The pace is picking up. The sun is shining, the flowery stuff is really starting to kick off. I've sowed more seeds, taken the first Fuchsia cuttings and finished chopping down all of last years dead herbaceous growth. In the autumn I sowed lettuce and potted them up in the greenhouse; we've had a couple…
Author: Jim Stephens
Stacks of flowers
Most of the time you can point a camera at a flower, focus in the middle, take the picture and get something acceptable. A wider aperture will blur out the background and the fact that the nearest and furthest points of the flower are slightly blurred won't matter at all. A typical single flower where…
Six on Saturday – 20/2/2021
We're off to get our jabs this morning, it feels almost like a day out, given that we are going to the Wadebridge Showground; twenty miles away, quite an outing. On top of a hill in North Cornwall when there are warnings out for rain and 50mph wind gusts forecast. Quite an outing. It's been…
Six on Saturday – 13/2/2021
The temperature yesterday reached 6.8°C, the warmest for a week, not that it felt remotely warm with the wind trying to go through me. This morning it's trying to rain, not pleasant at 2°C and still blowing. The only gardening I've done this week is armchair gardening. I've been trying to sort out digital photos,…
Just following the science
A month ago I wrote a blog about giving up composting, https://wp.me/p6bCCa-2Ft largely because I had a hunch that what was happening on the compost heap would be better happening in the soil. Today I looked at The Garden Professors™ – Advancing the science of gardening and other stuff since 2009 and there was the…
Six on Saturday – 6/2/2021
Throughout the winter I have struggled to find six things going on in the garden and have toyed with different angles, six gardening books, six tools, six views from a window, six types of rain. Now that the days are lengthening and things are waking up and starting to do their thing, I'm thinking of…
Six on Saturday – 30/1/2021
How time flies when you're doing jigsaw puzzles. January down. Hopefully this year will go better than last but I'm not holding my breath. At least the days are beginning to lengthen and the temperature's up a bit, meaning that a bit got done in the garden this week. One.Scale insect. I never like to…
Six on Saturday – 23/1/2021
Seeking inspiration, I looked back at what I'd posted as sixes in Januaries past. No help there. Walking round the garden didn't help much either. It's cold and wet and dull. Next door have a mini digger in and are starting to do something, so we have a grandstand seat to watch and tut. Anyhow,…
Soil texture
A few years ago I took on an allotment. It was a new site and had been operating only a year when I started; I took over a plot that had proved too much for the first tenant. At the start it had been shallowly ploughed, turning the grass over but not effectively burying it.…
Six on Saturday – 16/1/2021
Having rained all night, it's due to clear into a half decent day. We'll see, at the moment it doesn't look promising. It was forecast so I made sure I had some pictures in the can yesterday. I was thinking I might be able to find half a dozen things flowering even after the cold…