GARDENER'S WORD

Last week I took possession of a Tomato Growbag Growhouse by Gardman and while it is serving its purpose and the reinforced cover seems strong, there are what I consider to be design faults.  1. I don't know what purpose the two metal mesh trays that are placed (loosely)at the base of the Growhouse are supposed to serve.  They don't cover the width of the base and so there is a wide space not covered by mesh trays which bow under the weight of a Growbag and pots so the metal actually touches the ground. They don't seem to particularly strengthen the base of the Growhouse when in position either, I don't think. 2. While there are two hooks attached to the plastic cover at the back, from which you can secure the Growhouse to a fence or something, I am totally unconvinced that they would last in situations where it can get very windy. As you can see below, I have secured my Growhouse to my fence using twine. 3. There are three reinforced holes in th...

While mooching around the garden centre this morning, as mentioned in my previous post where I said I had bought Ipomoea Sweet Caroline Green , I noticed that they had a clearance section with things going at half price.  I don't know about you but I often find that the things that garden centres are selling off as clearance are either diseased, out of shape and beyond rescuing, or have given up the ghost altogether.  But I found a little treasure today: Cyrtomium fortunei.  Now, I don't think I've mentioned before but I love ferns, it's the memories of happy times that they conjure up, they stimulate the senses.  I remember them as swaying green borders on shady paths in shady areas of parks where the fragrance of the damp ground rises up and you can smell the earth.  When I see a glorious fern, this is what I think of.  Of course, some ferns can turn into absolute monsters reaching many feet high but any I choose has to keep within the limited confines of...

While at the garden centre this morning, just to get a tomato growbag, I mooched.  Mooching around is always a mistake.  You tell yourself you'll just have a little look in case you've forgotten something vital - as if there is ever anything really vital - and then you spot something you haven't seen before, or spot something you have always wanted, or spot something you have had in the past and wish to have again.  Ipomoea Sweet Caroline is something I have never had or seen before.  Unfortunately it is only an annual but I had to have it.  I visualised it adorning my marble table (the begonia will have to find somewhere else to hang out, if that is the case) or maybe the step by the door, or some other place that needs a dash of brilliance and interesting shapes because that is what Ipomoea Sweet Caroline Green has.  Apparently, the Sweet Caroline range comes in other colours.  Fancy! Ipomoea Sweet Caroline Green Ipomoea Sweet Caroline Green l...

The May blossoms ( Crataegus monogyna, or Common Hawthorn) are most definitely blooming as well as the Japanese flowering cherries, the apple blossoms, and so on.  I noticed that as I crawled along for a while in heavy traffic today after visiting my favourite café and the RHS centre in Harlow Carr.   It's time too, considering that in two days it will be June!  (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus_monogyna   There's always one tree on my way home from Harlow Carr, close to a road on a busy dual carriageway in Eccleshill, Bradford, that fascinates me and I've never yet been able to identify it.  It has the most perfect lollipop shape and I think it is a kind of Sorbus although it is not the common Mountain Ash, Sorbus aucuparia, as it has the wrong leaf shape.  This is the first time I have seen it in bloom and it is covered in lovely white blossoms against bluish-grey rather rounded leaves.  Another tree that I saw and looking r...

What a day yesterday.   When you think you might have a lazy day of it, you always see something that needs doing, don't you?  At least I do.  By the time early evening came around, I was too pooped to pant.  My head was thumping and not because of the sunshine.  To put the new Tomato Growhouse in place, the mini-greenhouse had to come down, be dismantled.  The aging hyacinths were taking up the freestanding trough and I wanted to plant strawberries in that.  So, I removed the hyacinths, repotted them in big pots, watered them (disturbing the roots as little as possible), and put the strawberries in their place.  (Exhausted bulbs, as you probably know, are replenished by the action of sunlight on the leaves, photosynthesis, so that the bulbs will have the energy to produce flowers again next year.   I managed to get five of the ever fruiting (also known as perpetual or ever-bearing) strawberr...

Two great things happened today.  First, the weather was fabulous and I managed to relax on the garden swing for a little while at least.  At least until the Gardman 'Tomato Growbag Growhouse' arrived via Charles Direct from Amazon .  I was impressed that it arrived within 2 days of ordering.  I was also pleased that it was very easy to erect with no missing parts to fret about.   I need to get a growbag now to place in the bottom and am awaiting the special Growbag Pots which I ordered at the same time as the Growhouse.   When I think about it, it seems an awful lot of fuss and expense to grow tomatoes if they turn out to be as pathetic as last year's pathetic efforts but I am hoping that the Growhouse will work magic and that I will have fabulous crops.  Although some of the tomatoes available in the shops now, with all the different varieties, there is nothing better than picking your own produce.  ...

This time last year, 23 May 2012, my loganberry vine was in full bloom .  This time, 24 May 2013, there is not one single, solitary, flower-bud forming that I can see.  It faces approximately south-east.  The Polka raspberry , which faces south-west, is full of nice, fat, developing buds.   Polka gets early morning sun from the east and then it is shaded by the shed for a short while until the sun comes around and shines on it again and it faces the sun right until it goes down in the west in the evening.  The loganberry gets sun a little later than Polka due to neighbouring trees, then loses sun earlier in the evening.  All to do with rooftops and open spaces causing shadow.   Polka raspberry 16 May 2013 I was watching the televised annual Chelsea Flower Show  (RHS link) this year and one of the exhibitors was saying how everyone had had a difficult year because plants were so far behind due to lack of sun ...

The weather has been mercurial today.  Sunshine, rain, wind and a hailstorm that threatened to smash the hanging baskets to bits and would have if I hadn't brought them in.  My head can cope with bouncing hailstones far better than begonias and bacopa.  It was a surprise storm, that's for sure.  If you click on the photo you can see hailstones on the lawn and the stuff lashing down.   Hailstones on my garden   Fortunately, my three tomato plants - Alicante, Italian Plum, and Gardeners' Delight - are in the mini-greenhouse so didn't get a hammering but they are getting too big to fit in that narrow space so I have ordered a special 'Tomato Growbag Growhouse with Heavy Duty Reinforced Cover'.   No doubt the wind will try to blow it into the next county but I will give it a try.  I can always tie it to the fence and anchor it down with rocks if needs be.  The heavy duty cover should be able to withstand our weather; at leas...

Not satisfied with simply having hanging baskets dangling from the rear wall of my home, and troughs under east and south facing windows, I wanted something to put into a corner in the small porch at my front door.  I always think my doorway looks so stark.  Funnily enough, I came across just the thing the other day while mooching around the garden centre: there were cone shaped containers that would fit into a 90 degree angle, there were containers that would fit around a 90 degree angle, and small, semi-circular 'hayracks'.  I bought two of the 'cones' to fit into corners at my front door and a 16" hayrack. I've actually planted them with trailing 'double burgundy' pelargoniums and white bacopa and attached them to the walls already.  I just have to watch out for frost at night.  When the plants fill out a bit, I'll take photos and post them here. I really did like the idea of the containers that wrapped around a 90 degree...

 It's only 16 days since I bought three different tomato plants: Alicante, Italian Plum, and Gardener's Delight .  They soon outgrew their original little pots and I put them into bigger ones, as you can see below.  On sunny but windy days I was still able to protect them in the mini-greenhouse, top deck.  I bring them in at night and they have been growing quite nicely, and rapidly.  In fact, they started to get rather tall and needed staking so, today, I put them into big pots (bottom image) which will be where they remain.  I plan to get the pelargoniums out of the mini-greenhouse very shortly and try a little experiment.  If I remove the wire shelves from the mini-greenhouse then I would think that at least two tomato plants could be stood on the bottom of the greenhouse and grow up past the shelf slats.  It's pointless, I think, my trying to grow Italian Plum and Gardener's Delight completely outdoors.  I understand that Alicante mi...

At last!   I have found what I was looking for.  While I love watching the birds eating from my birdfeeder, which is suspended from my washing line at the top of the garden, I have become sick and tired of sweeping up the seed husks and digging out seeds which have been dropped into my tubs and pots and germinated.  There's grass, ryegrass I think, everywhere, not to mention baby sunflowers.  Yesterday I found a tray which attaches to the bottom of the feeder and is held in place by a large plastic screw.  It has holes in the tray for any rain water to drain out of and already, even though I only attached it yesterday, it is full of husks and seeds.  What a relief that it is doing its job.  See what a mess the birds make? I was thrilled the day before yesterday to see a group of about five Greenfinches eating from my birdfeeder and fluttering around the trees overhanging my garden.  The flash of brilliant yellow along their sides...

While gardeners expect hardy herbaceous plants to keep coming up year after year, it is always a pleasure to see them fulfil that promise after a rather harsh winter.  Brunera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' is four times the size it was when I planted it last July .   The flowers are abundant and so like Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis).  Click on the images for a closer look, please. Brunera Macrophylla 'Jack Frost' Brunera Macrophylla 'Jack Frost' I am even more pleased to see that a plant called Lynchis coronaria Occulata has put on such a mound of healthy growth promising a crown of glorious carmine flowers this year.  I bought it from a garden centre in one of those little pots, really cheaply, and look at it now.  It is planted in such a place that I never had high expectations but, apparently, they like heat and lack of water and not too rich soil.  Well, it got it - perhaps not the heat - but it is planted in a narrow bit of border c...

While we have a lovely sunny day here today in West Yorkshire, it is kicking up a storm out there and now and then sleet-like rain lashes down.  It's bitterly cold.  Driving home from the supermarket today there was big empty trash cans hurtling (yes, hurtling) down the road and just missing the traffic. I noticed when I got home that the lovely free-standing trough of yellow hyacinths has taken a battering.  The individual little star-like flowers have coped well with the strong wind but the over all flowers have keeled over and looked pathetic.  They are a lot paler than they were when they first opened.  I'd be pale too if I had to tolerate that wind bashing me around for hours on end.  I have cut the flowers and brought them in so that they can fill my home with their perfume.  You have to be careful with hyacinths though, if you didn't know.  I didn't know until a couple of years ago when a garden centre had a sign up war...

I know it is far too risky to be planting up my garden trough at this time, what with the weather being very breezy and rather cold with lashings of rain just to make sure no one thinks they can have a barbeque.  But I decided to do it.  I've been in and out with the plants like a cuckoo out of a clock, taking them out during the day, bringing them back in at night, and it's not as if it is freezing and I see no forecast, at this point, of a frost.  I decided I would risk it and I can always pin some bubble-wrap over the trough if the weather gets treacherous.  White and blue bacopas; a Fuchsia Heidi Ann, and a burgundy coloured trailing pelargonium.  I was going to experiment and plant the tuberous begonia that grew in the trough last year.  It's a peachy/pink colour but the truth is that while it has been waiting to be planted out, it has already become quite large in its little pot and had to be repotted.  I think it will be a good idea even...

I have a recess by my front door, just a small recess where the door is set back a couple of feet, and on either side of the door there is a space of about one foot.  That little recess annoys me.  I always think it lacks something, something green and growing and wonderful.  It's a south-facing door but even though there is a slight recess, it can get blustery on blustery days; and there are plenty of those.  At the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Centre, where I visited today, it was suggested that I grow a clematis.  Well, clematis are okay but they tend to be picky plants, wanting their heads in the sun and their roots in the shade, and plant them deep enough, and this and that.  Now, in my back garden, on the north facing fence, I have a Jasmine Officinale which tolerates full sun or partial shade.  It gets both.  It is growing in a rather rubbish bit of soil, right up against the fence by the shed, facing winds and God knows what, and al...

For two years I have been looking for a particular type of cherry tree at the RHS Garden Centre and today I found it.  I wanted a sweet cherry, self-fertile, a dwarf tree that could stand being planted in a pot.  They had just the one in stock and it's a lovely shape: Prunus Avium 'Stella'.  It's a Gisela 5 which means it will not grow into a big, or even medium-sized, tree.  Even if it never provides a single cherry, and it might take a while, the flowers are lovely.      As it can be quite windy much of the time where I live, I bought a frost-proof 'lifetime guaranteed' 'Yorkshire Flowerpots' terracotta pot by Naylor's for the weight so that the tree won't blow over all the time.  'Yorkshire Flowerpots' by Naylor's ( http://www.naylor.co.uk/gardenware-products/ ) Prunus Avium 'Stella' is supposed to achieve a height of about 10-13ft and already it is almost 6ft so 10ft isn't going to seem massive.  Th...

I mentioned the other day that I had bought three tomato plants: Alicante, Italian Plum, and Gardeners Delight.  My tomatoes will have to be grown outside as I have no greenhouse as such, only a mini-greenhouse, and their success depends very much on the weather as much as my care.  I will give them as sheltered a sunny spot as I can find.  These three varieties, Alicante, Italian Plum and Gardeners Delight, are not the usual Tumbling Toms that I have grown in the past but will grow tall and upright.  I don't think Gro Bags are deep enough for tomatoes and so mine will go in large pots embedded in Gro Bags.  See clip below by Monty Don.  When growing tomatoes like this you really need to pinch out the side-shoots that jut out between the stem and a leaf.  If you don't then you end up with this massive, almost uncontrollable, bush that is not easily tied in and supported.   Tomato side shoots between main stem and leaf joint Tomato si...

I popped down to my local gardening centre today for more white bacopa.  While I have already bought a number of trays to use in four hanging baskets, I find them so useful that I had to have more to plant in the troughs at the sunny side and the shady side of the house and perhaps a tub or two.  They tolerate sun and partial shade, seem unfussy, and just keep on flowering and flowering right through until the hardest frost kills them.  I've never, in the years I have grown them, seen a sign of aphids or any other pests troubling and spoiling them.  Today I bought two blue ones which were in individual pots and so a bit more expensive and I want those to punctuate colour in the shady trough under the kitchen window.  It really is a lovely violet blue.  I wonder if they will be just as trouble free as the white.  I spotted some trailing geraniums while mooching around the garden centre, pushing a trolley full of white and blue bacopa.  I've ne...

I posted the other day about the tulips I have growing in my garden, 'Apricot Beauty', Fosteriana 'Orange Emperor' and 'Yokohama'.  I said that I thought Apricot Beauty was more pink than apricot coloured and that it might change with age.  Well, it has.  It is still mostly a pink but it now has a soft raspberry and peachy colour.  Actually, I am still not convinced that the suppliers haven't put the wrong bulbs in the Apricot Beauty package.  If you look at other photographs on the net, the don't look like this.  So we might have an imposter here.  Orange Emperor has also changed, picking up a yellow at it's base.  They really are quite beautiful.  It's a cloudy day today and I took photographs while the tulip flowered were cupped and closed.  Tulip 'Apricot Beauty' opening in sunshine Tulip 'Apricot Beauty' Tulip 'Apricot Beauty' taken on a dull day Tulip 'Orange Emperor' taken in sunshine ...

While I always think that tulips look much prettier when they are cupped and 'tulip'-shaped, rather than when they open out for the sun, I do think that their reproductive organs are fascinating.  Unfortunately, the bees that visit my garden don't seem to find them fascinating at all.  They seem to ignore them.