Sunday, 17 June 2018

17th June 2018 - Flowers and more flowers

Well it's been a couple of weeks since I last put my thoughts to paper (or screen) and so I have a few things to catch you up on, but they mostly seem to be about the flowers in my plot...

I have a Shirley Temple peony and I think that last time I mentioned that it had loads of buds; they started to open, looking and smelling amazing.  I love the fluffyness of them, prior to buying this one I'd only ever seen red peony's before but the pure white flower of this really pops in the bed.  I have some spiral supports that help to keep the flowers from flopping over.  The idea is that you put a stake in the middle of the plant and then twist the spiral around the stems.  Unfortunately I didn't put a long enough stake in this year and whilst I had supported the stems the plant put on a growth spurt a few days before we had a wind and rain storm.  When I went back to my plot all of the flowers had flopped over and a lot of them had simply been blown to bits all over the bed!  I rescued as many as I could and I've brought them home to enjoy them for a few more days.  The smell when you walk into the room is lovely.  I also quite like that the vase only has the peony's in it without any foliage or other flowers; it does make a bit of a statement.

Next to Shirley Temple is Lady Emma Hamilton, again  beautifully scented and a gorgeous flower.  Last year it got black spot and was very unhappy after I moved it from under the arch so it didn't flower.  This year I bought some Sulpher Rose, which is designed to stop black spot and it's obviously worked because not only do I have a flower already there are also lots of buds ready to bloom.  I think you can see that the spray hasn't really helped with the powdery mildew which appears to have started to bloom on the leaves, which is a bit frustrating.

As you know I have had various problems with pigeons and squirrels on my plot.  I like to feed the birds but of course that attracts the squirrels and pigeons and other bigger birds.  In fact when I've looked at the footage from my wildlife camera it's often filled with big birds all around my feeders.  I did have 1 squirrel proof feeder but when everything was stolen from my plot they took that too so I've been a bit reticent to buy another.  After shoo-ing away pigeons regularly I decided to bite the bullet and buy a couple anyway but I've actually run a chain through them and fastened them to the arch; it doesn't look brilliant but the little birds seem to like landing on it and (weirdly) hanging upside down from it.  It also means that gives me a little piece of mind that they aren't going to be stolen - although it's mad that people will actually steal bird feeders for goodness sake!

Some of you may remember from last year that I had an old bathroom sink that I had planted up.  This year I decided to use succulents, which I've not been particularly successful with before, to try and not kill them I used 1 part compost to 2 parts gravel and then mulched with gravel.  They're currently looking very happy so fingers crossed they stay that way!

I think it looks really pretty and although I don't know what they're all called but the pink flowers are absolutely gorgeous; I've never had one happy enough to flower before so I'm hoping this is a good sign.  I would quite like to make a stand for it and put it into 86a somewhere, maybe on the side of the shed so that it looks like a proper sink but filled with plants :-)

Just behind the sink growing on the fence is a honeysuckle which honestly is a bit leggy and has never flowered, I was considering removing it but this year it has flowered and surprisingly to me the flowers are yellow (I thought they were pink!)  Strangely it doesn't seem to have a strong scent so I'm still considering removing it but it's quite pretty, although I'm going to look at pruning it to get a better spread of flowers and leaves on the plant.  

I still haven't done any more work on 86a because I want to really let the membrane kill off as many of the perennial weeds on the plot as I can.  I have a long list, in my bullet journal, of jobs to do.  I am considering putting beds into the plot, even though I'm not planning to fill them yet, so that it's very clear what my plans are when we do the next inspection.  I have a shed in bits that I haven't been able to put up because I'm struggling to get flags for a base.  I do however have some matting that is usually used on car-parks that I could use, although Mr L doesn't think it will work I can't see why it won't so that's what I'm going to do!

Finally and just for interest, I had a dahlia in a pot next to my polytunnel that I had completely forgotten about over the winter and so it thought I'd probably killed it off.  As you know dahlia should be dug up and left to dry out naturally before packing into dry sand and storing in a cool, frost-free place.  This winter was pretty cold and we had a lot of snow, right into spring but somehow the tubers have not only survived but have started to grow again.  They will obviously be behind others that have been protected and grown properly but this is a really beautiful flower so I'm really glad it survived and I'll have to make sure that I look after it at the end of the season; if for no other reason than I'm pretty sure the tubers will need splitting this year.

It's that's time of year where everything is planted, I've been really rubbish at weeding along the fence-line and paths this year so that needs to be on my list of jobs to do in the next week or so because I simply have no excuse for not doing it!  Instead I've been busy doing fun thinks like making pyramids for my clematis to climb up; I used 3 bamboo sticks and tied a piece of garden twine at the bottom and wrapped it around them until I got to the top and then did a wrap to make it look nice.  I forgot to take a picture but I also used a terracotta reservoir in each of the pots that are really lovely; it's funny that they're so lovely because most of it is underground.  They are from  Wilko's and only £3.25 each, I use things like this a lot, especially in hanging baskets.  These ones are a bit big for hanging baskets but brilliant for bigger pots.

https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-hanging-basket-reservoir/p/0447645

I have 3 new clematis that are now all planted and will hopefully have a fabulous pyramid for them to climb.  I hope you're all doing interesting projects now that everything is planted out.

Until next time, happy gardening x

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