Holy Shroomy Pelargoniums Batman!

I was giving my overwintering/house plants their weekly soak the other evening, when I made a mycological discovery in the pot of one of my pelargoniums.

How the hell did that get there!? Ah well, guess I'm repotting that one then!

Horticultural Careers - Why Not?

There has been a lot in the gardening press recently about the lack of new blood coming into the horticulture field looking for a career. It's all seen as desperately uncool, and being a gardener has been likened by our glorious and esteemed prime minister as being on a similar level to litter picking.

Having said all of that, I suspect from some reading around that I've done over the last few days that the real answer is actually rather simple. Money. Simple as. If people are going to spend time, effort, and hard earned cash on getting themselves a horticultural qualification, put more time and effort into developing their skills, and then go out and put those skills to use making other people's property look nice, they are going to want the effort to be worth it.

Garden Log - February 2013

And so it starts. The first proper session outside for the year, and the beginning of the photographic deluge. The Other Half decided to take That Baby off for some minor galavanting (a trip to the shops and then a visit to the great grandparents) so I took the opportunity to start getting to grips with this years planting.
The main job I wanted to do was to pot on some of the seedlings from the agapanthus seeds I sowed back in November that were pinched from Alfabia, the garden we visited on holiday. That done I also potted up some of the swag I acquired from the mighty Poundland yesterday. I got a load of Oriental poppy roots, some Lupin roots, a bare root rose, and a blueberry bush/root/whatever. These have all been potted up today. I also got some crocosmia 'Lucifer' corns and some gypsophilia roots, but these have yet to be planted. Poundland seem to have an astounding assortment of plants in at the moment. I know that these are not going to be of the greatest provenance, but I'm trying to garden on the ultra-cheap, so they'll do me fine. The main problem I have is that they don't give you the full name of what you're buying. For example, the climbing rose I've just potted up (yeah, I know it could be planted, but the bed where it's going doesn't exist yet) is labelled simply as a "purple climbing rose".