29th April 2018 - Harrogate Flower Show

It was the Harrogate Flower Show this weekend and Mr L had bought me tickets for my birthday; so 6 months on and off me and my allotment neighbour went for a fun-packed day of looking at the show gardens and generally shopping and wishing we could afford some of the amazing products on show.

My two favourite show gardens were the hospice garden which was beautifully planted in silvers, whites and purples.  There were 3 silver ball water features, one on each side of the bench and one at the entrance.  I'm a great believer in having water in a garden, it's so calming and as this garden will be moved to the hospice I can imagine it will be a very restful place to be at a hugely difficult time for people.

The other garden that I loved was the Tranquillity garden, mostly because of the Yorkshire Rose made out of the stones at the end of the pathway.  I do like the back arbour and fencing though and I could absolutely imagine sitting there with a good book and a glass of wine!

I have never been to a flower show before so it was a very new experience for me.  Some of the exhibitors had some amazing products.  Luckily I didn't have my credit card or I might have bought a very expensive fountain and got into a lot of trouble from Mr L!!  There seemed to be an agreement on prices because overall I'd say that most of the plants were consistently priced across the whole show.  We did get some Himalayan blue poppies in small pots and there were only £5 for 2, all of the others were bigger and £6.50 each.  I've already potted mine in a 9cm pot and given them some all season feed so hopefully they'll soon catch up to the bigger plants.  We also found a stall selling willow wands; these were lengths of willow that you literally just push into the ground and they'll grow like a standard.  They looked really great and I bought 3 wands with the intention to have them as a feature in my garden or maybe in the allotment.  If they are going to be in the allotment I'll have to think about how to secure the pot.  

Moving on to today we brought all of our purchases back to the allotment.  I decided that the strawberry bed, which hasn't really been very successful needed to be cleared and then I can use it as a second flower bed.  I took all of the strawberries out and then sorted through them all and kept anything that I thought would be viable with a view to pot them up for now until a new strawberry bed is ready in the new plot.  I still have a bucket full of plants that I didn't manage to pot up because I ran out of compost so I'm hoping they'll survive for a few days until I get back up there again in the week.  Strawberries are very resilient so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  I might even pop some into some hanging baskets as well as pots.

I'm going to have loads of sunflowers this year (I planted a packet of dwarf sunspot sunflowers thinking they wouldn't all germinate and they've all come up) so this bed will be a really good place for them because it's a lovely sunny bed.  I've also got plenty of blackball cornflower and some blue cornflower too.  I'm also hoping that my nigella will germinate because they're beautiful flowers.  The purpose of these flower beds are to bring the pollinators into my plot but they're also lovely to look at so I'm looking forward to enjoying them as well.  I want to make sure I get a good variety of flowers I can cut for the house as well as those that are attractive to pollinators and I'm hoping to get plenty that have a good scent to them as well.


Speaking of which, I bought a really big phlox which is called Clouds of Perfume and is absolutely beautiful and smells amazing.  I'm not 100% sure where it's going to go yet but I know that I'll find the perfect spot for it and my initial thought is for it to be somewhere that I'll brush by it to release the scent.

I also bought some little narcissus for the existing flower bed.  They're both unusual varieties and I thought they'd add some lovely colour to the bed and because they've got tiny flowers they're really very pretty.  The other purchase that I'm deciding where to put is a wooden wind chime that is really pretty.  At the moment I've put it into the polytunnel because even though it was an absolute bargain I don't want it to be stolen.  

I did a video tour of the polytunnel last week that I've been struggling to upload so watch this space (albeit that there's even more in there now!)

Until next time then 
Happy Gardening x

22nd April 2018 - Sowing seeds and Spring Flowers

After a few weeks of horrible weather it was very sunny and warm yesterday and I wasn't able to go to the allotment because Littlest L had her semi-final match over in Wetherby.  It was a really hard match but she managed to score 7 goals and they went through to the final on a 7-1 result.  I couldn't be more proud of her; then today we went to Garforth for her induction and measuring up for her new kit for York City Development Centre.  The coach talked about how impressed he's been with her so far so fingers crossed this is the start of things to come.

I did manage to get up to the plot for an hour this afternoon, I didn't manage to get to 87a but I'm happy to get 86a tidied and sorted before I really get stuck in on 87a.  It's such a funny feeling looking across the path and knowing that it's mine!  I do want to think about whether it's worth putting gates in the side of both plots so I can jump between the two easily.  I know it sounds lazy but the main path is so muddy that it's actually quite difficult to get between the two.  I'm not going to talk too much about 87a until I start working on it so that's all I'm going to say about it for now.

Spring time is my favourite time of the year, all of the spring flowers are starting to bloom and the weather is starting to warm up.  Last week I sowed lots of seeds and I was delighted that a few of them had germinated this week.  It's still a bit cold (in the unheated polytunnel) for the pumpkins and tomatoes but they're starting to come along.

The flower bed is really starting to look great.  Last year I planted a second peony but it didn't grow at all and I thought it had died but this year it's growing and it looks really strong and healthy.  I'm really looking forward to seeing it flower.  All of the spring flowers are growing really well.  There's loads of grape hyacinth that I actually forgot I'd planted.  I have a lovely group of tulips and I just planted some English Bluebells; I have bluebells near the pond but I saw some at the garden centre and I bought them on a whim.  It would be lovely to have them spread across the bed.  I also planted some sweet rocket, it's apparently really nicely fragrant in the evening so I'm looking forward to that.

The Hellebore's are also still putting on a good show, there's a small one at the back of the flower bed but in the planting table there are 3 that have gone absolutely nuts!  I can't help but wonder if they're happier when they have their roots restricted - does anyone know if that's true?

I've also got a couple of pots of lilies that seem to be growing well.  They're both oriental lilies and so it will be interesting to see how they compare.  The smaller pot are the lilies from last year; they performed well last year and so I'm hoping they do the same again this year.  My long term plan is to plant them into a bed on 87a but in the mean time I'll keep enjoying them in their pots.  In the bigger pot I have some new bulbs and I've also planted freesia's into the same plot so hopefully I'll get a great display.

I am a little worried about my new bleeding hearts.  I have 3 plants in pots and they didn't look very happy today.  I've just read that they prefer partial or full shade so I need to move them but they looked quite dried out so I might need to plant them in open ground soon rather than keeping them in pots.  I'll keep you posted with their success or failure!

I did try to do a video tour of 86a today but it cut off halfway through so I'll have to do it another time.  I'm up there on Tuesday to show a plot so if the light is still good I might try again.

Until next time then - happy gardening :-)

5th April 2018 - Winter is never ending

This year has been a nightmare so far!  Winter seems to never be going away - every time I thought it was improving it would snow again!  It snowed on 2nd April or goodness sake.  I did still manage to get up to the plot for a little bit of tidying but I still feel like I'm behind with everything - especially my new plot!

Looking at 85a to start with though, I have installed a wildlife camera after my plot was robbed (I know, closing the door after the horse has bolted) and whilst thankfully I haven't had any more problems I have had some photos of my plot when I'm not there.  It's amazing how many pigeons and rooks come to the plot and I definitely need to work out how to stop them from eating all the food on the bird feeders!


On the few days in between the snow I found that my hellebores were flowering and that the frogs were busy in the pond.  I now have a big ball of frogspawn which fingers crossed will give me lots of new frogs later in the year.  I also noticed today that both peony plants were starting to grow - last year only one of them grew so I'm surprised and very happy to see the second one starting to grow - hopefully we'll see flowers on it this year.  The original peony has lovely white flowers and I've used a twister plant support that I bought from QVC (product code 514104); they're really clever because you just gather the stems into the twister and it supports the stems without damaging them - I'll try and get a picture when it's flowering.  I've just popped a pyramid shaped topiary form over the second peony but I'll probably swap it out for another twister support before it starts to flower.

Some of the jobs I've done so far this year is the pruning of the raspberries; they are autumn fruiting so need to be cut down to the ground in early spring.  I've pruned the berries in the fruit-cage and I pruned the grape vine in the polytunnel.  I still need to finish tidying the polytunnel and the shed but all of the beds are looking good and ready to go once the soil heats up.

In the new plot (86a) I've strimmed the whole plot but haven't managed to get it covered yet.  There are boards pushed into the ground that I can't get out so I need Mr L to come and help me, they also hammered metal stakes into the ground that need to be removed if we can manage it.  I also want to remove all of the current beds so that I can start again from scratch.  My plan is to cover the whole plot with weed membrane and then I'm going to build the beds and cut the membrane out from inside.  I will take photos or maybe do a video when I get started properly with it.

Today on 86a however I planted an apple tree at the entrance.  It was a tree that's been given to me by another plot holder and I've had it in a big bucket in the shed for a few days but today I was able to get it planted.  It's slightly late to be moving apple trees but even though it's been dug up and moved it had loads of buds so you never know we might even get some blossom and apples this year.  I also lightly pruned any branches that were crossing.

I'm hoping to get back up to the plot again this week before I go back to work but who knows what the weather will do in the next few days, so until next time - Happy Gardening :-)