It was in my Six on Saturday post from 28th January this year that I mentioned grafting a few scions of what may be 'Meridian' onto a tree of 'Holstein'. I last looked at them when they were just breaking bud, at which stage all four grafts appeared to have taken. Today I had a…
Author: Jim Stephens
Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast.
I love colour, it cheers me up.
Retired nurseryman.
Six on Saturday – 3/6/2023
I'm getting pretty close to the end of my stored rainwater so I'm really hoping that we'll get some rain in the next week or so. Well established plants are almost all fine still but newly planted and pot grown plants are beginning to struggle. I read on one weather forecast site that the south…
Six on Saturday – 27/5/2023
The switch from wanting it all to happen quicker to wishing you could slam the brakes on and slow it down seems to have been particularly abrupt this year. There is no happy medium because even now I'm both wanting some things to crack on a bit as well as lamenting how quickly other things…
Six on Saturday – 20/5/2023
Can someone tell me, cos I'd really like to know, how you can spend a whole week gardening from dawn till dusk and it's just as big a mess at the end of the week as it was at the beginning. I've pruned, planted, sowed, watered, weeded, shredded, potted, watered; you name it, I've done…
Putting them in the shade.
Nowhere in our garden does more effort go into forcing a quart into a pint pot than in the one corner that is shady. If Sue is never happier than when she's furtling about in her greenhouse full of cacti, I'm at my most content surrounded by greenery in the shade. The greenhouse is her…
Six on Saturday – 13/5/2023
What a lovely day yesterday was. Much gardening was done; progress was made on my allotment and it finally seemed like the 2023 growing season was properly under way. I've been lining things up to plant out, getting things hardened off, deciding where they are going to go. It feels like proper gardening. So, six…
Six on Saturday – 6/5/2023
Lighter evenings are supposed to give us more usable time but I feel I'm running to stand still at the moment. I can't believe how quickly these Saturdays come around. It's all growing like mad out there, Dahlias, Salvias and Cannas all coming up. Slug, weevil and lily beetle patrols will be routine until things…
Six on Saturday – 29/4/2023
Almost a third of the year gone and it hardly seems to have got started. Things are growing but plants like Dahlias and Begonias, that want a bit more warmth, seem to be falling behind. It's probably the same every year but just now I'm only concerned with this year. There's no shortage of things…
Another one bites the dust.
Ever since I took out the leylandii hedge along the edge of the garden - at least twenty years ago - we have had problems with honey fungus. So called because of its honey coloured toadstools, which we have rarely seen, it has taken a steady toll of mainly woody plants, the latest of which…
Six on Saturday – 22/4/2023
Once again, I'm scheduling this post and going out for the day. Rosemoor garden is hosting the RHS National Rhododendron show, with a late Camellia competition thrown in. The weather forecast isn't great, so I probably wouldn't have got a lot done in the garden but there is plenty needing doing. It feels like it's…
garden ruminations 