Month: February 2014
Hi Fellow Gardeners
Just joined up …after finishing my RHS Level2 exams In principals of Hort.
delighted to get time to get back to what I like best..in the garden . Posted a few photos from my garden- memories of last year!
As more trays have been started and most of the windows are full upstairs,now it was time for the centre table in a top rooom.
Veg,seeds and more plant seeds etc are in place.
I wont know until later if the local card game will go ahead.
Linda the Asphodeline you gave me did not seem to like the move to the garden here. After planting it sulked and sulked and faded away slowly but surely.
In the end I gave up and even took the label away last Autumn some time.
But all seems well, the sulking seems to have given way to new growth and the label has been put back in place since yesterday.
Trilled about this, as when I saw it in Stephens Green that time it was one of those plants I had to have ;-))
Different from the Hippeastrum. I got a present of two at Christmas. There are two flowers in each. This one is the only one open at present. Weather here is wet and windy so no outdoor gardening. Yesterday was lovely and gave be the opertunity to repair the greenhouse. Thank God the roses were pruned early in January otherwise they would be badly affected by the strong winds.
No gardening for me today. Horrific day, and I didn’t even go out to take photos. That must be a first.
So instead, I’ll post a photo of my Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ which opened this day last year. It’ll still be a while before it flowers for me this year.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Horrible wet morning here so I at last got round to sowing seeds. I got this propagator in either Lidl or Aldi a few years ago and I find it great. It comes complete with six seed trays with lids which have vents in the top. I put 2 different kinds of seeds in each, one at each end, which probably isn’t a great idea but I love variety.
Among others I have Cosmos, Viola , Echinacea, Aubretia, Petunia, Malope, Salpiglossis, Gaillardia and Lychnis chalcedonica. In a few days the exciting bit of seeing the seedlings appearing will happen……
By the way in the background of the photo you can see the stumps of the trees I talked about in my last journal.
I have this shrub here for years. No real idea why it has not grown for me. But it is up for grabs for whoever wants to give it a home and more TLC than I ever gave it. It’s about two foot tall.
That good spell we had a long time ago got me all fired up for the garden. I even sowed some tomato seeds. Sadly they perished. I’ll never learn. But the seeds that I got from Moya in the Botanic gardens have all come up. Happy days! Rudbeckia and Basil are also up.
But it seems ages since the weather has been really good for little more than a day or two at a time. My enthusiasm is beginning to wane. Hopefully there is an end in sight to this cold/wet weather. Won’t get anything noteworthy done outside today as the ground is pretty cold.
If there’s a Weather God up there ……………
I wish,i wish, i wish, things were that lucky again.The veg in the picture were at harvest for 2013 and getting ready to freeze.Thats a long way off yet.
Without doubt Potato Blight,Carrot fly,Cabbage troubles,Slugs etc and indeed plenty more,will be the enemies paying a visit.
The bad side of nature strikes then and will always win.Maybe sometime they will be defeated,maybe sometime.What year though is a six marker question.
At the end of the day their is always hope.
I love these little beauties, not least of all because they are no trouble at all.
And also, they flower in spring, at the beginning of everything, like a little taster of the delights ahead of us.
Although orchids, pleiones are also alpines and need a cold winter, somewhere between 0 and 5 degrees. As they are deciduous, I pop my bulbs in the fridge and only pot them up in spring when I see them beginning to grow.
Pleione Britannia ‘Doreen’ opened for me today and you can see photos in my orchid album.
Great to see lots of frog spawn in the pond this afternoon. In spite of the awful weather they are pretty much on time — usually around mid February for the last number of years.
I bought this shrub a few years ago. It’s, at the moment, in a planter. But it’s definitely worth a place in a border. I may plant it at the back of the newly-acquired free space in the North-facing border. I feel it’s not looking as good as it should being restricted in a planter. And I do need some cover for the awful bare brick wall now that the ivy is gone. It certainly won’t take over the wall as it only gets to about 1.2m.
I went out in the garden armed with the camera to take a few photos and was plesently suprised at some colour …I will put up photos later .
Laughing away to myself here seeing that Jackie has a tulip beginning to open today. Me too, and it looks possibly the same one. Must be a Northside thing! LOL
Not long in from a great day out in the garden. Bit cool but dry and just glad to be able to get out after the recent bad weather. Did lots of cutting back, weeding, checking pots etc.
I was amazed at the number of Ladybirds about the place. I cut back one grass and there were about 10 of them around the base. Wonder why ?
Lovely to see them.
It was nearly 6.00 p.m. when I took this photo last night.
Got a few different types of Kennedy primroses last year. But, even though they are lovely, I find that the flowers themselves tend to be a bit ‘watery’ in colour, almost translucent.
I have this growing in the ‘raised bed’ behind the Upper Pond. I’ve gone back on last years photos and can’t find anything that might suggest what it is. Hoping someone here can possibly jog my memory?
I think the medicines I’m on are getting to me. Another unused piece of kitchen equipment has been put to an different use today.
It was a glass lid, handle removed creating a ready made drainage hole, furniture pads applied to add balance, gravel added, then a layer of grit, pot placed on grit and finally another layer added level to rim of lid.
Just perfect for the patio table during the summer.
I like different.
Back a few weeks ago I bought some Iris in pots in B&Q and planted them up.
Some were Katherine Hodgkin and a ‘purple’ one which the label has vanished in the storms.
Still waiting on Katherine to open, but yesterday I spotted the purple one has opened and a couple more to follow.
Pretty little thing. Anyone any idea what it might be called?
Look what just dropped through my letterbox.
From now on its a monthly magazine, which means we are going to be very busy. Excellent tips and information in here.
Happy days and happy reading too 🙂
ps I give up. Tried to turn this a dozen times but still it’s sideways. Anyway you get the gist 😉
On an open day in Jimi Blakes a few years ago, I was offered to help myself to some Hellebous seedlings.
After a couple of years of waiting, the first flower opened today.
I have even christened it to mark it’s arrival in my garden.
Joan this is the Helleborus x hybridus which you so kindly gave me at the get-together in Johnstown…..as you can see it has some lovely juicy buds appearing on it and I cant wait for it to flower and see what the flowers look like. Shouldnt be too long now…so thanks a million.
This is a later and more advanced Cymbidium, same plant. It was not as much opened on the previous occasion. Perhaps Rachel may advise me when the time comes if the rootstock can be divided. I got the Irish Garden to day and it seems as if there is great reading in it. As usual, I looked at Rachel’s article on Pelargoniums. She seems to have the more sophisticated type, the Regal. I have quite a lot of the more humble type the Zonal type, close on a hundred. They have grown to be quite big and I think I will at the proper time, maybe April, to divide them.
… and the daffodils aren’t even out yet! i just put up an album of my February photos and I’m quite surprised to see how many of the flowers are yellow – or yellowish!
When I think of plants for the garden I would seldom deliberately choose yellow but this time of year I have to confess that the patches of yellow glimpsed here and there really lighten the heart!
The shades of yellow in my garden vary from very pale -almost cream – to in your face egg-yoke yellow and other shades in between.
Although the Helebores in white and all shades of pink are the stars of the show this time of year, the yellow crocus, primrose, eranthis, Winter Jasmine, Hammamelis all contribute in my garden.
Those large Helebores – Argutifolius and Foetida – with their greenish yellow clusters of flowers are lovely too at this time.
I’m noticing that the daffs are growing rapidly so that will be another feast of yellow! I see that some of you have daffs already open so I reckkon I’m back to the usual 3-weeks-behind flowering scheme.
I think there are certain SHADES of yellow that I have difficulty with – but no doubt I can easily be persuaded to give a home to even these – I guess I’m just a sucker for little plants looking for a home LOL
