I’m into my fifth year of recording seed sowing dates for both veg and flowers. It gets a bit more patchy at the pricking off stage and worse still for planting out. I thought it would tell me how far behind I am this year, but it actually tells me very little. It feels like…
Author: Jim Stephens
Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast.
I love colour, it cheers me up.
Retired nurseryman.
Six on Saturday – 24/3/2018
Has to be said that when I opened the cupboard of horticultural delights for this SoS it was looking pretty bare. It's a good thing that hopes, dreams and disasters are admissible because that's what's on offer from me this week. I'm counting on everybody else's contributions, linked from The Propagator, for an uplift. One. Cuttings;…
Six on Saturday – 17/3/2018
Here we go again, six on saturday under the cosh of the weather; imminent rather than recent. Checking heaters and moving things about is the order of the day. One. Camellia ‘Annette Carol’. This has long been one of my absolute favourites.. I cut the bush in my garden down last year so it only…
Six on Saturday – 10/3/2018
I have nothing further to say about last week. I'm moving on, as is my garden. So, six things scraped together from the wreckage for my contribution to The Propagator's Six on Saturday meme. The non-UK contributors are going to have to do the heavy lifting this week methinks. One. I wonder how many weeks…
Six on Saturday – 3/3/2018
Snow is rare enough in Cornwall but temperatures of -4°C by day are pretty much unheard of. There will be a price exacted for growing plants that are at the border of hardiness, though what that price will be will not become clear for a while. Some things look dead and are, some look dead but…
Drawing a simple garden plan.
I suppose in this day and age I should be doing a You Tube video, but I’m too old for that. Many of us want a reasonably accurate map of our gardens and end up with something that falls short. Here is a fairly simple method which will produce quite an accurate map. You will…
I just want to know what it is…
I have a garden of my own, I volunteer one day a week in a local park and I have one gardening “job” where I help out with a garden the owners of which are finding it hard to cope with. Occasionally in my own garden I get annoyed that I can’t remember the name of something.…
Six on Saturday – 24/2/2018
Brrrr! One. The sound of chainsaws nearby on Monday morning put me in a bit of a panic. Turned out that one of our neighbours had decided to have the large oak between him and my next door neighbour down. I reported on his mutilation of it back in September. I can't really say that…
Apple growing, a cautionary tale.
I have an allotment. On it is a large fruit cage, taking up a third of the plot and in which I grow, reasonably successfully, soft fruit. I have raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and red currants. The allotment rules don’t allow me to plant trees in the ground, so I am unable to plant…
Six on Saturday – 17/2/2018
OMG, it's sunny! Gotta do something! Frosty weather is not conducive to things moving forward in a garden; they stay the same or go backwards. Still, it's amazing how resilient some things are, which is just as well given the requirement to come up with half a dozen performers each week. It has to get easier…
garden ruminations 