Month: March 2013

I cleared the old veg bed and you’d swear it was made for the greenhouse!  I’ve pegged it down, put my bags of potting compost over the bars inside and tied it to the trellis and the plum tree, just for good measure.  It’s sheltered from the prevailing west winds and tucked near the house, so I think it should stay where I put it…famous last words I know.  It’s pretty full already, but I think I’ll start some tomatoes anyway!

While my bath runs, I thought I’d share my work today.  I’ve been out in the garden in bright sunshine all day and managed to get the new bed and the greenhouse done.  Very pleased with the result and very very tired now. 

I planted my Artichoke, Erygium, a few Digitalus purpurea, a small Scimmia and my Clematis ‘Early Sensation’…just to start things off.  The rocks are a nod to Scrubber 😉

My Dad is not known for his spontaneous visits. But ‘lo and behold, he arrived up a half an hour ago to show me what his mushrooms are doing. Ha ha, they actually lifted up the cardboard cover that was over them. Needless to say, I picked the bigger ones, and replaced the cover so the smaller ones could develop. Scrummy even when eaten raw. He wouldn’t even stay for a cup of tea. Just happy to let me see how well they were doing. Daddy, you rock!!!

These grapes have been photoed to day Saturday March 30. Happy Easter to all.

I spent a long time moving plants around yesterday in the new area, before I was finally happy with the scheme and planting could begin.

One combination that I liked was this Phormium and Pittosporum. I think the colours look well together despite the totally different leaf shapes.

Final day of course in Killmacurragh today, cold but lovely sunshine ;-))

PS Clare thanks for the Pitospurum.

Dendrobium hercoglossum gives you your money’s worth. Her it is with a great flowering, but I counted another 9 infloresces which are just beginning to bud up. This is typical of this species, I’m not sure why, but maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to flower over a long period and therefore increase it’s chances of being pollinated. Whatever the reason, it extends it’s prettyness for us.

This species is found growing at various altitudes of 50 metres to 1,300 metres which means with careful acclimatisation it can be grown in temperatures of 5c up to 13c. It grows in lowland forest and primary rainforest, it flowers in early spring through to early summer. During the growing season it likes lots of water and shade from sunshine, in the winter a good spray with water to prevent excessive shrivelling of the canes. Shade should also be removed and give the plant access to full light to induce flowering for the following spring/summer.

The Dendrobiums are now getting into full swing as are the Oncidium group.

Wow, this is proving to be a week to remember. Rachel came to Limerick last night to give us a talk on ‘Exciting Annuals’ The Limerick Garden Plants Group were enthralled and in awe of the skill that Rachel has when it comes to Alonsoa, Titonia, Schizanthus and snapdragons! Annuals are experiencing a revival in gardening at the moment and with Rachel to champion them, I expect that we will be seeing a lot more of these underused plants popping up in gardens all over the country. If you are a member of a gardening club, be sure to put Rachels name forward as a speaker for your next season!

And of course with two plantaholics together, the night was far from over when the talk was done. Rachel came out to Dromin to spend the night with us and the two of us chatted way into the night over a bottle or two of wine 🙂 We set about putting the gardening world to rights before turning in for a few hours sleep. After a quick bite for breakfast we headed out into the bitter cold and did a scoot around then garden. A mini plant swap ensued and then we headed into TK Maxx…..

Thanks Rachel, for the fantastic talk, the wonderful company and the lovely gifts.

I think Rachel was surprised to find out that I visit the garden.ie site daily. I’m one of those dreaded lurkers! I know exactly what you lot are up to at any given moment. So even though I’m not making my presence felt, I’m here with you in spirit!

Must be off to bed soon. We are off to Birmingham in the morning. Our oldest son Emlyn is getting married there on Sunday. Mother-in-lawdom, here I come…….

Yes, I know, it’s orchids again. Unfortunately it’s the only gardening I can do now.

I’m often asked, why use latin names when talkig about orchids, isn’t it just snobbery? well, the bottom line is you just can’t use common names for a couple of reasons. First reason, many people have tried giving them common names but it just doesn’t work. The genus Oncidium were given the common name of “Dancing Ladies” but alas, there were literally hundreds of species in this genus that showed the same characteristics, the often flamboyant lip gave the impression of a dancer wearing a very colourful dress – see the example in the picture. It just didn’t work, one never knew which of these “Dancing Ladies” the other was referring to. Another example is the genus Rossioglossum. There are 7 species within this genus and they were given the name of “Clown or Jester Orchid”, the appendages on the lip take on the colourful shape of a Clown or Court Jester. Unfortunately, all the species within this group have the same shape and characteristics. To make matters more confusing it’s known in Guatemala as Boca de Tigre (Tiger’s Mouth). See the pictures of Rossioglossus grande. The easiest solution is to refer to them by their botanical names. Incidently, as the hobby or profession of gardening goes, we should develop a habit of learning botanical names of all our plants, it’s really easy and nothing to worry about, common names cause real confussion and if your telling someone about your wonderful evening primrose, they may not know what you are talking about as they could well have a different name for it, whereas Latin names are international.

While cleaning out the Lower Pond today, I cut back some of the ferns that had been damaged by the bad weather. However, one such fern ( the name eludes me at present) had lots of spores on the underside of the leaf. Got to thinking I’d like to multiply this particular one in my garden. It’s such a sexy fern. I do remember vaguely asking Martin about this process a couple of years ago. But in all honesty, it went in one ear and out the other. Maybe now I am more receptive to propagation procedures!!

Myself and Anne finally finished getting the chippings down around the veg beds today. All the area is covered now so no more mucky soil in the winter or wet weather. It will be great to be able to wak around without needing wellington boots on. The area will be much easier to look after now and only the individual beds will need weeding during the growing season. The plastic around the edge of the beds still needs to be trimmed but this is only a small job. The beds themselves are the next thing to be prepared but I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s going to be like in the summer with plenty of colour. More pics added to album (Preparing the Veg Garden for 2013).

Today I ventured out to the garden with great intentions. But before long, the grass was being positively churned up with my wellies on the swampy grass. So I gave up before I even started. Spent a bit of time taking out pond weed, and fixing up the netting around them.

I ended up in the greenhouse pollinating my peaches with a paintbrush, as there is very limited bee activity at this time of year to ensure thorough pollination. The only positive gardening activity all day, but in a few months it will all have been very worthwhile when I sink my teeth into delicious peaches. Mmmmm!!!

I can’t believe I have reached the stage of having completed all the major work in the transformation of the front corner.

It has been a long hard slog.

Each and everyone of you have listened and encouraged me every step of the way, for that, I thank you one and all.

I have posted an album showing what I started with, and what was finished in the last two days. I should be an complete ache and pain this evening, but I think it is the joy of completing this area that simply has me on cloud nine.

I hope the photos encourage any of you who has a majoy task ahead of them, one piece of advice I would give is,

”work on small sections at a time, look at what you have completed, not what has to be done”

these words were often said to me by my Dad, he was a wise man.

Happy Easter to you all.

Couldnt work outside today so made my ‘easter tree’ which I hope will please the grandchildren. There are some edibles-chocolate carrots and lindt bunnies-so they should go down well.

Went into Kilkenny instead. TKMax has some good stuff in garden tools and small forks etc. Lovely brightly coloured watering cans and iron rods topped with fancy bits that tempted me. I finally settled  though on a small iron staff curved at the top with ivy leaves (iron) winding around it and a lovely little iron bell at the top of the hoop surmounted by an iron dragonfly! All for a tenner! Now it may not be practical but it fitted into the Scrub perfectly and every time i pass I will ring it! There are worse ways of going ga ga!

Will put up a picture after easter. Meantime all the blessings of the season to you all. April is almost on us!

Seedaholics didn’t have any Ricinus seeds so I found this company, Seedparade, and ordered a few more seeds off them while I was at it! Well, one never has enough seeds does one????

This company seems to be good value and the seeds arrived in a couple of days.

I’m working on the lawns using an aerator/dethatcher I bought in Lidl recently.

Pinky has been following me around in anticipation of some protein.

She decided, as it was so sunny this morning, to have a dust bath in the middle of the Hyacinth bed.

The sun lifted the garden from the monotenous grey of late and I was pleased to see that the force ‘up above’ hasn’t completely deserted us.

No, it’s Jacinta’s delightful front garden – such originality in an ordinary suburban garden cannot be praised too much! 

I was so glad that we rearranged out trip yesterday – Helen Dillon’s garden will have to wait for summer!

The others have given a real flavour of the day, so I have nothing really to add – Oh except for the Facebook bit ….

Jacinta convinced me I should join the Facebook group for friends from this site. Now I have to say that although I have had a Facebook account for some time I have never bothered much with it as I didn’t seem to get the hang of it at all so I somewhat reluctantly went to the site and requested to join that elite group!

Jacinta took a hand here and sent me a load of people to be my “friends” so I clicked away merrily and even managed to have a chat with someone – but then it started … my phone has a kind of a bird-call every time I get an email, but I now know that it also gives a bird-call every time I get a Facebook notification. And then, since every Facebook message results in an email, my phone was sounding like a demented Blackbird for the rest of the evening …. and some people go online at 6 am. ….

So over breakfast I logged on and did my best to shut these chirpings up!

Having said that, I’ll give it a go for a while and see how I get on 🙂

 However, I don’t see myself giving up on this site any time soon. I like its simplicity and the journals make very interesting reading – so all you Facebook fans – keep in touch here too!!!!

Scrubber had finally to confront his fate or rather the fate of the 18 pots of Dahlias that he had stowed away last october and had been afraid to check on, expecting a mushy mess as often happened before. But Lo and behold the 18 were dry as a bone and in good nick and ready for the next step! Do I wait for April warmth and then water them to start them off in the pots or should I put them straight into the ground? After holding on to them through the winter i dont want to lose them now.

And Scrubber got a surprise present recently from his daughter-a very posh bird bath-It has an anemone design and the centre is a raised boss of yellow and is roughened so that little claws can have a good hold while their owners are splashing about. I uded an old eucalyptus stump as a base and I put it on the rockery. It does look a bit new and bright at present but I know it will settle in. Its frost proof-would need to be these days. 

To day, Good Friday, is usually one when I spend a lot of time in the garden, not this time, too cold. The temperature as I write this journal is 3 C, probably cold for January and with the chill factor it could be as low as zero. I remember early in January, I got the roses pruned the first week, and in February, I was back at the rose beds again and some weeds had come up. These were eradicated quickly. During February we had some lovely days and I was looking out for a drop of rain when I would consider spreading some fertilizer on the lawn and roses. The roses have come on well, about 100 of them but for the greater part of March, little or nothing has been done. Up to about 10 March, everything was great, then a chest infection and I have just finished the antibiotics. As a result, nothing has been done in the garden during the last few weeks. Hard to believe that on Sunday, the clocks will be going forward but Met Éireann tells us that we will have to wait a while yet before we will have April weather. I cannot really complain. On the positive side,  a considerable amount of work has been done and the soil is reasonable dry. Tomatoes are well advanced, over 80 of them some in the greenhouse and others inside a south facing window. below I show 63 tomatoes in the greenhouse. In fact I brought some along to the Country Market, yesterday but nobody interested in buying. Almost all are in small pots and perhaps they could be potted on. I could also repot some indoor plants, but I look forward to the day when the temperature will be in double figures. Hard to believe that we had 20 degrees at this time last year. Jacinta mentioned that many decades ago we had it like this. I remember 1998 when in Holy Week we had snow on Holy Thurdsay and the following day it was cold but sunny. I was well wrapped up and mowing the lawn in my sister’s place in Co. Waterford. I think of the story that was told to me when I was young, about the year March was very cold and the aim was to kill the old cow. It failed and borrowed a number of days from April and eventually the speckled cow An Bhó Riabhach, died. They tell us that on the odd occasion, this phenomenon takes place and there are so many names for these days, the borrowing days, skin the cow days, Laethe na bó Riabhaigh (Days of the Speckled Cow and Old March.  

Wishing you all a very Happy Easter.

I hope the weather is kind to us so that some time can be spent in the garden 🙂

I wanted to post this journal after i visited Rachel,but as usually something happen.

   Last Sunday ,Liam was at home(not so comon thing),so what we going to do???Liam asked me,,maybe i want to visit Rachel,wow,,of course i wanted,,quick call,and after couple hours we went away.

I think i spent more time in Rachel’s garden that day,as i did in my own in last days.After that tour,i think(i know) i will barow Rachel’s idea about ”Lasagna bed” ,ok there is mess for while,but it is not back braking,and that is what i need.So in my garden this year will be same beds too.

  Orchids,,well done Rachel,well done,,joy to look at them,,healty,big, flowering plants.Make me jealous 🙂

  While we were chating,and walking around garden,,Nikola was keeping busy Rachel’s boys,,i think ,if they ever wanted little sister,,they don’t want her now 😀

  Thanks Rachel for hospitality,and cake,and good ideas!!!

Thankfully, this adventure took nothing as long as it with the Hobbits LOL

Sadly Maria and Clare fell by the wayside for this trip, Clare I hope your better soon.

I travelled to Limerick last evening to hear Rachel’s talk to the Limerick Garden group.

Exciting Annuals was the topic. We all know of Rachel’s seed sowing saga every year, but it was only on listening to her last evening that it really struck home with me the trojan job that is involved.

It was a great talk, with some wonderful photographs, well done Rachel, very enjoyable.

Joann, Deborah and Martin great to see you again. Thanks to the Group for a lovely welcome from a ‘Dub Blow-in’

Rachel when I see you on Saturday, would please sign the LGPG events calander for me, it will be a collectors piece in years to come LOL

Well done again.

Looking in my greenhouse today and noticed some of my dahlias starting to put on growth very happy to see when everything in the garden at the moment is at a snails pace. Plenty heat in the greenhouse today when the sun was shinning it was reading 20+ degrees.