Greening up

The broad beans have gone out this week and I am preparing the fencing for the sweet peas and runner beans.The greenhouse and the poly tunnel are now rapidly filling up.I have started the cuttings of pelargoniums and tender plants adding to the pandemonium.
Checking along the borders, the irises are starting into growth and I regret that I did not thin them out last year.I have made a note to attack them with a vengeance later this summer.I have a feeling they would take over if left to their own devices,they always try to head into the lawns ,never the other way.I end up burning a huge pile every few years.I made the mistake of putting them on the compost heap a few years ago and had irises poking up in odd places for years - worse than couch grass - well maybe not! One little job I make sure I do now is to go over all the borders while they are still easy to navigate looking for nettles and brambles and creeping buttercup,which is very bad this year.While they are young and green and the soil is very soft they are easy to get out.There is nothing worse than a proud stand of delphiniums with a great clump of nettles in them or a lovely shrub with a great bramble sticking out of it.They are very difficult to get at later in the summer.It looks like it is going to be very wet for the rest of the week and over Easter so these are pretty urgent tasks before I become a slave to the lawnmower.With the clocks going forward there is more time now,so when I can, I try to do the mowing during the last couple of hours of the day, as it is still very damp until the afternoon.That is in theory,it never works out like that,if the last few summers are a guide it is best to mow whenever you can as it might well rain for days.The the ground is mostly clay so mowing can only be done when it is dry or it looks just awful. 

Vermin ?

This last few weeks I have been wandering around the garden puzzling at the appearance of crocuses and snowdrops in the oddest of places. I have noticed it very occasionally in the past but this year they have been all over the place. When I looked more carefully I realised they were not as random as I first thought,being mostly under the canopy of trees.It dawned on me what was happening.They were being dug up and moved by squirrels. I'm not terribly fond of these little creatures because of the damage they do to the trees. We have lost several trees in the garden that have had their bark stripped off and quite a few others that are stunted and unsightly with horrible bare patches on them. I can live with the small holes they make burying their stores of food. The bulb moving I quite like as it makes the bulb planting look more natural,of course I have not found yet where they are digging the crocuses from so ,no doubt, I will change my mind..They must have been digging in the areas with crocuses looking for nuts and then burying them to dig up later. I hope this is part of digging up nuts and not that they have now got a taste for spring bulbs.With all the freak happenings of global warming nothing would surprise me now.
I never learn. A few weeks ago I sowed a couple of packets of tomato seeds in the greenhouse.The first one "Shirley" came up in a few days but a new one to me "Olivado" did not show.Worrying that I would not have enough I bought another packet "Ailsa Craig" which I have not grown for years. I left the" Olivado" on the greenhouse bench to deal with later.The "Ailsa Craig germinated a few days later and at the same time I noticed that the "Olivado" had now started showing through a good fortnight after I had sown them.How strange. So now even before harvest I have a glut of tomatoes albeit at this stage just plants. I never learn to wait for a while. The same happened last year with courgettes.
This next week is going to be all about preparation. I will get the bean and sweet pea fence and trenches prepared and put the stakes in place for the delphiniums.I know its a little early but it is so much easier at this stage when there is room to manoeuvre. I will also finish the first mowing of the lawns.It was slow going last week as the grass was so straggly and thick with missed leaves. It also takes so much longer at this time of year dodging all the clumps of bulbs in the lawn,and stopping to make notes of plants in the borders to move or split. I try not to get distracted when I am mowing but it is not easy.

Why are we waiting

The sub zero temperatures are continuing way past what can normally be expected for this time of year. This has put seed sowing and even taking cuttings on hold. Jobs are backing up which is very frustrating.Trying to be more positive means I have time to go round the borders and finish off tidying areas and marking perennials that I want to divide this year. The lupins are due to be split up.Last spring was just too wet to get on the ground and it does give me more time to divide the crocosmias that I did not get time to do this autumn. I have the ubiquitous lucifer and citronella a beautiful delicate plant ideal for the front of borders not only for colour but texture and contrast. I quite like the idea of doing a patch with lucifer at the back and citronella at the front.
Of course the dry bright weather has meant that greenhouse work has been a little neglected. I normally spend quite a bit of time taking cuttings of pelargoniums and fuschias for all the containers so I must get on with that this week.I have quite a few dahlias in the green house that I started early so that I could take cuttings to build up stock from all the losses last year.They are now sprouting so another job beckons.

Layers

My size eleven feet have been a distinct disadvantage this week.

One of the joys of working in a established garden for the first time is all the new plants encountered.The garden I have been working on for the past few months is springing into life.The patch that was just bare border a week ago is now a forest of delicate tulip and iris leaves.The climbing roses that were one of my first jobs to prune are now covered in delicate red shoots confirming that I have'nt killed them, even though I took so much away.I have been mulching the borders with the most beautiful compost that I suspect has been rotting for quite some time.Usually mine never gets to this stage as I have already found a use for it.This glorious stuff is mostly leaf mold with gravel mixed in, which makes it perfect to put on a fairly heavy soil.I have also been raking it into the new beds to improve the tilth.Being very light it is easy to scatter amongst the delicate bulbs.To break the job up a little I have been trying to remove as many pesky celandines as possible,they just spread like crazy and one little bulb left and you are back to square one a year later.This work is being carried out near a couple of tree peonies so I am keeping a sharp eye out for their seedlings that often appear now.I have to manoevure carefully as my feet can do untold damage. I was told that the peonies came from Kelways of Langport the superb specialist nursery just down the road. I have not been there for ages - a trip is imminent! When I first went, I was amazed at the variety of colours and just how easy they are to grow.At my first garden we had a huge one that had to be cut down each year as it was right at the front of the border.At first I was nervous of doing this but the more I cut it down the more it flourished. In fact I found that if you left them they do have a tendency to get leggy and not flower as much.They also appreciate a decent mulch to keep the moisture content round their roots more constant. The seedlings take ages to grow on but the results,when flowering, although brief, are rewarding.
As I am working my way through these borders I am wondering what else will appear in the next few weeks that my feet are now hovering over.