GARDENER'S WORD

Last Saturday, 21 October 2017, Storm Brian followed Storm Ophelia and left my garden unscathed, thankfully.  It mashed the few Polka raspberries that were on the cane, but that's no great loss.  Not so lucky for many, especially in Wales and on the west coast of the UK where the sea crashed onto land adding to devastation caused by wind and flooding.  Stormy weather often brings interesting skies here on the Pennines of West Yorkshire and I had to take a photo of this yesterday morning.  I used my Canon EOS for this one and the image has not been edited in any way whatsoever.  Glorious colour, I think, against a conifer and trees (now devoid of leaves).  Also the birds were out in force.  No doubt glad to have survived and singing their little heads off!   See image below.  It always amazes me how, in high winds, tiny birds managed to sit on the bird feeders and eat.  Why don't they blow away? Sunrise on 23 October 2017, over ne...

I always find it difficult to cut my garden's roses to bring indoors.  For one thing, my roses ( Wild Eve and New Dawn ) don't always have stems suitable for cutting and making a nice display in a vase.  For another thing, the flowers last an awful lot longer when left in the garden unless a storm comes along and even then they often just go with the flow and weather the weather.  Today, mooching in a Marks and Spencers store, I bought yellow and red long-stemmed roses, half price, with a sell by today's date.  I am hoping they will last as long as the dark red ones which I bought over two weeks ago for half price.  There's a trick to making them last...  Yellow and Red roses from Marks and Spencer ...Every few days, I cut an inch of so off the bottom of the stems of my cut flowers (any cut flowers).  Cutting the stem at a very sharp angle exposes a larger area for water to be draw up to the flower's head.  I use flower food which often...

There's definitely a chill in the air this morning, foggy too, and for me that's a reminder that frosty nights and days are on the way.  Winter!  Under my living room window I grow a trough of pelargoniums (often called geraniums) which I plant each spring.  Pelargoniums originally come from South Africa, I understand, and they are not fully hardy.  Certainly they are not hardy enough to cope with the harsh winter sub-zero weather that we can get here on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire.  They don't like to be frozen or waterlogged.  They like sunshine and warmth (a bit like me really).  So, the other day I gently dug them out of the trough and planted them into pots and placed them under the shelter of my garden room's overhanging roof.  They'll be happy enough there for a little while longer, facing south-west, and when the weather becomes harsh (and I expect it will) I can pop them inside the unheated garden ro...

As the year winds down into winter, so do I.  I'm no winter gardener (I hibernate) and there is so much that needs doing while the weather is still mild.  As lots of gardening work all at once can be rather overfacing (not getting any younger, you know) I have to do it little by little and what does not get done, well, does not get done!  The weather has been strange across the UK; episodes of sun giving relief, downpours of rain causing flooding, and winds that create havoc for many on the roads and elsewhere.  While we in the UK are doing better than many poor souls across the world right now, coping with wars and disasters, we did get downgraded Hurricane Ophelia swinging east across the Atlantic a couple of days ago.  She devastated areas of Ireland, then followed that by smashing into the UK's west coast causing loss of life (3 people) in Wales.  When storm Ophelia arrived where I live, high on the Pennines of West Yorkshire, the wind was sti...

In the early spring of 2016 I bought and tried to grow a Crassula ovata  sometimes known as a Jade or Money Tree/Plant.  I failed miserably.  So did the plant.  It was not happy in my home and I never could work out whether I was not watering it enough, watering it too much, if it was too hot, too cold, not enough light, whatever.  It kept drooping and after a long while of pandering to it, I chucked it onto the garden and chopped it into the soil.  Done with that!  This year, in July, I bought another (after all, in a previous garden in the 1980s , I had grown a magnificent one in the conservatory) and by that time I had my new but unheated garden room built and wondered if a Crassula ovata might fare better there.  It has.  It has almost doubled its number of leaves since buying it.  Crassula ovata - 01 October 2017 The label says: Crassula ovata (Money Plant) prefers a light position with temperatures of betw...