Egg shells and tea leaves

For those of us who are unable to have a compost heap (and there are few compelling reasons for this, including laziness), I would recommend the shortcut of saving the egg shells and used tea leaves from your weekly consumption.

My grandma used to crush eggshells into her potted roses and I started to do the same last year. Eggshells are rich in calcium, add valuable nutrients to the soil and improve drainage. Strewn around the base of young plants, the sharp edges of broken egg shells also serve as a deterrent for slugs.

Recently, during a spring clean of my kitchen I found an old ceramic teapot that has a glued-up handle making it rather unsuitable for tea, but certainly could serve as a decorative storage for used tea bags in our pantry. Tea leaves break down to provide humus for the soil and they contain trace minerals that are good for plants.

Over the weekend, my tea pot and the egg-shell container were brimming, so I emptied the crushed egg shells around our roses and tore up the tea bags around the base of our peach tree. It is important to crush egg shells as finely as possible so that it breaks down more easily into the soil. Tea bags should be torn as most tea bags in the UK are not made of degradable material.

This weekend was the definite signal that spring is here. There are daffodils everywhere you look around the country and our garden is kicking into gear as well, with blooms of hyacinth and buds of cherry blossom and peach.

We planted three young climbers against the back wall, two yellow honeysuckle and a passion flower, supported by little tepee shaped stakes which should be adequate till we can create a trellis.

Have made first step towards growing our own veg. Sowed seeds for French beans, courgettes, basil, tomatoes, carrot and kale, and a few sunflower seeds too, and have left them to work their magic in little pots on a warm window sill.

To prune, or not to prune

Come Feb-March and I am always left wondering which plants I am meant to prune. I recently came across this rather useful phrase that goes, 'If it flowers after June, then Prune', courtesy Monty Don. The rationale being that these plants flower on new growth and if you don't prune them most of their energy is spent on growing the plant rather than flowering. Also explains why the cherry blossom which flowers in April does not care for a prune! Armed with this piece of wisdom and our secateurs I set off into our garden last weekend. The buddleja went down several notches and the clematis got a bit of a trim too.

Found tender, bronze miscanthus shoots in the front bed so I transferred them to the new bed at the back garden. If they grow anything like the grasses in front they will provide quite a feature. Meanwhile, Mr Macaron gave the barbecue a good scrub down, brought out the geraniums in the troughs and put up the hanging baskets. Felt rather pleased with our efforts and the garden looked cared for after the self-maintennance spell over the winter.

Shopping at a new food market this weekend, we found a packet of bulbs that seemed just the sight for our front bed. Our front bed lies adjacent to our red door and red garage shutter and we wanted to have blooms and foliage in colours that would complement it. So we needed little persuading to buy a pack that said 'bulbs in red mix' and Sunday afternoon saw us planting thirty anemone bulbs and fifteen each of crocusmia and gladioli. The packet says 'summer flowering', not sure if that means summer of 2012 though!

The front bed now has one cherry blossom, two rows of miscanthus, box hedging, a couple of oriental poppies, couple of red roses, heucheras, holly hocks, alpine plants and lots of sedum overlooked by a hanging basket of geranium and sweet peas. Quite the planting scheme if there ever was one!

The packs also came with red dahlia tubers, a species we have had no success with previously. Held back from planting it along with the other bulbs. Plus, there's only so much red our neighbours can take from the front bed!

Wrapped up the Sunday afternoon after a top-up for the bird feeders and spray of Bordeaux mixture for the peach buds. If we are spared the blight of peach leaf curl this year, we should have lots of Peregrine peaches this summer.

Winter colour

Snow, what about the birds

Wonder what happens to the little ground-feeding birds when the ground is carpeted by over six  inches of snow. Any bare space is prime real estate, I read, and finding food is the key challenge for survival.

We had placed around a dozen suet balls in the bird feeders in mid-January. This morning we saw a couple of robins and tits at the bird table, stopping by for the high energy food and a spot of shelter.

Time to place some more food out there.

Sun in the sky you know how I feel

It is still winter, but in a good way!

Still hunkered down, mostly. But did step out to the garden for a bit, to top up the bird food and for some tidying up around the beds.

Trusty hand Bruce came over to help with planting the roses I mentioned in the last post. Planted three bare root roses in ice cold soil, topped with a layer of frost. Lopped off the dried holly hocks stems and dried stems on the sedum.

New sprouts of sedum have grown from the base of the old stems, cute as buttons at this stage.

The warmer days have persuaded the tulips and daffodils bulbs to come up early too, but they will slow down when the weather gets colder come February.

We absolutely have to have the garden looking its best this year, through every season. Have been tipped off that Hunter's Farm is the place to go for some bargains. I saw this flower planted in large troughs in one of the public squares last October and noticed that it has remained in bloom throughout the winter. Definitely the kind of hardy colour we want in our garden. Turns out this is Polyanthus Primula, or the good ol' Primrose, and it is right on top of my shopping list, along with winter jasmine and  honey suckle.

Hunkered down for the winter

We did intend to get out and dig for England over the autumn. I got help for the some of the hard digging and created a new bed at the back of the garden. We could have lots of climbing roses there, I thought. We set off in earnest to the fancy garden centre and before long we had a trolley loaded with bulbs of all sorts, as well as the sedum  have been looking for. At the till, we realised that that we had nearly 200 bulbs of narcissi and tulips, but no  coherent planting scheme. That plus a time-starved week ahead and we decided to we put all the  bulbs back on the shelves with a plan to return the next weekend when we knew which bulbs we needed. Next weekend never came and eventually we missed yet another November with no new bulbs. A right disgrace. Anyway, I can at least share that Spring-Summer 2012 is going to see lots of tulips of the Parrot variety, not in our garden though, but most certainly in a lot of gardens up and down the country. 

The last new addition to our garden were six beautiful sedum with pink blossoms. We just about managed to plant them between days of blustery weather and very wet soil. Sedum are winter hardy and provide a carpet of ground cover, just what we need to fill up the gaps in our front bed. We did pick three bare root roses from David Austin, but they too remained potted over the winter - cannot be a good thing, but hopefully not a crime. 

On a more cheerful note, the warmer than usual November meant that the oriental poppies continued to grow and both plants appear to have established well.

We also bought some cyclamen at the garden centre at a deeply discounted price and the label said it would not last the week. A little TLC, a large pot, indoor placement and a whole month later, the cyclamen are thriving and bringing fabulous colour against the bleak hues of winter. 

Earlier on we had a sunflower bloom from a seed past its expiry date, well, a year or so past its expiry date. Should try my luck with the other seeds next year.

Last night we brought our geraniums indoors at 1.00 am, just before the next major frost. They continued their display well into December, probably confused by the warmer winter as the poppies were.





















Signing off for the year now, with a lot of promises and
plans for the next year.  Hope the birds will be fine over the winter.

Dahlia Triplet

Had to share these iconic giant dahlias! Not from our garden, but from a garden not too far away, currently gracing our kitchen!

ps: Use the skirting board in the picture as a reference to estimate the size of the florets!