A week in my garden - 17.08.2015 - 23.08.2015

Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to spend as much time in the garden this week. The weather hasn’t been great, and I’ve spent more time at work that is really ideal. We also spent the weekend visiting my brother in law, so aside from a little time after we got home this afternoon, the garden has been neglected this weekend. Not that we haven’t had a great weekend, we had a really good time visiting Luke and Andie - plenty of good food, wine and cocktails, board games and minigolf!

Front garden

I did manage to tidy one of the sides of the front garden. I pulled out all of the long grass and the weeds, cut back a few of the euphobia that were growing over the driveway, and cleared as much of the moss from the driveway as possible with a spade. I also finished trimming the hedge on that side, and put some Roundup Gel on the dandelions growing through the drive. It already looks quite a lot better. I also pulled out some brambles as far as I could, but the roots seem pretty impossible to get out. Any advice would be appreciated! I also trimmed one of the bushes on the other side of the garden as far as I could. However, it was pretty windy and without the ladders (which I didn’t want to use in the wind) I couldn’t reach the top, so that still needs to be finished. There’s still quite a bit to do, hopefully over the next couple of weeks, we’ll manage to edge the front lawn, finish trimming the hedges, and get some more Roundup Gel on the dandelions and weeds that don’t come out easily. We have more plans long-term, but they will have to wait a while.

Sweet peas

The sweet peas have continued to bloom. I keep cutting the flowers back, and they just keep coming. 

Beautiful flowers!

I took some to Luke and Andie, and still had even more when we got back today. I have had sweet peas in jugs inside for over a month (not the same ones, obviously), and they just keep on coming. They looks so pretty, and I love their smell (though I don’t think my husband appreciates it as much!). For the cost of the seeds, especially considering I have loads left for the next couple of years, they’ve been more than worth it. They’re so pretty, and they really provide some colour. I love having flowers in the house!

They brighten up the kitchen!

Weeding

As usual, a fair amount of weeding has been done. There is always weeding to do! I am happy enough that I am on top of the weeding in general in the areas that have been worked on (the ‘middle back’ is another story - maybe next year…), so I now don’t really focus on weeding a particular area so much. I mostly just try to weed all areas regularly to keep on top of them. I have tried to do a little more on the steps to the right-hand side of the garden, including bruising then putting Roundup Gel on some mare’s tail (as advised here). Fingers crossed it does the job.

I also managed a trip to the tip this evening after hedge trimming. Our garden bin was stuffed full (luckily, it’s being emptied tomorrow) so I had the hedge cuttings, plus the branches from the tree-behind-the-compost-bin to take. I got there and got them into the garden waste section just in time, as it started pouring down whilst I was still there (but in the car). I managed to avoid getting soaked thankfully.

The weather doesn’t look so good this week, so I’m not sure how much I’ll get out. Hopefully there will be at least some dry weather - I really need to at least scarify the lawns and deadhead the buddleia. That said, I have a lot to do indoors too - I have all of the August bank holiday week off work, and as well as gardening, intend to decorate the living room. That means, stripping wallpaper and sanding woodwork and paint beforehand, so regardless of the weather, it’s going to be a busy week this week. Hopefully not too much additional time will be spent in work, but even if it is, I will just be bearing in mind that I soon have a week off.-

I also treated myself today; I was given a John Lewis voucher for my birthday last November and had only spent a little, so on our way back home we stopped off to have a mooch around the John Lewis at the Trafford Centre. I bought a beautiful propagator set. I will probably still need to plant seeds in little plant pots, as the ones included have no drainage holes, but this is going to keep the side in my kitchen tidier next time I sow some seeds! I can’t wait to use it!

Happy gardening,

Jenny

The week in my garden - 10.08.15-16.08.15

How on earth is it the middle of August already? Where has the time gone? 

I've been away this weekend visiting friends, which was wonderful, but I still managed to get a reasonable amount of garden time in during the week, both before and after work.

Sitting in the garden is incredibly enjoyable at the moment (providing the weather is reasonable). Some parts of the garden look beautiful, and bring me lots of joy. The Crocosmia (lucifer variety) are just stunning. I can't take credit for the wooden sleepers, they were in place when we bought the house. I think they really complete the look though, allowing the lucifer to spill over the top. They bring such a fabulous burst of colour to the garden.

This picture does not do the Crocosmia justice!

Our apple tree is also still full of apples, although they do keep dropping off in the wind. I'm just hoping that a decent number stay on the tree and become ripe so that we can make lots of apple crumble!

This week my husband started digging out the foundations for our second vegetable bed. Last week, he pulled back the membrane that was in place in that area and found a load of bricks underneath, that had foundations themselves! Luckily, his parents were on hand to make a trip down to lend us a pickaxe - and thankfully they then weren't too difficult to remove. Goodness knows how many there are though, thus far we've only removed enough to dig the next lot of foundations!

I've carried on doing a lot of weeding this week, especially on the steps that lead to the back right corner of the garden. I came across quite a few bramble plants (no fruit, just prickly stems in completely the wrong places). I have cut them back but will need to try to dig them out at some point. One evening I also cut back all the euphorbia seed heads, as they had really gone past their best. 

This week I've also spent quite a bit of time cutting up the wood from the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. The thinner bits were chopped into small pieces and went into the compost bin. The wider bits, where possible, have been cut small enough to easily fit into the car. I used the loppers, and it actually felt like quite hard work! That's my exercise for the week :). The bits that are too wide for the loppers are still long, and will need sawing in half so we can get them in the car and take them to the garden waste section of our tip.

This was before it was all chopped up.

This is all that's left of the tree!

I also carried on doing a little hedge trimming, so the left-hand side hedge is pretty much done in the back garden. We have a little more to do in the front garden, and then we need to decide what to do with the leylandii (right-hand side of the back garden). We got a quote for having it cut back professionally, as it's quite tall and we're not sure we'd manage the top, however it seemed pretty expensive. We are going to maybe get some more quotes, and I will probably ask my in-laws for advice as well. I guess it might partly depend on what we do with the clematis, as it's kind of entwined in the leylandii. Maybe that's why it was so expensive.

The other garden task that we achieved this week was treating the lawn. I wrote a post about it here. I rained hard on Friday, so the feed should now be active and hopefully it's improving the lawn as we speak! The week after next I'll need to scarify it, but for now I can leave it to do its job.

We gained a few new plants last weekend when my parents visited, including a couple of begonias. It's nice to have some more pots on the patio, I really think they add something to the garden.

Begonia, in a pot that used to belong to my granny.

Other than that, we have found time to enjoy the sunshine in our garden, including drinking some delicious strawberry fizz that we were given as a wedding present back in March. It does feel like summer is slipping away a little bit already, so I'm trying to make it last as long as possible :).

Obviously the photo has had filters applied as it was instagrammed!

On that note, I'll sign off.

Happy gardening!

Jenny

Trying to improve our lawn

When we moved into our house, getting on for two years ago now, both the back and front lawns were in a horrible state. They were full of dandelions and other weeds, as well as huge amounts of moss. They’re still not great, but with some work, they are slowly improving.

Twice a year, we use feed, weed and moss on our lawn. It’s recommended to do this between April and September, so we try to do it in April (or early May), and then in late August/September. I’ve so far bought the Qualcast version, mostly because it was on offer in Homebase! I tried to find it to provide a link, but even though I bought it earlier this week, it doesn't seem to be available anymore. It's very much like this one from Homebase though (please note that I haven't been paid or compensated for mentioning these companies). Like most similar products though, it comes with an applicator spout so you can just walk back and forth over the lawn and it sprinkles the mini pellet-type-things all over. Once you’ve applied it, you need to leave it (don’t mow the lawn for at least a few days) and if it doesn’t rain within two days, you are supposed to water the lawn so that the feed is activated. Luckily for me, it has rained within two days each time I have applied it, saving me a job! It rained a lot more than I needed today. I just keep telling myself it's good for the garden.

The idea is to then leave it to work for a couple of weeks, and the weeds and moss will slowly blacken off. It’s not very pretty, but at least it means it’s doing its job.

After a couple of weeks, out comes the scarifier (or a rake, if you don’t have a scarifier - we borrowed the machine from my in-laws, who have every garden tool/machine you could ever need). Back and forth I go, taking a break what seems like every minute to empty the bucket contraption that collects the moss the scarifier pulls out. It’s very effective, and has really helped to reduce the moss in our lawns. The downside is that because it pulls out so much moss and so many weeds, our lawns end up looking a little bare for quite a while, until the feed has really worked its magic. If the lawn is also a bit damp, it ends up looking like Glastonbury festival happened on it. 

Bare lawn...but it does grow back eventually.

In between doing that, I also use Round Up Gel on the dandelions as they are a complete pain to get rid of. I inevitably end up killing off a bit of grass around the dandelions, but it’s never too bad. The Round Up Gel is very effective, so it’s worth it.

I have to stress that I don’t ever expect to have a ‘perfect’ lawn, with no blemishes, no weeds, no moss, and perfect grass - unless we buy new turf, that just isn’t going to happen. To be honest, I’m quite okay with that. Our garden isn’t intended as a perfect show garden, but to be a happy, comfortable place - whilst I will continue to work to make it look nice and to remove the bits I don’t want, I also hope that it continues to look natural and not too neat!

I just applied the lawn treatment this week, so in a couple of weeks time the scarifier will be brought out of the garage, used, and then returned to the in-laws so that they can do their lawn!

Happy gardening,

Jenny

A fortnight in my garden - 27.07.15-09.08.15

As usual, more time than intended has elapsed since I last posted. Eventually, I will get better at this (I hope). My goal is to post 'A week in my garden' each weekend, even if I don't manage to write anything else (though fingers crossed I will manage more than that). Due to me not posting last weekend, this week I'm cheating and the round-up covers a whole fortnight!

The first week I was out in the garden quite a lot; before work, after work, at the weekend.

I pruned the cordyline (almost to within an inch of its life). I finally found out where all the snails hang out: in and under the cordyline. I bet they're not going to like it quite so much now that it's lighter and airier!

Cordyline pre pruning

Cordyline post pruning

It looked a bit weird for a while as I was so used to it draping over the wall, but now I definitely think it's a bit improvement. It means it's not encroaching on the rhubarb quite so much!

We also started chopping down the tree thing behind our compost bin. You can kind of see it behind the compost bin in the photo below.

Mostly the picture is of a bare flower bed. But maybe you can see the tree a bit.

By the end of the weekend, I had this much foliage from the tree to get rid of:

Six charity bags full of tree. Very charitable to the garden waste section of the tip!

The rhododendrons were also deadheaded, so they now look nice and tidy. I also cut back the clematis where it was strangling the beautiful acer, and started pulling out some of the herb bennet lurking in various places around the garden. Unfortunately, the more I pulled out, the more I found hiding under other plants! My husband also helped with chopping down the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. Aside from that I did lots of the usual weeding, trying to keep on top of weeds in the veg bed, herb garden and (former) fir tree areas.

This week I haven't done as much gardening, in part due to me having to be at work early all week, and in part because our garden bin was full (and the garage was getting full of the charity bags!). We did manage to do more work on the tree-behind-the-compost-bin, to the extent that it's now pretty small, and you can see the pretty bush (laurel or something similar?).

The remainder of the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. Plus the pretty plant behind.

I also continued to weed out the herb bennet - I think I've got most of it, but I'm guessing there'll be plenty still going to come through. I just need to keep on top of it, which hopefully won't be too difficult now I know where it likes to be!

We also have some horsetail, which is notoriously hard to get rid of. I pulled out what I could, but really I think it was probably a mistake as the roots have broken, so it won't actually get rid of it. I should have read this first - when it starts growing again, I'll cover it in Roundup Gel. I get through a fair amount of Roundup, as I use it on dandelions and dock leaves - weeds which are quite hard to get out, as they have tough, long roots. I like it because I can kill them off without worrying about killing anything else off.  It's especially good for dandelions in lawns (although I do usually end up killing off a little grass, but not much). It takes a while to work, but it does get the weeds gone.

My parents visited this weekend, so my gardening has been limited to a small amount of weeding (plus a trip to the tip in my parents' big car to get rid of the charity bags of garden waste!). The weather has been pretty warm and sunny though, so we have at least spent quite a lot of time in the garden enjoying it. Which is good, because it's also meant I've had a much needed rest (boo early starts for work and restless nights). The parents did bring us a few plants though; a couple of begonias and a stripy tomato plant. Our tomato plants have some baby tomatoes as well - hopefully they will ripen and we will manage to eat them before the birds do!

I think the weather is turning a bit, but whilst it's still warm I'm writing this from outside. I'm hoping that it stays reasonably dry in the evenings this week, as I have a garden to-do list (as always) and a busy weekend next weekend, which won't leave much time for gardening.

Have a wonderful week!

Garden update

Somehow almost two months have passed since I last posted. The absence has mainly been due to being away a lot (work, honeymoon, work), and therefore being pretty busy in the time I've actually been home. 

In between trips, and now that I'm home properly, we've been getting on with the garden. I'll post about all of the different bits of the garden properly with photos, but for now, here's a quick rundown:

Vegetable bed

Today we finally finished constructing the first vegetable bed. It has seemed to take a long time to complete, but eventually we got there. It still needs to be painted (and we need to decide whether to render it first of all), and the wood on the top needs to be stained, but the building work is complete. My in-laws brought down some rubble and we collected some small rocks from our garden to put in the bottom, then added some polystyrene. We then added a number of bags of earth that my in-laws also brought - they had dug some foundations for a feature in their garden and didn't need the earth that they removed. It's not very full yet, but we'll slowly add more earth, plus some ash and compost before we start planting. We're aiming to dig the foundations for bed #2 over the next month.

Apple tree

The apple tree is chock full of apples, so hopefully that means we'll have a good crop this year. Obviously a number will fall in the wind before they're ripe, and some will inevitably be eaten by birds, but fingers crossed we will have plenty to make into apple crumble and put in the freezer to see us through to next year.

Herb garden

The herb garden is now mostly looking quite bare. The grape hyacinths have died back and I've taken most of the stalks out, and since coming back from holiday I've done a lot of weeding in the area. The sweet peas I planted in the herb garden are beautiful, and the tomato plants are flourishing. There are plenty of flowers, however I think really I need to take some of the stalks out to thin them a bit. This weekend I finally dug some holes to put the actual herbs in the herb garden. The rosemary and chives are now sunk into the garden, and today my mother-in-law brought me a bay tree which now needs to join them. This is the area that I really want to start planning.

Fir tree area

Excitingly, the fir trees are no more. My husband sawed out the remainders of the trees, and then dug out the roots with a spade and an axe. There's still one root to be taken out which he's working on, so slowly but surely it is getting there. The main difference it has made is that the garden looks much, much bigger. We can also see the plants behind the (former) fir tree area much better and we now have a new space to plant and do what we want with. For now, we need to take the final root out, remove stones and then just try to keep on top of the weeds. 

Aside from that, I've been weeding, weeding and doing more weeding. I've also dug out a lot of the 'monster plant', collected apples, and pruned various plants including some ivy growing on the back fence.

The next jobs on my list are mostly pruning: I need to cut back our clematis where it's starting to strangle our acer, cut back some other plants (not 100% sure what they are), cut the cordyline back, and top the rowan trees. Other than that, it's a case of keeping on top of the weeding, and starting to dig the foundations for the next vegetable bed.

Next time, I'll post some pictures!

Weekly round-up - 7th June

This week I haven’t managed to spend much time in the garden - I was away for a couple of days for work, yesterday I was busy (also it was incredibly windy) and this morning I was really unwell. That said, I have managed to do a few bits and pieces, and I felt better enough this afternoon to get out (and the sunshine was, and still is, beautiful).

Boat/herb area:

I have tidied this up further. After lifting the paving slabs last weekend, I moved the remaining ones out of the bed this week, and dug over the soil that had been underneath them a little. 

Herb garden/fir tree areas. Look at the beautiful rhododendrons!

As you can see, it still needs a lot of work and much more digging over, but it’s a step forward. I’ve also moved some of the bulbs around the back of the bed. I think I’m going to try to put them all around the edges of the bed. The plan for the herbs is to grow them in pots, then sink the pots into the soil. I’ll use a few of the smaller spare paving slabs for some stepping stones. Of course, these plans may change completely if my husband plans his crazy golf course properly. I also did a bit of weeding in this area and pulled out more grass and the purple flowered geranium type weed that spreads a lot. Whilst doing this, I removed quite a lot of gravel from the flower bed as well. It’s the bane of my life, but I’m trying to look on the positive side - at least we can use it to put in the foundations for the next raised bed.

After Saturday’s wind, the poor sweet pea wigwam was leaning somewhat and not quite as upright as it should have been. The sweet peas were looking a little sorry for themselves, and needed a bit of rescuing. I tried to work out how on earth I could untwist the bamboo canes from the position they’d ended up in, but it was completely futile - I’ve no idea how they got into such a contorted way. This afternoon I cut away all of the twine holding up the sweet peas, and just pulled all of the canes out and started the wigwam again. I pushed them deeper into the ground this time, in the hope of them being more stable, and have placed them slightly closer to the plants - they were slightly far away before. I’ve retied the plants to the canes, and added some additional sticks for extra support. Hopefully they’ll now weather any further crazy winds.

Newly re-erected wigwam.

Sweet pea tied to the cane - fingers crossed it stays supported.

Fir tree area:

I did quite a bit of weeding in this area this week. When getting on with this, I started digging out the monster plant. I was wearing wellies and couldn’t get as much force on the spade as I’d have liked, so next time I’m going out with sturdy trainers on. I also removed some big stones and yet more paving slabs that were under the biggest fir tree. Luckily these were a lot smaller and more liftable than the ones in the boat area, which were huge and tested my strength somewhat. My husband chopped down some more of the tree trunks this morning, so the area is looking even clearer - you can now fully see the beautiful, flowering rhododendrons in the area just behind (you can see this in the first photo best). 

Slowly the trunks are disappearing. Next stage might be an axe. Or maybe a professional tree remover.

Back right area:

I haven’t really written about this area yet - a post about this area is coming soon. At the moment I’m doing very little with it, other than trying to keep on top of the weeds. I’m reluctant to use a weedkilling spray, as I want to be able to plant there if I feel the desire to. It’s therefore just a lot of hard work and squatting! It’s a lot better than last year though, so I at least feel like I’ve achieved something, but there’s still a lot to get out. Some of them I’m not really sure how to get out, so will need to enlist my mother-in-law’s help next time she’s visiting.

Greenhouse:

I’ve planted out the tomato plants that a friend gave me, as they were getting a bit too frustrated in the greenhouse. They were in small plastic cups, and tomatoes need a lot of nutrients so I think they were ready for a bigger area from which to get their plant food. I wasn’t really sure where to put them to have optimal sun and shelter from the wind. Our newly built raised bed would have been perfect, but it’s not ready yet - it needs to be lined then filled with soil. I eventually settled on just next to the sweet peas, as there’s a little wall that provides a little shelter (I hope it will in any case) and they will get plenty of sun. I mixed a lot of sharp sand and compost into the soil and dug it over thoroughly, then put the tomato plants in. I’ve added some canes to help support them. Fingers crossed they take okay there.

I will be overjoyed if these babies actually produce something edible.

Lovely green plastic 'cane' supporting one of the tomato plants.

Along with all of the above, I’ve done some general tidying. Yesterday I loaded all of the chopped down fir tree into the car and drove off to the local tip, where we have a garden waste area. Chopping the branches up beforehand definitely helped, as I was able to get it all in the car in one go. It was bad timing, as the car went in for its service on Friday and the garage gave it a clean and hoover, and of course once a lot of tree had been loaded in and out, there were bits of greenery and wood everywhere. Still, another hoover and it looks nice and clean again! I also chopped up some eucalyptus wood which had been lying around since last summer and put it all in the garden bin, so if nothing else, the garden looks a bit tidier now. Or at least it did until my husband attached the tree trunks with a saw this morning - I’m not complaining though!

Fir Tree Area

Behind the boat area/herb garden, we have another semi-planted area. Firstly, we have a fabulous Cordyline, which is a big impact plant. It’s quite impressive, and I love it’s foliage. I’m a big fan of foliage and often prefer it to flowers. 

Apologies for the picture of the garden wheelie bin. It's full of old bits of the cordyline though, so at least it's relevant.

Secondly, there is what I originally deemed the ‘monster plant’, because we didn’t know what it was and it looked weird. I think my mother-in-law eventually worked it out, but I honestly can’t remember what it is. The leaves are similar to elephant ears, and it has little sprays of prink flowers and knobbly green root things which grow partially above soil level. It was the knobbly roots that made me call it the monster plant. I’m trying to get it out as I don’t really like it all that much, and would rather replace it with something else. On top of that, it must have grown since it was put in as it has knocked a couple of bricks out of the wall it’s next to. Unfortunately there’s some sort of electric cable running near it so we need to be careful when digging it out.

You can see the electric cable in the photo - isn't the plant weird though?!

We also have a few random plants in this area: a rhubarb, some daffodils, some cyclamen and a foxglove - it’s the holding area really. Eventually these will probably be moved, but for now they are quite happy there. We’re in the very early stages of planning what will be done where, so for the moment a holding bed is quite useful. 

Finally, we had three different fir trees. One was pretty small, one was medium height but with thick branches, and the other one was so tall and dense that it overshadowed the garden. We decided pretty early on that we would need to get these out. I’d prefer to have more trees in the world, not fewer, but they were in completely the wrong place. 

You can only really see them in the background in this picture, but the mass expanse of dark green is quite visible.

For Christmas we were given some loppers, so this spring, we set to work. We were careful to only do a little at a time at first. This was partly to make sure we didn’t disturb any birds that might have been nesting (although we were pretty sure there weren’t any in these trees) and partly so we could see the difference gradually, rather than making a fast, drastic change. The idea behind this was was to allow us to work out what we might want to do with the area. 

We took on the smallest tree first. It wasn’t too much trouble to take off the branches and just leave a narrow trunk. There was an immediate difference in the amount of light coming through, so we carried on chopping.

You can see the little stump on the left. Obviously this was taken at a different time of day to the picture above, but you can see where there is light all around in the left-hand side of the picture. 

Next up was the medium height tree. I managed to get a fair amount of this down, however most of the lower branches were too thick to take off with the loppers and required a saw. Luckily, ever since my husband and I moved in together about five years ago, my in-laws have been buying us tools and equipment as birthday and Christmas presents. We now own a selection of saws, so my husband has been working on tree number two, and there are now only a few lower branches left to remove. 

The largest tree was actually less difficult than the middle one. Most of the branches were lopper-friendly, and after a garden session where I may have gone a little overboard and forgotten the ‘a little bit at a time’ plan, half of the tree was down. I ended up driving to the tip twice in one day to put the branches in the garden waste section, as our garden bin was already full. Since then my other half has removed the rest of the branches, as well as half of the trunk, so a lot of progress has been made. 

Sorry for the appalling photography - I took the photo at totally the wrong time of day. You can see how the mass of dark green has mostly gone though. And you can see my pretty purple rhododendron. No-one would have known it was there! I suppose we'll have to paint that odd fence panel now though.

And voila, tree stumps.

I spent a while cutting the tree waste up, so that we can take it to the garden waste section of the local tip sometime this week. It looks a lot neater than it did when my husband was in charge (by his own account he’s good at making a mess!).

The pile of garden waste as left by my husband.

The pile of garden waste after I sorted it. Not that I'm obsessed with making things tidy or anything.

There is so much more light coming through now that the trees are almost gone. It makes the garden look bigger as well, but for me the light is the best thing. The boat area/herb garden had some areas towards the back right that were completely boggy, and which never got any light. Now the soil has started to dry out, and it looks like I will be able to plant in it. 

We still need to take down the trunks, and in all honesty we might need to get someone in to do that for us. The fun bit can now begin though - we get to plan what we want to put in the area. It sounds like I’ll be planning the planting around the crazy golf course, as when I arrived home from work one day last week my husband started to tell me, in all seriousness, where he thought the obstacles, fairways and holes would go. When I thought about it, I figured it does sound quite fun, and will give me some structure to plan the garden around as well. The ‘fir tree area’ will need some height, either from plants or from something ornamental, however it’s become clear that we really need to make sure that the planting doesn’t prevent the light from coming through. 

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to take some time. Better get cracking...