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…
Allotment update 11/2/2018
I made a quick visit to my allotment earlier. The wind was slicing across the very open site and, seeing very little that needed doing urgently, I didn’t stay long. My leeks were a dismal failure; almost all of them produced flower stems. Sown too early seems to be the verdict. Spinach beet is OK,…
Six on Saturday – 10/2/2018
Cornwall is bordered by sea on three sides and all the while that the wind is coming from it, enjoys some protection from extremes of cold and heat. Earlier this week it was coming overland, from east north-east, and it was pretty chilly. Not much was happening in the garden before it turned cold, even…
Six on Saturday – 3/2/2018
My seven weeks in Oz is now, sadly, a fast receding memory. On my last day I did a bit of gardening. The Strelitzia nicolae was getting very tall and leaning against the neighbour's fence. It suckers freely so it's a case of taking out one or two of the tallest stems each year. Sadly…
Six on Saturday – 27/1/2018
Flying home tomorrow. Hey ho, all good things must come to an end. And back to who knows what. I have a fair idea, gleaned from The Propagator and all the other contributors to six on saturday. One. This will definitely be my last post from Australia. Having been here seven weeks I am beginning…
garden ruminations 