My Progress at the Weekend

Ah. That's more like it. A day like that, every weekend, would make me very happy. It was so warm and sunny in the garden, I got mild sunburn! I never even thought to put sunscreen on. Go figure, when two (three?) weeks ago it was snowing.

First up was some serious weeding of the left border. And some admiring of my tulips! They opened darker than I imagined, but I'm very happy with them.

I may possibly consider re-siting them to the back border next year however, as sitting next to the round dalek that is the compost bin doesn't really do them justice. And I'm not sure if that lovely Choisya is being a bit stunted in it's growth surrounded by those lovelies. Or perhaps it just grows slowly. Time will tell!





Apart from the normal weeds, I am plagued by these, which come from these seeds off the tree at the back (not in our garden, just behind). They are everywhere, left, right, centre. I guess that's how forests grow!

Things are coming along nicely on the left. The Delphiniumhas a lovely big flower coming already, the Geraniums are about to pop, and although the Lady's Mantle (alchemilla mollis) isn't as large and spreading as I had hoped in it's second year, (having grown them before), I'm sure with some sunshine it will grow, and hopefully spread.

And my gorgeous rose has some buds! The Euphorbia looks fantastic as well. The support you see was an absolute find. If it did not have that, the whole think would be sprawled on the ground like it was last year. Perhaps that's how it managed to self-seed so much (do you see? I haven't had the heart to take all of those out. I'd kind of like to see how that pans out) but it was something of a mess. I am all for plant supports like this. The delphinium has one as well. All of these can be moved up as the plant grows taller. I'm sold!

Left border duly weeded, it was time to tackle the next big but satisfying job - cutting the grass.

There's my baby there (the lawnmower, I mean), having just done it's job.

In the meantime, though, I went off to the garden centre to get that job done. But no! Bad news, no seed potatoes left! Now, when I was watching GW on Friday evening, Joe Swift, one of the presenters had just put his maincrop potatoes down this week. The lady at the garden centre was a bit sniffy and said "well, it's a bit late..." Hmph. Alan Titchmarsh in the brilliant The Kitchen Gardener says April is fine for maincrop.

I bought my few bits a pieces there (more supports!) and was making the trek home. First, I passed an outdoor flower stall, which also sells plants - oh, very naughty, I bought two peonies (two for a fiver!).

I love peonies! The problem is I have no place to put them yet as they are intended for the back. Yikes. I think I shall put them in some large-ish pots for the time being until such time as the ground is ready for them.

If I'm realistic I'm not going to be planting up the back now until October. I mean, look at it. And summer is not the time to be laying a border, in my experience. No, October is the target.

Then I thought perhaps I'd just pop into my 99p Store. Do not ignore your local 99p Store. Result! Four bags of seed potatoes, 8 in each, for 99 pence each, I think I went a bit nuts as that's 32 seed potatoes each producing a bunch (this is my first time growing potatoes so I'm not sure about the results of a crop); I could be having a right glut in the autumn ... that's if I can manage fit them all in! We'll see.


Grass cut, smell to die for. If next weekend is fair, I believe the lawn needs some TLC in the form of a "weed and feed", but that's not looking too bad for the first cut after a winter with no sun.



I tackled the much-talked-about vegetable patch too, but I believe I will save that for the next post. Too much to share all at once!

I'm pretty happy with what I did, though. I shall enlighten you very soon!

My hopes for the weekend

I think I can safely say now, given the weather forecasts on the radio, television and internet over the last couple of days, that the weekend will be fair, at least tomorrow. A proper, sunny, spring day. Yahoo!

So what I mean to do is the following:

Cut the grass. Mmmmm, can you smell it now? I can't wait for that. I think I will be hearing quite a few lawnmowers tomorrow!




Weed the borders. The plants are doing wonderfully well, and the tulips are about to pop. And the weeds are copious!



The tulips worried me a bit to be honest, as they were coming above ground since January. That surprised me very much, as that seemed so early. But true to what was promised on the packet, they seem to be ready to bloom, with no snow damage, thankfully. I thought it should be April/May, and it seems that is correct. I love the fact that the heads turn the colour before the actual bloom. Tulip bulbs are new to me.



This was the idea, so I don't think we're to far off. There were about 20 bulbs down, and some of the plants got a little bit trampled when husband was repairing that fence panel. Hey, it happens. Can't be too precious about these plants, and they are very hardy souls after all. Surprisingly so!

I have actually seen other people's tulips blooming (who else ogles other people's front gardens on a regular basis?) but I do realise now, the sun's traverse of my garden.


There is no denying, I have a north-facing garden. Now that I have had a chance to track the sun over a year, I know that we lose the sun almost completely in October, and it comes back late February, at least at the back. The right border, with the herbs (and soon to be vegetables) does get at least an hour of sun down the side through the year which was good planning, even if it wasn't intentional! I wanted the herbs to be close to the house so I could pop out and clip them for cooking. Well thank goodness, that worked out well.

The left border has recently begun to get the morning sun, as it's high enough over the houses to do what it does all summer long - half the day for the left, half the day for the right. But in the corner on the left border, it has taken a long time, and only recently has really had some proper sun (when there is sun!). It's quite sodden there, and also that is where the compost bin sits (and hello, there's Blackie on top).



I'm seriously thinking of re-siting the bin to get more sun as it needs the warmth to generate all that lovely, lovely compost I so dearly want to use when it is finally generated. A re-think there is needed, and I shall keep you posted.

Third thing will be to finally, finally, turn over the vegetable patch and plant onions (which I have), potatoes (which I have yet to buy, but will do Saturday morning from my local garden centre - goodness what a busy day that is going to be!) and the blackberries.




I've just had an inspirational, hour-long "Gardener's World" on the BBC to get me motivated. During which, of course, I took notes!

I shall be back with you all on Sunday, when it's supposed to rain, again ... but maybe that's a good thing for all I plan to do on Saturday!

Wintry Weekend Progress

Well, amongst the frequent hailstorms over the last couple of days





I am fairly pleased with the progress made thus far. I wanted to end the weekend sore but happy, but I will settle for sore, but content!


What I did manage to do was dig over the planned vegetable and fruit plot. I haven't really introduced you to the right border, approximately a third of which is made up of the herb garden. This section is made up primarily of herbs, apart from the jasmine up the fence, and the verbena in the foreground. In it we have the usual suspects: lavender, rosemary, bay, sage, orgeno, tarragon, chive, thyme (two kinds), plus the (new to me) hyssop and bergamot. This picture was taken last autumn and you will see that everything has grown up quite nicely over the winter season! Herbs are wonderful, and quite easy care in my experience. I wouldn't attempt to grow basil in the ground here, but I do very nicely with a big pot of it on my windowsill over the summer months. Oh, for a heated greenhouse, when I could grow it year round! I am missing two things, which I have now bought seeds for (in my dining table mini greenhouse currently): Lovage, and Borage. Lovage is wonderful with a celery like flavour, which I have grown very successfully (and very large!) in the past. Borage is an annual, but will be a very welcome addition to the patch, just to the left of the jasmine where you see a bare spot. I intend to sow it directly into the ground in a month or so, as per the seed packet instructions.

A few weeks ago when I was at the garden centre (not specifically plant shopping), I couldn't resist buying a few early plants, one for the right border (a beautiful hellebore, to replace the dead skimmia) and a nice parsley for this herb patch, which is coming along fine.

There are bulbs in this border as well, as I wasn't sure how full everything would be by the spring, so we will hopefully have some gorgeous Alliums, and another sweet thing which I didn't save the label for (always save plant labels!) which has white bell-like fowers. I was looking for snakes head fritillaries last autumn but strangely couldn't find them. Well, you take what you can get, from your local garden centre or elsewhere!

Friday dawned fairly decent. The first thing was to take up the weed control fabric I had placed on the patch to keep the weeds down over the winter. This tactic was I believe something of a success, but of course the dreaded comfrey was rearing it's head. I think perhaps next winter when everything is harvested, I may try the wet newspaper trick, which should break down by the spring when I'm ready to dig over again. I thought the best thing was to get down into the dirt and just dig up those weeds that did survive, by hand. This wasn't too onerous, although time-consuming, as the sun was shining very nicely and with my several layers I felt quite warm!

That job done, I was going to get the fork out, but remembered my new tool

a hand cultivator. And here we go - the great garden work-out begins! What with the turfing last year, I lost weight AND toned up quite nicely! This took some time, as it turns out the border is 21 feet long and 4-1/2 feet across, but it was a very satisfying tool. It has a similar action to the rotovator, in that every time I found a stone (or more likely, a large chunk of cement) the implement would "buck", although of course not being mechanised it wasn't so much of a bronco! It also had a superb levelling effect, as this border slopes a bit worringly. But what had been this

became this


in the Friday sunshine. I felt satisfied with that for the day, and narrowly missed the first hailstorm of the weekend!

A note on the back corner: our initial plans for the garden, in consultation with the lovely people upstairs, was that in the right corner (which gets some lovely sun in the summer) we would put a patio - nothing fancy, something along the lines of the shed base we constructed on the right (as you will see soon). However, that didn't happen last year, and to be honest, I'm not sure if it will happen this year. So, in anticipation, I am taking over the ground for the time being to have a rather unexpectedly larger vegetable patch than I imagined!

So I have to say, this patch in the corner, since rotovation, has not really been touched. In fact, it spent most of the summer looking like this on the near right. That means it had not been "de-rocked" at all!

At lot of hard, satisfying work for a Good Friday, with one little shower in between. One word of warning: do not dig with whatever tool you are using, in rubber gloves. It was so warm in the sunshine that I was sweating profusely, including my hands in the rubber gloves (which I had been using to hand-pick the weeds). There is a good reason garden gloves are cotton - to absorb all that hard-working sweat and save your hands from - ouch - blisters!

Yes that was progress, but I would also have liked to, over Saturday and Sunday, dug over with the fork (getting out many more of those rocks), then with the spade (digging in some organic matter), then over the plot with the rake (adding in some fertilizer). Then, only then, would I have been ready to plant!

Today I woke up to snow. One more day tomorrow - it would be nice to get something else done, in order to plant these next weekend! The sun and blue sky appeared late afternoon at 5pm - hope for tomorrow?