Archives: journal

Did a small amount in the garden when the rain stopped today. Chopped off the lupins pod heads and hope they give a show later on in the season. Will dry the pods and save the seeds…thats the plan anyway.

Clipped away some of the invasive ferns, brambles and huge thistles in the hedgegrow on the east side of the garden.

I also, as you can see in the photo opposite, pulled out the ‘Wild Flowers’ selection that I bought in a tub in Lydl. I had scattered them where I had planted gladioli bulbs and thought that’ll be nice some wild flowers growing before the gladoli flower…but as you can see..definately not a good look….I have enough freely growing weeds without sowing them too!!!! The poor gladioli were of course being smothered…but I do think they will live to tell the tale!!!

Have added a new Summer album…Ciao for now!!

It lashed rain here today. It was a good excuse for a day off. Besides, the muscles in my hands were acting funny since I clipped the ditch with the shears. The child-safety on the slug pellets defeated me last night, because of the muscle problem, and I had to get my teenager to open it. I’m fine now though. Hubbie says you need to know how to hold the shears properly.

My giant alliums have finally deigned to flower. Are they always so late, I wonder? The ordinary ones have come and gone by now. You can see some white alliums still in flower in the photo. Most of the giant ones were bent in the wind but it looks like they’re going to flower anyway on their bent-double stems!

Another thing that’s bugging me is why my delphiniums are so disappointing. I grew them from seed and the flowers are very insignificant – nothing like the fabulous blooms featured in the latest Irish Garden. You can see one of mine in flower in my June 09 album – hardly worth the bother. I did buy two Delphinium ‘camelliard’ this year and they look gorgeous in the photo so I just hope they turn out like the picture.

I added plenty of new pictures today to my albums.

So far this year the Cosmos plants I am growing from seed are not doing as well as they did last year. It may be that the heavy rain we had earlier this year damaged their roots. They might improve with age as we move into July.

My Foxgloves(Digitalis) and Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis) have run wild and are growing everywhere. I spent yesterday thinning out the Foxgloves and uprooting the Forget-Me-Nots. The latter are seeding at the moment and will surely come back again as they have been doing since I first sowed them more than forty years ago. 

The Himilayan Balsam is another plant which tries to take over the garden. The flowers have a lovely vanilla scent but are prone to black-fly. I had to pull up hundreds of seedlings, leaving only a few to grow to flowering height.

I also dug up most of the tulips and will replant them in the Autumn, discarding the diseased and damaged ones. Later this month I will dig up as many of the daffodils as I can and replant them to better effect for next year. Like the tu;ips they look better when planted in clumps.

The Lilies are coming into bloom and I hope they give as good a show as they did last year.

I am thinking of getting a ladybird house for my garden, I have even found a place that supplies the ladybirds. I would welcome anyones comments or advice on same. I know they are a great natural pest control but I dont want the ladybirds to end up as dinner for any bigger predators !!!

I went to see this beautiful garden on Sunday

This beautiful peaony is almost fully open now.  I hope it is not destroyed by the wind and rain.  Its pretty breezy out there today.  I think I saw the same one on Steno’s site but he has a much bigger clump.  I just put this in last year and only have a couple of flowers.  I hope next year it will look like his as I can’t wait to pick a big bunch.

All that done in the last few days was cleaned the deck and put up the hanging baskets. (must buy more timber to finnish it). I also sowed some seeds for next year, wallflowers, pansy, sweet William, foxlove,hollyhock. Putting photos up of deck and a special one for jacinta!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the first lily this year.  I’ve always loved lilies since I was a small child (even when I had no garden and no interest in gardening at that time).

Sadly, I didn’t plant a single bulb for this summer so I can’t expect many flowers.

 

My zinnias are still somehow surviving!!

I have my cucumber plants in the sunroom and they are hugh now, not the cucumbers though they are tiny, any hints on stunting the plants and making the cucumbers grow.  I did put three plants in pots outside and they have been blown to bits so I think I will leave the indoor ones inside.

Cut the back grass today and stayed away from the bees – two days later my wrist is still swollen and very itchy!

There was much excitement today.

A scuffle even broke out.

You’ve guessed it – first strawberry of the season.

I declared war on aphids today. Well, I at least made a declaration of enmity.

I bought more aphid spray – Bug Clear, to be precise. It is for use on food crops. There is another brand but it is much more dodgy – you need to leave a certain time lapse before re-spraying and you can only apply a certain number of times to the same food crop. I don’t really have organic principals but I have four children and I’d like to keep it that way…

So, I sprayed, using Bug Clear, in the greenhouse. I then took all the potted veg outside and let them sit a few hours and then hosed them over to remove dead or sickly or live aphids. I did the courgettes twice right up close and personal. I cleaned the staging surface with soap before putting the pots back and gave the floor a hard sweep. I also sprayed in the greenhouse border. Now, this is very tricky because I can’t get everywhere as it is so packed with leaves at this stage. But I did the best I could, although it will not be enough.

On a positive note, the Sweet Peppers are forming and you can see the biggest one in the photo. I even have my first Cape Gooseberry forming so that is also exciting. The Aubergines are grand bushy plants but no sign of flowers yet. Had courgettes for dinner again – yum, yum.

Thats It! Enough punishment. Steve and I have been trying to shift more of the soil from our new ‘puddle’ since we got in from work. You could see the showers approaching from nearby areas. We have only got down to one spades depth. Another spade to go before I’m nearly happy with it.

We have called it a night. We can finish it either tomorrow or at the weekend. I’m off. Wahoo. Seems ages since I had a weekend off.

This is the Epiphyllum cooperi that Rita gave me the day we visited. Such a spectacular flower and its smells of melon……….

Today started at 4:30am with it promising to be a good day, my youngest son and his band had to travel up to Dublin to record on the 6am bus, after seeing them off and spending time on learning how to up load photos etc. I planned to get some more work done in the garden before having to teach in the afternoon. Geraniums and varigated ivy eventially got planted into planters and as I worked round to planting out what I had bought in B&Q on Saturday the day started to change sunshine puntuated by heavy downpours. Planting completed I started to teach at 3:30pm and thanked my lucky stars that I had a roof over our heads. It started to rain and the wind became gail force in a flash and then the hailstones that followed for the next 5 minutes left the place white. Luckily it came from the north west so the peony and roses on the south east side of the house missed the brunt of the storm. Rain has continued on and off here all evening- one good side is the lake has risen almost 10cm in the last couple of days, however I hope it soon picks up otherwise plants will surely suffer.

While the morning was good took more photos which I will post once developed.

Not enough time spent in the garden today… The temperature was ok, but it was very blustery and not very pleasant. I should have started digging that border for my problem area but ran out of time. I spent quite a good bit of time planting the seedlings that had been disturbed by our little friend the cat a couple of days ago. All of the seedlings are looking quite sorry so I hope that some of them at least will survive…

Two campanulas are beginning to bloom at the moment. One has large bell shape dark purple flowers (see the June 09 album). I love these big flowers, but the plant is tall and quite susceptible to wind. It got a bit flattened by the bad weather a couple of weeks ago, and I managed to stake some of the flower stems, but in today’s wind, some of them ended up very flat again… The same happened last year, and at the time I said I’d add some support for the plant in future, but I got caught again this year! Anyway, the flowers will still look good I hope.

The second campanula that started to bloom has small star shaped lilac-colour flowers that grow on long stems on the ground. What makes it striking is that when all of the flowers are open, it looks like a purple carpet. The plant looks totally insignificant for most of the year, but for 2-3 weeks in June, it is amazing looking!

And surprise, when I took a look at my orchids today, I noticed what I think might be a flower stem on one of them!

Or is she? have a look at the album.

 

Nearly missed these cute little Spraxis in flower.

The tunnell and greenhouse was given first priority over watering this evening.The beds outside were wet enough.Gave a trim to the middle section of the garden and had a look over the veg area.My friends the slugs are still hanging around i noticed in some areas but maybe they might head off on a summer holiday for good.Took a final walk around the garden and retired at that.Looked over some jobs for the garden tomorrow.

Having learned this evening from the post that i won a 10-issue subscription to the Irish garden Magazine finished the day on a very bright note. 

 

I went to a gardening centre in Naas (yes, the above ad!) to buy a tomato feed for the cucumber plants & a citrus feed for the lemon trees.  I had done a bit of research and discovered I may need citrus feed if I want the trees to have fruits.  It may be a bit late for this year, but we’ll see!

Our indoor cucumber plants look like they’re bred so that they only have female flowers, so we don’t have to worry about nipping male ones.

 

After shopping we went for a walk along the canal with the dog.  It was very nice.