What a change

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Evening slug hunters,
What a change a few days worth of sunshine makes,
Im seeing the verious cherry trees bursting into full bloom, the ribes are smelling nice, the phontinia is in full growth, bulbs bursting open tulip/daff/ muscari,
And the orchard has again woken up, peach in bloom/pear buds getting there, apple the same, plums looking like they’re about to burst open,

I myself have been re-potting cauliflowers from seed compost to a higher graded compost into small pots, also the last of the tomatoe plants have again been re-potted and are now sitting on the top staging in the greenhouse enjoying the sun.

Ive sown 200 small pots of tagets (they’re a small yellow or orange coloured flower “African marigold” i’d sown these about 3 weeks ago and most will be going into the ground in about 2 weeks time,
If ever you want a life times worth of flowers that last all summer until the first sign of frost and free seeds for life (as long as you save the flower heads once the pettles have gone,
Then tagets are the plants for you,
Ive not bought taget seeds for well over 20 years,
all you do is when the plants coming to the end of its flowering life, cut the heads off and leave to dry
once dried place in a tin & put the lid on and store away in a frost free place until spring time,

Take these heads out of your tin and open the seed heads “the long shaped seed will just fall out”

Sow these "long seeds onto a flat composted flower pot “seeds compost” and then use a sieve to gently just about cover the seeds and then water the pot and put it we’re the sun will shine and within a few weeks you’ll have taget plants growing like mad,

These plant in these pots are ideal for inside the greenhouse as they deter green/white fly, it’s natures way of keeping these pest at bay,

But the seeds you still have "and you’ll have tin after tin full can go into the ground once frost has gone, they make both great border edging plants and pot/window box display plants.

As ive said if you want a tried & tested way of having a really nice orange smelling small long lasting summer plant?
Then take my tip and go for tagets,
They are so cost effective to produce you can well afford to give a few pots of fully grown plants.

TIP.

If your re-potting your toms from the seed compost to the pot/compost plant the small tom plant all the way up to their shoulders “thats just under the leave”

By doing it this way the plants grow much faster and stronger stems will appear.

Well folks like a lot of you im finding it hard to get the weeds out of the borders due to the ground having been soaked in the past few weeks, its between the devil and the deep blue sea thing,

If i do try to dig over and then weed ive got half the garden stuck to the weeds rootball, and there again if i wait ! the weeds have grown even bigger!!

One tool ive got for really speeding up the tilthing of the soil is a small machine called a “Mantis” its small enough to get between the shrubs/plants so it can save a lot of time once ive removed the weeds,

After this is done its a case of regular hoe work and the use of the “Mantis” all summer,
What did we ever do before garden machinery came along?

Good gardening to you all.

• 16 Apr, 2013
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