Archives: journal
I took a pre journey amble around my garden today and was astonished to notice blossoms on my peach tree.
I bought the tree several years ago, before I knew any better, but it has never flowered for me.
So I found an artish’s paint brush and gort my husband out there to pollinate it (a few pictures in my latest album). I made him promise he would do this every day while I am away. I know peaches are not an outdoor crop in Ireland but God loves a trier…
Pollinating the Peach Tree
Surprise!!!
Bobby and I went to Birr Castle today for a walk. The Magnolias are in full flower and create a beautiful display. The Champion Magnolia is not yet in flower but we will return with the kids in April to see it in bloom. It will be a good comparison to our new Magnolia Grandiflora. The tree peonies and the herbaceous peonies are just coming to life. The red stems have punched through the soil and the leaves are starting to unfurl. Sorry! we didn’t bring the camera today as we just set off and followed our instinct
In our own garden we’ve decided to leave the magnolia as it is planted. It’s at the north side of the veg patch and avenue borders and the soil we dug up to plant it is some of the best soil I’ve ever seen in this garden and definitely the deepest.
I checked the depth of the seed potatoes this evening. I thought that they were planted at 12" depth and Bill (Headgardener) confirmed to me that this was far too deep. I dug 4 separate trial holes and had a 100% result. They’re planted at 6". Woohoo! No remedial work necessary. Sorry I doubted you Bob!
Things that are looking good in the garden are hellebores, the daffs are looking great still. My own peonies are showing signs of great promise and the tulips are about to start flowering. The greenhouse is reaching capacity and I think I need to make a new cold frame! The only thing I don’t like about this time of year is having to open and close the greenhouse, polytunnel and coldframe every day.
Tree Peony unfurling
I now have a greenhouse bursting with seedlings. Since this is my first year sowing seeds I have learnt a valuable lesson in the quantity stakes. I started off sowing seeds in trays, resulting in lots of seedlings… very exciting to see them grow, and also I enjoyed the pricking out process, which resulted in lots more pots and less space. I quickly realised that I don’t really need 30 Chinese lanterns, and certainly don’t need neigh on 100 marigolds! I’m now sowing seeds in 3" pots and using only a few pinches of each to give me more than enough seedlings. Lesson learnt the hard way… I don’t even know what a chinese lantern will really look like!
hi everyone i have just added some more photos of my garden before the new plants have gone in. hope to have the after photos by wknd weather permitting that i get out to finish it, its looking alot better than it does in the photos alot of the plants are in and more to put in. improving already, it is work in progress but i love doing it,
Yesterday I have found little buds on my mamillaria. It happens not every year, but if mamillaria starts to bloom – will be with flowers all spring.
Also I sowed more flowers – seeds that I’ve got from Rachel (geum, helenium and echinacea), Gilia tricolor, pansy mix (viola wittroskiana Swiss Giants) and mixed set of fragrant flowers.
Mamillaria
Ready for action.
Busy Month!! We had the practical days from our 2 evening courses. The Kinvara class got a cold blustery day with a bit of rain too – they got loads done in the tunnel. They had a go at preparing soil, using different tools, planting salad plants and sowing seeds direct into the soil and planting onion sets. The oranmore class had a great day, warm and dry. The soil was dry too, so they got to plant potatoes and strawberry plants, as well as a bed of onion sets.
So now I’m preparing for the 2 day course this Saturday and Sunday 4th and 5th of April. We are going to plant up a herb bed, so we have done most of the ground work already. I’m also doing a general tidy up. If there were only more hours in the day!! Still have lots of poataoes to get in- I have all the earlies in and 2 rows of early maincrop, lots more to do, and it’s the 1st of April – but the ground was too cold until recently to get started.
Well, I’ll be back in the garden tomorow. Try to prepare the onion bed for the onion seedlings, I always do some from seed too. I also have ‘Baun’ onions to plant out to grow for seed. They grew well for me last year so I want to save some seed.
We started gardening in Foynes over 30 years ago. The garden is one acre in size, on an elevated site, overlooking the River Shannon. We have mild winters and get very little frost, however we are exposed to salt ladden winds that come up the Shannon estuary. Designed for year round colour, the garden is divided into a number of informal rooms which provide a micro-climate for the many tender plants, from the Southern Hemisphere, that grow here.
The garden contains a small vegetable garden where a wide range of vegetables are grown.
The garden has won the Limerick County Council Enviromental Award for the last two years for its composting and water conservation.
Phyl and Dick Boyce have published a book called Irish Gardening for All Seasons. The book is published by Mercier Press and is available from bookshops or from Boyce’s Garden, Mountrenchard, Foynes, Co. Limerick.
Garden Visits The garden is open to visitors 7days a week from 10 to 6pm from May to October, telephone 06965302
Web site www.boycesgardens.com
What a great day for the garden. Planted out dahlia tubers, also 40 gladioli and sowed some cornflower and wild flower seed where the gladoili hopefully will grow, just hope they all like each other. Put some lettuce and radish seedlings out in the cold frame 2 days ago and they seem to like it. So hope to plant them out soon. Planted lots of alpines on Monday, I had a field day in Lidl got there early on Monday and bought 4 trays of mixed alpines…planted them 3 to a section so should be pretty. Enjoy the good weather everyone!!!
I bought a fresh bulb of garlic a while back, placed it in the press and allowed it to sprout. Today I broke it into individual cloves and planted them in pots. There ends my knowledge of garlic, so if anybody has any knowledge on the subject I would be grateful. other than that the day was wet and uneventful.
Sore arms, back, knees, ankles and fingers.
Happy heart.
The result of a full and sunny day in the garden on Thursday.
A well deserved beer at the end of a satisfying day
Lack of pots had reached crisis point yesterday. My courgettes needed potting on, not to mention various perennials and even my tomatoes will soon need potting on. After some discussion, myself and the husband decided to plant some tomatoes & courgettes in the border in the greenhouse. We decided to do this because…
1) It seems criminal to waste all this beautiful sunshine
2) Even if I do loose them to frost, I have loads more plants to take their place.
3) The house can’t take many more pots, especially not large ones.
So I planted out six tomatoes and five courgettes and even put down the French marigolds which I had grown as companion planting. But there was good luck on the potting front as my husband discovered a firm that supply pots wholesale so I’m back in business again…
Here We Go
Everything is at the formative stages right now. I hope to some day accomplish my goal of planting enough trees and creating adequate shelter that will eventually allow me to have a very large and extensive garden. The location is suberb, great view of Balycarbery Castle ruins, also a view of an old stone fort, mountains and close to the ocean. BUT!!! The wind, the wind, my friend!! The gardner’s biggest enemy.
Over time, I hope to bring possibly a couple of acres into my "Great Garden" plan. But for now I must exercise great patience and slowly create that much needed shelter. What I will lose in external scenery, I hope to make up for within the garden itself.
APRIL 2009. Got a chance to check out on how the shelter is progressing and unfortunately, I had to plant numerous pines to fill in the huge gaps left by failures. This is a big setback. Although there are several individual pines and some alders growing well, there is not enough consistency to privide an adequate filter of shelter from the prevailing South-West winds.
In the area where there is established shelter at the rear of the house there is now a great stand of birches, ash (fraxinus) mountain ash and sycamore. These trees are looking terrific and pretty soon will cover this area of ground with a full canopy. The outside row of pines are now getting bare at the base so I will have to add a hedge (probably Hebe) atthe lawn side of this in order to provide a nicer finish.
Ribes
I potted on my agave americana today with cactus compost. I removed five small plants from around it and potted them up separately. It was quite nerve racking as I had to sever the connection from the mother plant to the babies with a bread knife!
My teenage son has asked for one of the "babies" to keep himself as he is quite taken with the agave. I will leave them in the greenhouse for a while first to make sure that they take proper root.
Agave Americana
Got a little bit done today. I pruned back the hebes that had been badly affected by frost this winter and looked really bad. I’m not sure if they will recover, but where they were planted was overcrowded anyway so if they don’t, its no big loss. Seedlings are coming on well and it is time to pot them on if I can find space for them.
Hebe with frost damage
Hello all gardening enthusiasts. As you can see from my photos my favourites are perennials I can’t have enough of them in the garden. I always seem to be searching for something. I hate if anything dies in the garden. I have loads of great gardening buddies in my area. Around here there are 5 garden clubs and that means there are lots of gardening activities going on. Nice to chat to you all.
Fritillaria
Just look at those roots
Daffodil ‘Minnow’
Look Mammy, its me!
Had a great page of stuff written, then it timed out!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Dug and weeded the veggie beds, trimmed the grass, have to paint them now with Fencelife.
Hauled, mixed, lifted and built the greehouse base walls/beds….. have old teak windows and door sourced for it, very GREEN indeed!!!
Planted the Magnolia Sieboldii that was hangin around in a pot for ages!!
Made contact with the local Gardening Club in Castlepollard, next meeting in Parish Centre 1st May 8pm…..
J
Cleaned Up & Ready to Sow!!!!
cadburys daffodils
most of the taller daffodils are either in bloom or on the verge. some of the scent is breathtaking especially the cheerfulness adn yellow cheerfulness
also today i noticed the snakehead fritillarias.they look quite happy where they are.
the yellow dog tooth violet is also looking very well. these were bought as a last minute purchase 2years ago and i didnt know if they would ever bloom but iam very pleased with them
