My garden is officially dead....
I bought a soil testing kit at SW2005 and had a go with it today. I followed all instructions carefully and the results are pictured below. I now have scientific proof that my soil:
- has a ph of 5.0 (must be nearly acidic enought to etch glass)
- has a barely registering nitrate level
- has some phosporus - yippee!
- has absolutely no potassium whatsoever.
OK - so no mucking about then - liquid fertiliser in every watering from now on...
Nitrate reading from my veg plot. This could explain a lot...
Soil sample from my border
Emergency plumbing
Yesterday I rammed my garden fork straight through the buried pipe that supplies the water tap at the end of the garden. No excuse -I knew exactly where it was because I buried it. So the water to the polytunnel is off, and I need to figure out how to mend it.
Even more annoyingly, it means digging up the young box hedge that's planted over it. Off to B&Q on a Saturday morning - Oh, joy...
Pink, but not PINK
I've always shied away from pink. Hated it as a child (wasn't expected to wear it so that was OK). Think candyfloss pink, shell-suit pink, old lady's lipstick pink - nothing there I'd like to associate with. But I've lately discovered pinks that I do like and I can live with. See below for two recent discoveries. The rose in particular looks fabulous on these late, twilight summer evenings while all around it has faded into the dusk.
More pink beauties. A David Austin, and I need to find out which one as I'd like more
Geranium sanguineum var. striatum. I can see why this is a favourite - a beautiful clear pink with delicate markings
I did ask for summer..
...and we have it. Over 80C again in bright hot sun. Outside it feels like Florida, or Nice.
The youngest had her final GCSE today and we're all relieved for for her that it's over. Why we still put 16 year olds through this condensed assault-course test of their short term recall, speed writing and emergency time-management skills in this way I really do not now.
First raspberries to make it to the table
Naturally the first handful or three got eaten straight off the plants, but there was a bowlful today and it would have been sheer greed to eat the lot as I picked them. Summer joy.
First bowl of raspberries.
New arrivals
More plants from the ever reliable and very helpful Penlan Perennials - thanks Richard.
3 x geranium sanguineum var. striatum - for me probably
3 x Geranium 'Mary Mottram' for the neighbours, to go under the Pittosporum
4 x Comfrey - Hidcote Pink for attractive composting.
My new arrivals, three for the neighbours and the rest are a summer solstice present to myself!
Rain stopped play
Well as you can see from the graph below we had a huge thunderstorm at 3pm today. I planted up a pretty pittosporum for the neighbours (C&R) this morning, removing an old berberis to make space. Hot work, even for a tough old camel like me - over 29C in the shade. I knew from the crackling on the radio that there was a storm around, but it has been much bigger than I expected. It's still coming and going in fresh waves of black cloud, lightning and heavy showers. Some of the local roads are flooded.
Can't complain for my part, but am a bit worried about Daughter No2 who is in Milton Keynes at an open air Green Day concert. She will either roast or drown, there is no in between today.
Anatomy of a thunderstorm
Four seasons in one week
5 days ago it was so cold I had the pumpkins under winter cloches. Today reached 29.9C in the shade. We went to a family event and the paddling pool came out, partly for fun, but mostly because the children were overheating. Several of my newer plants are wilting in the heat so I've had the hose out. One of the great merits of living in the north west is that there is almost never a problem with the water supply.
In spring, the garden looks fine with its informal look, but now it looks untidy as plants flop and run to seed. I feel a strong urge to redefine the edges and smarten things up in a way I don't bother with earlier in the year. The best thing right now are the roses and hardy geraniums. I bought a single white Eremurus at GW - if it's happy here I'll get more as they will also help fill the summer gap.
A David Austin - I'll have to look up which one.
GW 2005
Had a wonderful, hot and self-indulgent day out at Gardener's World 2005. I especially enjoyed Jo Swift's presentations on garden design - probably the best thing all day. Below is my favourite photo. For all those who said that children should be banned from Chelsea - well, just look at what you're missing.
Colourful and compulsive. All the adults envied the kids that they were allowed in and we weren't.
Perfect weather.... almost
It's 17C, there's a slight breeze and the sky is clear. Only one problem - it's 11pm and pitch black outside.
BUT - I'm off to Gardeners' World live tomorrow so a great day will be had. I will at least be in a garden (or several), just not my own.
If it's not one thing it's another
So, the temperature's improved - up to 20C. Blue skies and fluffy white clouds. But now the wind has picked up - gusts of 20mph in the last hour. The pumpkin cloches have slipped their moorings and are careering across the lawn. The happiest plants are the ones in the polytunnel (or 'polytonal' as I saw printed a few days ago). They're warm, protected from the wind and with a friendly resident frog to eat the slugs. Not a bad life.
Reluctantly, I'm off to the regional temple (The Trafford Centre) to purchase the youngest a leaving-do frock. She hates frock shopping and so do I so it should be fun.... of a sort.
Flippin' freezing...
13th June, it's supposed to be high summer and the thermometer is reading 11.5C, or 52F. The pressure's dropping, wind is rising and it feels like early March outside.
I sowed the courgettes and pumpkins late this year because it was so cool, the've grown slowly and I finally planted them out last weekend. I've now had to cover them up with cloches as the poor things looked utterly miserable in this chill wind.
Can we have some summer - please?
My miserable pumpkins and courgettes in chilly June
'sunlight is the best bleach'
I don't know where I read this quote, but it is apt. 10mins after I posted the picture below it started to rain. I got the message, and cleared the shed. Not all of it, the teetering piles of plant pots can wait, but it's a good start.
I shamed myself into a clear up..
Behind the scenes...
According to my mother, as a teenager I would leave the house for a night out dressed up to the nines, every hair just so. But I would leave behind me a trail of debris, with my bedroom a bombsite and the bathroom in chaos. The pictures below might suggest that I haven't changed much...
Hall of shame 2 - I keep meaning to clear this and put a poly tunnel up.
Hall of shame - inside the shed.
A snapshot of part of the birch tree border after a big end-of-spring clear up.
Valerian - under-rated, easy, colourful, long lasting.
Inspiration - and expenditure
I didn't get as far as Tatton Park - I drove on auto-pilot to Dunham Massey and that was all the inspiration I needed. Wide drifts of Meconopsis Sheldonii with a wisp of white geranium behind and a carpet of pink Persicaria in front. Brilliant. Fabulous clumps of Hosta Sieboldii with leaves the size of elephants' feet, sweeps of maybe 10 different perennial geraniums - a deciduous azalea and beech woodland, Enkianthus campanulata, superb acers. Almost everything is labelled so you can admire and learn at the same time. See below for a close up of Magnolia 'Wilsonii' -it was underplanted very effectively with astrantias.
Brief visit over, I shot off happily in search of Geranium 'Kashmir White' and found it in a nursery I'd driven past loads of times in a very uninspiring spot next to the M6. 2 for £5.00. Half an hour later saw the same in Bents at Leigh for £8.99 each, who didn't have Mme Alfred Carriere in their David Austin rose collection so that will have to wait. I do hate that place - it's not a nursery any more, it's a 'lifestyle zone'.
By the time I got home it was nearly 3pm so just time to plant up my new acquisitions (10 new plants including my first pittosporum - I hope global warming really is happening...). I do spend some money on plants. But I spend next to nothing on handbags, shoes, makeup and clothes so I don't think my plant buying habit makes me a bad person, all things considered.
Magnolia 'Wilsonii' at Dunham Massey
Off to widen the view
June and July are my gardening weak spots. Once I decided that roses, sweet peas and lavender were not just for the elderly, things improved a bit, but I don't really know how to do summer colour. I have a complete horror of summer bedding (something to do with visions of Eastbourne seafront?). Am off to Tatton Park for the day (via my favourite garden, Dunham Massey) to pick up tips.
See below for one of each of all my roses. Not exactly a major collection but I like them all for different reasons.
I think these are (clockwise from L) David Austin's Evelyn, The Times, Dublin Bay, another David Austin but I'm not sure which one, and my climbing Iceberg. By the end of the day I hope to have added Mme Alfred Carriere for the new fence.
One of my top ten - Giant yellow scabious or Cephalaria gigantea. 5ft high but delicate and airy. Easy, reliable and beautiful.
1st June - rain
What does it mean if it rains all day on the first day of June? Probably nothing more than that you get a wet garden. Had lunch in the conservatory and watched a wren flitting between the moss lining in the hanging baskets and the house wall. They have an astonishing ability to hold onto vertical surfaces - more like a bat than a bird.
The moss was not the product of pillage from an Irish hillside, by the way. We raked it up off our lawn. 15C, 6mm of rain so far and still raining, but all is lush and green.
