Garden Mysteries: Whodunnit?

In spite of having a netting cover, something has managed to sneak in and make a meal of my courgette plant! Luckily I planted the other courgette in a pot which is in the greenhouse so hopefully we will still manage to harvest some.

The cucumber I planted in the same bed has also been nibbled but not quite so viciously – and is that the tiny beginnings of a cucumber I can see? Hope it will survive, again I’ve got others in pots in the greenhouse so we should be ok. I’ve now got it covered with a plastic crate held down with tent pegs for the time being and will set up another beer trap in this raised bed as I think it is probably slugs.

 

There has also been a tomato disaster, this time it was the little green insects nibbling away at the stems that did it. I managed to rescue a couple but they are looking a bit fragile so time will tell if they can recover. I really do have far too many tomato plants though and the greenhouse ones seem to be thriving (so far…).

 

In more cheerful (and colourful) news, I’ve been busy planting up hanging baskets…

 

Very busy weekend in the garden, I’ve finally got round to planting the tray of leek seedlings I sowed earlier in Spring, plus the sweetcorn plants and sown some beetroot. Several hanging baskets and a couple of troughs planted, quite a few things potted on, a hydrangea and a bleeding heart plant rehomed in much bigger pots and a lot of tidying up and sorting out done. I’m exhausted, I’d like a weekend to get over my weekend now please!

Delighted to have some roses flowering too, I even cut a few and made a little display:

 

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News from the Potting Shed

I’m beginning to panic a little bit about all the ‘stuff’ I need to get done before we go on holiday for a few weeks (South of France, staying in a lovely little cottage near Nimes, can’t wait!). So I’ve done a bit of gardening in the rain tonight – we did actually have a little bit of sunshine earlier but it soon clouded over.

Before I did anything else, I ‘harvested’ some lettuce, mixed leaves and rocket – all of which has suddenly grown and seem to be taking over the cold frame.

Then some potting on – little and large here were sown on the same day but one courgette plant seems to have done a lot better than the other.

I popped the larger one in a pot, putting in a cane to help support it before placing the plant in the pot – I’ve managed to skewer the roots of a plant in the past so I’m trying to be a bit more careful now…

Some of the tomatoes needed tying up and a couple needed a better cane support so I got those jobs done before making up a couple of hanging baskets which are going to go out at the weekend.  By that time it was raining quite heavily so I put everything back in the greenhouse, watered all the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and flowers and made a dash back to the house. Not before taking a couple of photos of the packed greenhouse, a sight that makes me very happy 🙂

The Handkerchief Tree at Batsford Arboretum

This tree at Batsford Arboretum only flowers once a year for about two weeks – last year it
flowered in June and by chance, we visited then and saw it. So this year, I’ve been keeping a look out on the Batsford Facebook page as we didn’t want to miss it.

It has flowered a bit earlier this year, they think it will be in bloom from 14 to 24 May so we popped up to have a look.

It was a beautiful sunny day at Batsford and lovely to see that there were still some bluebells flowering:

As well as some magnolia trees which haven’t yet lost all their beautiful flowers:

Also good to see some beautiful buttercups, they always remind me of childhood:

Hard at work..

What a gorgeous day today, sunshine and warmth at last. All my seedlings went outside in the sunshine for a few hours and I’m hoping for great progress from them now! I have been trying to get organised enough to plant out the broad beans I’ve had growing in the cold frame over the winter and finally, today was the day!

I’ve also planted some more broad beans in the row opposite so hopefully a staggered harvest will be ours later in the year. We need to put up some more canes and string – tomorrow’s job as I got sidetracked doing other things today. I’d also sown some cauliflowers last October and they have been sitting in the cold frame but not really looking too good – so let’s see how they get on in the raised beds. I’ve got them under the netting so hopefully they won’t get munched (see last year’s ‘Massacre of the Brassicas’!)

I’m not very confident that they will do very well, but might as well give them a try, I’ve (just about) kept them alive since last year after all…

Other jobs today included putting some more erinaceous compost round the rhododendron in a big pot in the front garden as it was looking in need of some tlc, lots of weeding and I’ve sown some more stocks and leeks as well as another couple of cucumber seeds. 

Hope it is sunny again tomorrow, lots more to do – need to get some salads going and try and rescue the surviving geranium and fuchsia plants that I’ve kept indoors over the winter.

Talking to plants..

They say that talking to your plants can help, so maybe all my impatient sighing about the slow progress of my chilli seeds has had an effect..

 

That looks much better than last week, so I’m a bit happier now (still impatient though…) The tomatoes seedlings are coming along nicely too, a couple have wilted and given up the fight but most of them are still going strong.

 

So that made me turn my attention to the sweet peas sown in my new deep root trainer. I did two batches but cleverly managed to mix up which variety went in which half – note to self – REMEMBER TO LABEL STUFF! So one half is doing very well, albeit going a bit leggy and the
other half not looking quite so healthy but getting there. I gingerly pinched out the leggy half, I always worry that I’m going to kill everything off doing ‘technical’ stuff like this but I’m gradually getting braver.

 

So far, so good. I’m resisting sowing anything else just yet, but I think I will sort out all my seed packets this weekend and do a bit more planning – can’t wait to get out in the garden now,
I really want to be more organised than I managed to be last year when all the rain meant I didn’t get round to doing much at all until April so everything was really late.

Some lovely colours popping up in my pots and window boxes outside the back door too:

 

 

 

 

 

Not just vegetables…

I’ve loved growing flowers too – marigolds are one of my favourites and these lasted really well, photo taken at the end of October 2013 and they were still going strong. Sweet peas and snapdragons were successful too.