done so early. Came across another Arum lilly today that was very mushy too. Has anyone else found theirs have rotted?

some fotos and as seen i have quite a lot of gravel in use as this does help keep things less labour intensive.

 

nothing to do waiting till monday to start, but what ill do is another thing.

we’ll see.

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Hi there, Our good friend Gerry says that my cheese plant is in fact of the LILY family and thats why it has a musty smell.

Well its up for grabs, it aint small by no means and i nurtured it from a babe!

It used to be in the sitting room and never ever wift a musf, but as i had to transpose it into bedroom due to lack of space you notice it as that room is tiny.

I am looking for a tall spikey plant instead, but if anyone knows of a centre or rehab place for this then that grand, but alas someway its a gonner here, i am so sorry as i adored it to bits.

do contact if a cheesy can find a ‘forever home!’ 

 today i intend to cut back my roses and generally tidy around garden. i may mow if it stays dry. i mowed on 17/01 this year and it still looks ok. i have posted some fotos taken on friday but i had to get some help uploading them as typing and PC’s are very new to me.