Violet's Garden Diary

Sown in heated propagator:

• 6x Leek Malabar (next batch)
• 6x French Sorrel (because the couple that germinated outside last year, and are sprouting nicely now, are too close to the lovage, and will get swamped shortly). Now that I believe in their perennial nature, I shall site them more carefully.
• 6x Monarda Lambada (hope it works better this time?)
• Petunias that came free with the root-trainers
• Iceland Poppies (P. nudicaule) Meadow Pastels. Tried these a couple of years ago, and they were tiny and got eaten. See if I can make them big enough this time round.
• Lysimachia Beaujolais (L. atropurpurea) – found this random packet in the bottom of a bag in the garage, which must have been there for about 4 years. But it was still sealed, so just out of curiousity… It says 30-60 days to germination on the back, so I am not holding my breath.

Potted up the tall poppies and leeks. The strategy of potting things out cells well before they have obviously filled them seems to be paying off: the nemesia, for example, is already way bigger and bushier than at the same stage last year.

101 uses for a wire coat hanger! (or a dozen of them). Bend them into hoops to support the fleecy tunnels in the veg patch. Taken the fleece off the sugar-snap row, because they looked like they needed the netting by now. Hope they don’t freeze.

Picked up 5 more Polka and 5 Tulameen (summer) raspberries from Blackmoor (bare root). Just remembered to actually go and plant them. They turned out to be rather more than five
On account of the first pond quote being so ridiculous, got another chap coming next week. Dreaming about all the things I will plant in it already…

I blinked, and the cherry came out in leaf, thanks to all this never-ending sunshine, so I had to prune it pretty sharpish (ha-ha). Quite exhausted from gardening over-load now. Did manage to order some raspberries from Blackmoor, more Polka and some Tulameen to fill the gap.

Potted up 25 basils! and the one pepper, a bunch of artichokes, and some coriander. Also rescued a couple of cowslip seedlings which were growing through the landscape fabric, but managed to have flower buds nonetheless.

Planted out the hyacinths languishing in their mossy basket, almost anywhere has got be better than that. More bulb disasters: fritillaries in a pot on the patio, which appeared to be doing ok until recently, have turned out to have rotted, all but one. The pot of spraxis was completely devoid of life, and most of the self-seeded oxalis from the veg patch, which I carefully dug up and potted up before the winter, have rotted off as well. Most bulbs just don’t seem to like it in pots at all, even though I am thinking that I am offering them extra care and safety. The exceptions (so far) seem to be lilies. Oh, and one of amaryllis wasn’t staked and broke right off.

Put in a little wire border edging out the front, in the hope that next time the communal rough grass is strimmed, they won’t mow down half my flowers. Which are doing remarkably well, apart from Calluna vulgaris, who are probably not very happy with the soil – whatever possessed me to buy them? Must have come in a set with other heathers, or somewhat.

Tried to identify a couple of my succulent house plants, it turned out harder than I expected – there is such a variety of them, and I couldn’t even give a family. The first one turned out to be K. delagoensis (K. tubiflora) : An almost indestructible Kalanchoe that propagates by forming plantlets on leaf lips. These drop off and root in any nearby plantpot, so it is almost impossible to lose the clone. This plant grows up to 5 ft tall and produces an attractive cluster of orange flowers at the top of its stem. Finally tracked it down through www.succulent-plant.com. Am now looking forward to it growing another 4 feet higher…

The other one is probably an Apocynaceae, but struggling to pin down which one. Most likely a Caralluma, especially considering that it was collected by my sister in an Israeli desert.

The spreading of manure everywhere and on everything continues apace; there are only 2 bags left of the 10.

The pond man came yesterday, and seemed to agree with practically everything we said, so waiting for the quote with bated breath. He even complimented my rockery, as it did not exhibit the “currant bun” syndrome, ie had enough actual rocks in it. He said he won’t have to rip in all up, so that’s a relief.

Rather a lot of bulb disasters: turfed out the big pot of ixia to find that most of them have gone into a soft rotten mush over the winter. Only the ones in the middle of the pot seemed OK, so presumably the outside ones got too frozen? Also, a pot of small daffs indoors, which I was about to plant out, turned out to have rots and mites, little pearly running-around things. And I think there is eelworm in the yellow foxglove in the main bed, eating through the woody base. On the plus side, I kept a seedling of it that had come up in the veg patch.

The tall iris seem to have gone insane, and has shot up a few flower stems already. And the chionodoxa in the pot by the door is quite lovely.

The green bulbs have arrived, and I have managed to plant out 100 snowdrops, 100 tete-a-tete’s and nearly 50 fritillaries before dark. Still have 50 aconites to grapple with tomorrow.

Soak the remainder of mangetout seeds from last year for pea-shoots, as they were not found to be very tasty.

A whole weekend of gardening, and we just about won. Saturday was dominated by shredding activities, including purchasing (as the stupid tool hire people listed an electric shredder on their website, but didn’t actually have any, because, apparently, people kept wrecking them, so they only do petrolones now, at ridiculous expense). It was an absolutely monstrous machine, horrendously noisy, and covering everything around in a fine dust (including the insides of ones nostrils). It only kept jamming when we tried to feed it with smaller twiggy stuff, like dry marjoram branches. Did ok on the thicker sticks, that you could push in under their strength, rather than push down with the paddle thingy. We got through all the sacks of stuff in the end, it took a couple of hours, and hope not to have to do it again for a fair long while.

Did the first cut on the lawns, too.

Having disposed of the remains of last season, we could get on with the new one today. Did the flowers of sulphor (mixed with ericaceous compost) for the blueberry and camellias. Pretty scary substance.

Children helped to clear a vegetable bed, and sow the rest of the broad beans, including some of own seeds from last year. Then all trooped down to the garden centre, in the hope of acquiring a second compost bin. And guess what: they have the bins, but not bases, because they are not proper, so they don’t stock them. The cheek! We did manage to get some seed potatoes (Accent), which we stuck into the biggest planter. Planted out the sugar-snaps, and some Feltham Firsts alongside. The clamoring for legumes is getting ever louder…

Done all the fruit tree feeding, and chucked half a boxful of blood-fish-and-bone around the place. Covered all the new veg with fleece for the time being.

It is looking semi-decent now, a fair few daffs here and there, nice yellow crocuses in the turf (they could do with some purple ones mixed up with them though), a lovely little pale yellow saxifrage is gracing the rockery, and the pink viburnum has kept going. Neither the manure or the bulbs have arrived yet…

Everything has sprouted now. The artichokes germinated perfectly, strawberries were last – I think they were too hot in the propagator. Potted on the nemesia now, nice and deep. Honesty, aquilegia and lovage are outside, mostly through lack of space, but also for better light, and seem to be doing pretty well out of it. Sugarsnaps coming out of my ears.

Beautiful double amaryllis, with a second stem already shooting up, and the second stem of the dark red single is nearly out. A nasty mould keeps re-appearing on one of the peace lilies, however much I keep taking it out.

Some of the layered penstemons have worked (others weren’t near enough to the compost). A yellow saxifrage is flowering in the rockery, and the lawn crocuses have all come out now.