Archives: journal

The day started poor with showers lasting up until lunchtime.Only a short time in the garden this evening to check in the tunnell for watering etc,and how the beds were coming along outside.Moved some more trays out to the greenhouse.Have to check on the remaining seed trays in the house later. 

I have one peony in the garden and it has been growing at the speed of light over the last 2-3 weeks. But this morning I noticed that there are ants on the flower buds. This happens every year; the first year I did nothing about it, and the ants managed to destroy one of the only two flowers on the plant!!

Since then, I watch for them every year and try getting rid of them using different means (not all of them organic I’m afraid) but I haven’t found a good solution yet. Has anybody experienced the same problem? I’d love to know what causes this, and especially, what can be done about it!  

 

We’ve been away at a family wedding and I was trying to think of a way to justify putting up a photo from a wedding on a gardening site, and then I thought : Croke Park does have what is probably the most well tended, respected and impressive turf in the country, which many gardeners would envy!  So here is my little fella, who took his job as page boy very seriously, posing on the Hallowed Turf. The newlyweds made it into the papers, being the first couple to have their reception in Croke Park (they are both sports nuts) and are now on their way to Cuba for the honeymoon! 

During those tough tasks I did take a break now and then to enjoy the lovely colour in the glorious sunshine( and rest my muscles!)

A couple of days ago river gulls returned to our city from places where they spend winters. But the weather doesn’t please them – river head is still covered with ice.

22 of April – this picture is very unusual. Who talks about  global warming? Maybe ‘warming’ is not so ‘global’ as people supposed? 🙂

A lovely sight in woodlands at the moment. I planted a piece a few years back and now have a few nice clumps in the garden. It’s not too invasive at least not so far. Tulips looking great also. I’m about to post some in an album. Uploading photos can be so slow! Bye.

So I’m like a writer looking at a blank page.  The empty border is there, staring at me as I peer through the bedroom window.  The light rain last night has made it look even more tempting, but I think I really do need to spend time to think about a design, even if it is going to be acting mostly as a nursery bed for the moment while I attempt to get rid of the scutch that’s surrounds it (Do I bow to Monsanto or cover everything in Mypex for a year?  Can I wait that long?).

I shall post a photo of the blank page here.  Maybe it will help me to think.

And thank you shelser for the words of encouragement — I think I really needed that.

On a different note, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit not one but two gardens a couple of days ago (when I should have been working on my own, of course).  The first is a fantastic mature garden, with the emphasis being on fruit.  Fruit trees, fruit bushes, cordons, wall-trained fans… it was a fruit growers dream.  I think my favourite part was the area full of cordoned currants, gooseberries, josterberries and worcesterberries (I don’t even know what they are… a currant/gooseberry cross apparently).  Beautifully cordoned onto 3 levels of wires, meticulously pruned.  It was a joy.  The owner told me that the blackbirds eat everything… but he is going to net it all this year.  As well, he will be covering the gorgeous wall-trained cherry fan and nectarine fan… there was another fan as well but I’ve forgotten what fruit it was.  He is going to enclose then in a orangerie type of a construct.  Absolutely stunning.  And did I mention the whole garden is wheelchair accessible… Think about that.  Is your garden wheelchair accessible?  And not just accessible in terms of moving through it, but also in terms of being able to garden from a wheelchair.  It certainly gave me food for thought.

The second garden is a work-in-progress and belongs to a good friend of mine.  He’s been talking about this glasshouse he’s going to build for a couple of years now.  He got a load of fantastic glass from some fancy architect-designed house that had incorrectly-measured glass delivered to it that didn’t fit.  Well, he’s finally gotten around to doing the foundation block-work for it and it is massive.  It’s 13m long and 4m wide.  He has an enormous compost heap at one end that will undoubtedly help heat it up in winter.  It has 3ft deep beds around the edges.  He’s going to wall-train fruit trees on the backside of the house which is perfect because they will be southfacing.  The centre beds will be for the likes of tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, etc.  And there is loads of extra bed area around the place to fill with whatever he likes.  He has asked me to do a planting plan… I cannot wait to sink my teeth into that.

Funny how I’d do that before I’d do my own planting plan… go figure.

Inspired by Bill at our recent coffee morning, I decided to count the trees in my garden.

My garden needs height but this is chiefly because the trees are still small rather than the fact that I don’t have enough trees.

I counted 92 trees and seven waiting to be planted. I didn’t include…

a) trees planted by farmer to front and back boundary (Blackthorn etc)

b) trees on boundary with neighbour, planted by the builder

c) trees in pots – dicksonia, banana & small Japanese acers although I did count the medium sized acers

I wonder when my garden will ever be the leafy oasis I crave.

I write this post for Rita as she asked me about my amaryllis. I have no special recipe, so just tell the story of this plant.

About 7 or 8 years ago I’ve got a very little bulb of amaryllis  (only 2 cm), without any sign of roots or leaves. I planted it and did very common care – watering and repotting. The only one thing – I always separated all little daughter bulbs that always appear on amaryllis. I thought this bulbs bereave the main bulb of its forces.  I also used liquid fertilizer, but carefully, especially in winters.

2 years ago I’ve got first flowers. I was amazed of size and very bright colour.

Last summer amaryllis begin to blossom right after I come back from Ireland. Mum was absolutely surprized, cause there was no hint at flowers, and 2 flower stalks appeared during 1 week.

You can see this flower stalks on the picture. Lets wait and see what will be this summer. 

I’ve just red in journal of my friend Me27149 that she visited Carlingford.  I recall my visit to Carlingford last year. It was on 7th of August 2008.

The weather was windy and wet, and it’s easy to understand because sea is right there. We went to see King John’s Castle, and walked around – church of Holy Trinity and Carlingford Priory. It was a lovely walk, because I haven’t breathe the smell of the sea for so long. As you know I was born in Vladivostok, on the Pacific, and sea will be always a part of me. 

On the way back we had a stop for lunch in Ballymascanlon House Hotel. There was a fascinating wedding, all women in stylish dresses and lady’s hats. The weather become rainy and more windy, it was drizzling all the time. Me and my friends had a discussion about lucky signs for weddings. I said that in Russia it’s a very good sign if you have hard rain on your wedding day (it’s ture!). My friends came to conclusion that Russian people have a very positive mind. :))))

Carlingford Museum in the church of Holy Trinity is very informative. What a pity is that you cannot go upstairs there, the way is closed. The view should be wonderful. The only one place I found to go upstairs was round tower in Powerscourt.

Well it’s raining hence the update as I can’t do any gardening at present. Prior to the rain I’ve been busy planting my maincrop spuds (King Edwards) and building the 1st bay of my composter from pallets. I have very little available planting space left, but still have lots to plant namely peas/mangetout, brocolli and cabbages.

I still have to spray and clean my greenhouse to be able to put in the tomatos, might have to do this in stages though as to empty out the whole greenhouse spray and replace everything might not be practical. Last year I did’nt prune the tomaotes properly and need to do so this year, I also need to put in sturdier support as the bamboo canes were’nt enough last year.

My wife and I also planted up the remaining ferns in the shade garden and spread the remaining bark mulch over the bed, unfortunitly it’s hard to see where the path is so we put sticks in to mark it out. I planted two clematis Henryi at the back of the seat which will hopefully climb into the tree canopy at the back. Eventually I hope to join up the different sections of the garden to allow people to follow different paths, but the garden needs to do a lot more growing and maturing before that happens.

My wife planted her birthday presents around the rockery and steps and I construted her swing seat, which gives a lovely view down over the garden. It was sited specially so we could be as far away as possible from the wild indians playing at the other end of the garden.

I noticed on the Cordyline the start of this years flowers. I think the smell of these is wonderful. The first time I saw a Cordyline in flower was in Kerry during the very hot summer of 1995. The following year mine flowered for the first time.

I didn’t do any work in the garden today just enjoyed a walk around to look at what is growing! I received a lovely surprise in the post~ 2 free tickets to ‘Bloom’ for completing the survey on www.bloominthepark.com ~~

On the way to the Creche yesterday I took the shorcut down the narrow country lane and here I came across banks of lovely bluebells.  When I got to the Creche I was delighted to learn that they are planning a vegetable garden for the children to get involved in. The diggers have already cleared the area and it is being dug over, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it progress, and hopefully getting involved!  I have some seed to give them to help get them started.