This time last year it was snowing and this year it has been the warmest February day on record! This weekend I was determined to make a dint in my to-do list but I was slowed down on Saturday by a chest infection (it hurt to breathe).
Last week I cleaned out the pond; I also bought some 'sludge bomb' that you drop into the pond and it effectively eats all the excess sludge. Once I got up there this weekend though, I decided that it didn't need it. While the water is still a little murky I could see the lily at the bottom of the pond and so I'm going to leave it for now and see how it goes. The frogs have already started to sing to each other so I'm hoping to see some frog spawn pretty soon and I obviously don't want to mess with the pond once the frogs start spawning. I can keep the sludge bomb for the end of the season when I want to clear the pond again.
I had some leeks in root trainers over the winter. I didn't have room for them in the onion bed but I didn't want them to die off and I thought the root trainers would be a good way to keep them healthy while I was waiting for a bed to be ready for them to go into. I have planted them into the bed that I'm planning to put the carrots into; leeks are a good companion plant for carrots because they're supposed to help to mask the smell of the carrots from the root fly.
I also planted them very deep, which is supposed to help to blanch them; I'm looking at other ways to continue to blanch the stalks as they grown, You can earth them up, much like potatoes, with additional soil as they grow or you can use cardboard/paper tied around the stalks when they're big enough. I am saving toilet rolls for the job and I think I can even pop them over in anticipation of the leeks growing big enough.
I fixed the flag this weekend as well, I love having my England flag flying although it does have a tendency to tangle around the arbour but over the winter it was pulled off of the post and so I needed to take it down and fix it back again. I don't have a proper flag post; I use an old curtain rail and I've stapled the flag to it but it does the job.
I had 3 tree peony's that were delivered as bare root plants and they've just been sitting in the shed for a week. I wanted to get them potted up this weekend but I needed some more compost first. As ever I made up my normal mix of compost, root booster and all season feed. I didn't have any grit or water retaining gel so I didn't include those but I did top dress it with some moss which should help keep the moisture in the pots. The pots smaller than they will eventually end up in but until I decide whether they'll be in pots or in the ground (or even at the allotment or house) the pots are a good size to get them established and will probably be fine in there for the whole season, if not longer. They eventually grow up to around 5' tall and make a really lovely statement piece in the garden.
When I picked up the bags of compost I bought some primula's for the flower bed next to the shed in 85a, I enjoy having this area as a flower bed, it creates a nice space around the sitting area in front of the shed. One of the things I think I'd like to do this year is clear the area in front of the shed and make a bigger seating area. I think I'll need to move the bird feeder to do that but if I have enough matting after using it for the greenhouse, then I think it will be the perfect thing to use to extend out from the flags.
Some of the jobs I have planned for this year include clearing behind the compost bins; I want to cover the area with membrane to reduce the nettles and brambles that grow in that area. Once it is clear I may even be able to put the tree peony's back there or even a fruit tree.
I have no idea how long this nice weather is going to last but I will certainly be making the most of it while it's here and so fingers crossed I can get more done.
Until next time
Happy Gardening x
I love my pond, it was one of the first things I planned to put into my allotment when I got 85a, Mr L bought me it for my birthday and then installed it as a surprise while I was away with work. When I first got it the water went a pea green colour and after trying a few things I got some daphnea from my neighbour which completely cleared it and has kept it clear.
I have a lovely marginal grass, a bullrush type plant, a waterlily and an iris (which has never flowered). Last year I dropped a rock into the pond and while trying to fish it out again I noted 2 things. The first was that the bottom of the pond had quite a lot of silt and dirt and the second was that there were little leech like creatures in that silt that managed to attach themselves to me (yuck!)
I'm pretty sure I've talked about the pond before but just as a recap, my pond does not have fish in it; it is solely a wildlife pond and I've been lucky enough to have both frogs and newts use it. I also have seen dragonflies and various insects. I've had birds and hedgehogs come for a drink and since installing the pond I have seen hardly any full sized slugs on my plot at all.
I genuinely believe that having a pond, if you have room, is the single most beneficial thing you can do for your garden and allotment.
And so to this weekend, I wanted to clear the pond before the frogs started spawning because I knew that once that started it would be another year before I could get it done. I started by taking all of the plants out on Saturday and removing the mini fountain. I genuinely couldn't believe how much they had spread. The grass in the picture above was out of it's pot and the roots where as big as the plant above ground and it was really heavy (it actually turned out that it had grown around a brick that's I'd stood it on!!) One of the things that's really important when you're taking anything out of the pond is putting it on the side to allow anything that needs to be in the water to make their way back in. That was one of the reasons I wanted to get the plants out first because if there's any critters hiding that's where they'd be.
On Sunday I went down to the garden centre and got a pair of gloves so that I could get my hands into the pond without getting eaten by the bugs! I started by taking out the bricks that I'd used to stand plants on and a terracotta pot that I'd used to stand the fountain on. I also bought a mini rubble tub to put the stuff in that I pulled out of the pond.
I then laid on my stomach and reached into the pond and scooped up all of the silt and dropped it straight into the tub. There were 2 frogs in the pond who started to pop up and try to get away from me but of course because I had taken all the plants out they had nowhere to hide! I managed to scoop them out with the net and pop them on the side. I wasn't able to get all the silt out because I couldn't reach all the way to middle but it is definitely better than it was.
I needed to sort out all of the plants, as I've mentioned they had really spread. I have no idea if what I've done is ok or not but I couldn't leave them as they were. I essentially hacked away at them with my secateurs; I snipped off all of the roots that had grown outside of the pot and I removed any excess growth as well so that the roots I had left could support the plant. I managed to split the grass although I still had to throw away more than I kept. I had to do the same with the iris, bullrush and waterlily. I re-potted the iris and waterlily into bigger pots partly so they had more room to grow but also because both of them had managed to grow sideways and so I wanted to straighten them up.
In the picture you can see that all of the stuff I pulled out of the pond I've left on the side and I weighted down the bucket to allow anything in there to climb back into the pond without it all ending up all over the place (or back in the pond!). The water is still like a mud bath but one it settles I'm hoping it will clear again. I do realise the irony of wanting everything to settle when I was trying to get it out but I think that unless I'm prepared to completely empty and scrub it I will always have to put up with some silt in the bottom of the pond; I think I'm going to try and clear it like this once a year to avoid it getting this bad again.
I do want to get another solar fountain and so that will be my next job once everything settles, I've also looked at some stuff to drop in the pond that will allegedly clear sludge so I might try that in the summer (it apparently works better when it's warm).
Until next time
Happy Gardening x
I had 3 tree peony's that were delivered as bare root plants and they've just been sitting in the shed for a week. I wanted to get them potted up this weekend but I needed some more compost first. As ever I made up my normal mix of compost, root booster and all season feed. I didn't have any grit or water retaining gel so I didn't include those but I did top dress it with some moss which should help keep the moisture in the pots. The pots smaller than they will eventually end up in but until I decide whether they'll be in pots or in the ground (or even at the allotment or house) the pots are a good size to get them established and will probably be fine in there for the whole season, if not longer. They eventually grow up to around 5' tall and make a really lovely statement piece in the garden.
