Garden Log - August 2013

Shock horror. A garden log posted in the month that's being written about! You may not see this again for some time...

Everything is looking and smelling fab this month, but there is a definite sense of things reaching a peak and winding down. The ornamental stuff has, for the most part, done better than I could have hoped. The veg on the other hand has been somewhat disappointing. A few strawberries earlier on in the year, and I'm getting a few courgettes and a bit of salad, but still no tomatoes. They're on the plant, but taking forever to ripen. I suspect this is probably down to the soil being a bit crap and nutrient starved. I've been reading about how last years constant deluge will have washed everything out of the soil so I'll have to take some steps to address this once things have died back a bit. My compost heap appears to be doing well, so I should have a good load of mulch to stick down, and the missus and I have been discussing building a raised veg bed in the border under the kitchen window which will allow me to import some good top soil and horse shit. None of this can hurt even if it doesn't improve things (which I doubt will be the case) so we shall see.

Without further ado, here are some pictures!

 

A Spot of Sun

A hive of busy busy

Yesterday I thought spring had sprung. We had a lovely warm afternoon that was actually sunny enough to be working outside in a T-shirt. I got loads done - Lots of potting on of seedlings and putting in some summer bulbs, with a smattering of weeding and trellis building to keep things interesting.

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".

The Peat-Free Diet, by Emma Cooper - A Review

I have been somewhat lax in my blogging duties in the last few weeks. My apologies to Emma for being being a casualty of this and the length of time that it's taken for me to get this post finished. Thanks for giving me the book to review!

Peat free gardening is not a new topic of discussion. It is something that gardeners have been made aware of for several decades now. Some choose to ignore it, possibly pleading ignorance, others will give it their best efforts, and then at the other end of the scale are those who approach the subject with an almost maniacal zeal.
Whilst I applaud the standards of the latter group I'm afraid I probably fall into the middle one. I buy peat free compost, but this is something I have only recently started to make an effort with. I don't however have the time or the money to start demanding that all plants I buy be grown in a completely peat free environment. As far as I'm aware, my local nurseries and garden centres don't do this (I assume it would be advertised as a selling point if they did) and I do feel that supporting those local businesses is important. One of the main issues I've run into when starting to look at peat-free gardening is that a lot of the available compost is total crap. There seems to be a wide range of woody rubbish that's riddled with lumps of plastic, and in one case pieces of glass. Not pleasing. Many gardeners are unlikely to be totally converted until the alternatives are as good as their peat based counterparts. I have started making my own compost, but as I've been on with this gardening lark for less than a year I don't have any ready for use yet.

Garden Log - August Update

This has been a really exciting month for things getting going and loads of fantastic flowers appearing. It's nice to start getting a proper idea of how things are going to develop once the planting ages and gets denser.

Seedlings, Staking, and Nematodes

Note to self. Pot on all seedlings as soon as possible after a true leaf appears to avoid much fiddly separation and probable horrendous root damage.

Overcooked Nigella seedlings

This batch of seedlings was sown with rather unfortunate timing, in as much as they reached point of needing to be pricked out at about the lowest financial point in the month. With over a hundred of them I didn't have anywhere near enough potting space for them, so they've had to wait until I could afford to buy in a load of plant modules. This is done and they're now sitting taking up about a third of my coldframe... Hopefully this is the sort of situation I'll run into less as A) I build up a stock of equipment big enough to handle this volume of seedlings, and B) I learn the hard way to avoid it!


I've been experimenting with different methods of staking. To the inexperienced eye this does seem at first to be a little bit of a black art, but it quickly becomes apparent that it's one of those things that, on a basic level, isn't that hard, but will probably take a few years of experience to become proficient at. I started out on my first batch of plants with just standard garden canes and twine. This does what's required of it, but isn't very elegant or pretty. Hopefully the foliage on the plants concerned will grow in enough to cover it soon.

Ugly staking on Delphiniums

I've since realised that the large supply of apple tree cut-offs that I've been hoarding for burning on our chimnea could be used for a more natural appearance. I've started experimenting with this by attempting to sort of weave the branches together to form a useful structure. It looks a lot more natural, but only time will tell how functional it actually is.

Emerging Gladioli with apple branch staking

Nasturtiums with an apple branch trellis

Apologies for the poor pictures, but it was drizzling and a combination of wanting to not get too wet, and our neighbours already thinking I'm a bit strange without catching me taking pictures of sticks in the rain, drove me to haste.
The other staking tactic I'm going to take is to start acquiring some nice metal ones that look good in their own right. These seem to be very pricey however, so it will be a gradual accumulation.

The third and final subject I wanted to touch on in this post was a thought that was sparked when reading this post on the Bluebell Cottage Gardens and Nursery Blog that talks about peoples attitudes and approaches to organic gardening, and in particular a section in the comments where someone talked about nematodes.
I wouldn't say that I am an organic gardener as such. I don't use chemical sprays or similar, beyond taking some soapy water to the dreaded aphids, but I do have a very damp garden, and the result of this is slugs. Lots of em. I know Monty advises the use of grit around plants as a slug repellent, but to be quite honest, I can't afford that much grit. I have a lot of time for Monty Don - I thoroughly enjoy his writing and programs, and take a lot of inspiration from his gardening style. He does occasionally, however, recommend techniques that basically amount to throwing money at a situation, and this grit advice is an example.
Anyhow, I digress. My chosen slug solution is iron phosphate pellets. The reading on them I've done suggests that they are a good alternative to the standard ones that don't cause as much collateral damage, and they seem to work for me.
This post has been edited since I first published it because I came to the conclusion that what I'd written was drivel. I originally posited that we we didn't know what the long term effects of using nematodes might be, and that we should treat them with caution as a result. Since then I've done some actual reading up on them (as opposed to voicing a totally uninformed opinion) and I have to say I'm pretty sold on the idea. We do know what they do, we know that they're naturally occurring, and we know that should they fail to find enough slugs to feed on then they'll die back to natural levels. Given the amount of plants I've had ravaged by the slimy menace, I intend to give these a try. The Hostas will grow!