Gardening days

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Gardening is turning into an addiction for me! During the week, I identified Friday and Saturday to be “gardening days” as the weather was to be good so I had a task list! I’m enjoying being able to sit on the bench on the patio (a wee sun trap) in the morning with a coffee catching up on the GoY blogs! I then decide what needs done (sometimes inspiration coming from the blogs and sometimes a task I’ve already had on the list).

Project Hedgehog
My first job was clearing the mess behind the garage. I think someone has tried to start this off as a compost heap but it never quite made it! This is a photo of the area before I started digging:

I then picked up my trusty spade and started getting on with it! This is the rubbish that I pulled out of the weeds and old compost:

And the final “after” picture:

My mum is giving me some Lilly of the Valley from her garden, my uncle is giving me some wild garlic and granny is giving me bluebells for under the hedge. I know the Lilly of the Valley and garlic spread very easily but that’s what’s needed back here.

As suggested by Snoopdog, I’ve had a look down the verges of the country roads (went for a jog on saturday morning with a friend which was lovely) for the possibility of wild seeds but all I could see was Hogweed and I definitely don’t want any of that! Our jogs are going to be regular so maybe something different will grow later in the summer.

Slug Warz
I’m continuing my battle with the slugs. I couldn’t find nemaslug or Slug Off in the garden centre. My sister is graduating this year in biochemistry and agriculture so I asked her advice about using pellets. She said the slug pellets in my patio containers would be fine since the slugs would die before they reach the ground and the hedgehog is unlikely to go snuffling about in the pots. Also, the hedgehog won’t eat dead slugs and even if it did, the small amount of toxin wouldn’t be enough to kill him… probably it would just give him an upset tummy! So, still not 100% sure about it, I put about 3 or 4 pellets in eat pot. I hear you all gasp in horror :(
However, 6 dead slugs and a snail are now wrapped up in kitchen paper in the bin and all of them were still in the pots when I found them. I didn’t see any on the ground (I know that doesn’t mean they didn’t get there but evidence suggests they die quickly after ingesting the pellets). My plants in the pots are all safe and sound. I didn’t put pellets in the flower bed or up the back of the garage. It’s not that I don’t believe my sister, I’m just a bit uncomfortable using blue toxic looking pellets in my garden! Instead I’m using crushed eggshells and the beer trap as suggested by helpful people on my previous blog post. I caught a couple of slugs in the beer trap this morning so this seems to be working. Hubby is quite happy to drink the rest of the beer so it doesn’t go to waste!

Herbs
I seem to have developed a herb garden in containers on the patio. I didn’t aim for this as is the case with most things in this garden but I think it looks good if I do say so myself!

From left to right: In the first pot is Lemon Balm and Oregano (I may have done the wrong thing putting the Lemon Balm in a pot with another plant). In the second pot is Chives, Parsley and a random Lobellia. The third pot has Thyme Silver and Curry Plant. I love the look of these plants. The eye is drawn to them amid all the green of the other herbs. I’m not entirely convinced that either of them will survive as they like full sun and not much water. In Scotland we have the opposite! But we’ll see. In the fourth pot is Rosemary and the big pot is a Blueberry Bush. There’s a story to this Blueberry Bush (affectionately known in my family as “The Stick”). I will blog about this another day.

The pot after the watering can is Lavender and Lobellia then the next few containers are potatoes. I was a bit late getting the potatoes into their containers. They were chitting in my mum’s conservatory and we all forgot about them! Hopefully I’ll still get a couple of edible tatties…

Potato Row:

Coriander:

I’ve kept the re-potted coriander plant on my doorstep to keep it sheltered. I doubt this little guy will survive as he came from the supermarket and he’ll have been grown under glass so the fact he’s outside now means he won’t be happy. But there’s method in my madness! I’m hoping my coriander plant will run to seed then I can start from scratch so that I have a well weathered coriander plant from the beginning. It’s an experiment that’s maybe a bit advanced for me yet but we’ll see!

Bay Trees

The Bay Tree you can see in the photo is the healthiest one of the 2 that I have. The other one I think may have got frost bitten so I have pruned out the brown/chewed/discoloured leaves and I hope it’ll bounce back.

That’s the activities from this weekend and I hope I didn’t bore you too much with the tour of the patio! I love having a functional section of the garden so that I can actually use it rather that just looking at it.

I’ll leave you with 2 more photos – that of my aquilegias in the flower bed. As with the mint, I’m very pleased with myself that I’ve managed not to kill them :D

• 26 May, 2014
• 9 likes

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