Month: April 2018

This plant has flowered twice now in the last few months.. this picture was taken about one month before Christmas and is now in full flower again! Happy Easter to you all.

I can’t remember which Euphorbia this one is. but I’ve noticed that the foliage is looking very autumnal in colour. I suspect it’s due to the really cold weather we’ve had over the last few months. I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed the colour change

over the winter months before. And I’m certainly hoping that this is not the beginning of its demise. Only time will tell.

Hi all,

I just wanted to share a post from the Facebook page here about the continued development of Garden.ie:

Garden.ie is still in beta and has been over a year in the making, we’re not claiming it’s 100% ready yet but without people experiencing it in a live environment we can’t properly create the site everyone wants.

Building a website of this size and with the complexity of the various moving parts is a huge undertaking and we’ve encountered many issues that we didn’t think we’d have to.

Since we went live 4 weeks ago, we’ve received hundreds of mails with feedback from bugs to design features. We’ve read every one but it has not been possible for me to reply to every single one but we want you to know that we really don’t take that for granted and appreciate everyone who has got in touch with good, bad or other feedback.

Based on the feedback we’ve received, in those 4 weeks we’ve made upwards of 100 fixes or tweaks to ensure a better experience for members and we intend to make many more over the coming months. (Based on feedback from people involved in this thread we’ll be changing the recent activity page to include a stream of comments as well as new journals over the next 24/48 hours. The comments about the messaging system have been noticed and we’ll re-evaluate this over the coming weeks to see if it may be possible.)

Thanks everyone for your feedback, Have a great bank holiday weekend.

craig@garden.ie

Hi all, I’ve just popped-by to try the new site. (I think my profile picture has disappeared but I’ll add a new one at a later date.)

I hope you’re all keeping well, and enjoying your gardens.

I’m not opening my garden this year as I want to make a few changes (and a big mess), but in other news, I start work in a new job this Friday. It’s a gardening related job one day a week. It’ll be fun and bring a bit of balance to my working week.

I’ve also been bitten by the Begonia bug, and you can find out what I’m up to here!

Happy Easter,

Bruno

Bought this pot of St Brigids Anemone and  primula at the Westport country market.

After two busy days in the garden we took a day off today and headed for the plant fair in farmleigh. There was very few stalls there but it was a real case of quality v quantity. I had preordered a few plants from rare plants Ireland and I also purchased a few more (as you do) from caherhurley and camolin. The haul includes erythronium white beauty, roscoea humeana, amicia, cardamine enneaphylla, lathyrus vernus alboroseus, geranium blue cloud ,anthriscus ravenswing ,agapanthus queen mum and anemone ruffled swan. Nice lunch out and we were happy with our day out. Oh I nearly forgot James (my fourteen year old) is responsible for the conifer Cham pisifera nana  variegata. I also had my eye on a yellow hellebore but Jimi Blake got to it before me!!

Well it is such a treat to get two good days in the garden together and having gerry off as well. We made the most of it. Got tunnel planted with spuds mangetout peas lettuce rocket etc. Got some shrubs dug out that were past there best. More dividing and replanting of perennials like artemesia, phlomis and persicaria. Some mulching and seed sowing lots more to do but at least a start made.

This year I decided that I wouldn’t sow seeds. I’ll be spending a few weekends in the country over the next while and it seems pointless when there’ll be nobody here to look after them in my absence. However, I can’t be without tomatoes. Two weeks ago, while over in Homebase, I thought I’d be able to get some seedlings. But I was there the day before the delivery was expected, so I bought seeds instead and sowed them right away. They didn’t seem to be doing anything and I was beginning to give up on that. The only variety I could get in Homebase was ‘Moneymaker’. But having grown that variety many times, they were always very successful. This morning I spotted the first one to germinate. And that was WITHOUT bottom heat. Now it has given me the boost to try more, things that I hope will survive a bit of neglect. Propagator all cleaned out and ready to go. Now to see what seeds I have. But just typing this journal while looking out the patio doors I’ve noticed two robins, obviously a pair. One is feeding the other, not something that two males would be doing I assume? So is this normal behaviour for courting birds? I’ve never seen that before.

I gave up sowing in the open ground years ago as things got crowded out before they were big enough to fight their own corner. The last few years I’ve sowed in containers and at least some things have done well. So I’ve put about a dozen different things in these two containers and put bits of Pyracantha to keep the birds away hopefully. I was watching some Sparrows hopping around them but so far they didn’t find a way in!Sorry about photo.