Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Heaven: Come into the Garden: Gardening 2022
Let us know how your garden grows! Failures as well as successes are welcome here. We will cheer each other on while we dig in the dirt and trim those deadheads!
Flowers and fruits are a balm to the soul and worth the effort!
Flowers and fruits are a balm to the soul and worth the effort!
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A friend came around yesterday, masked and with gloves, gave me a repotted Lycaste orchid, quite rare, and I am hoping I don't kill it before the week is over. It is either Lycaste aromatica that smells of fresh cinnamon, or Lycaste skinneri alba known as White Nun and the national flower of Guatemala.
Trying not to show my love with too much watering.
Have just checked January - filter gives me 4 things that can be planted all year, a snapdragon, and the sweet peas. Since I know that mid Feb is better for sweet pea seedling survival, and the same is likely for snapdragons, looks like I have an easy planting schedule this month
Walking back in from the car the other day there was a Very large splash from the pond. Surely not a frog? In this weather?
I just have a small balcony and have planted a few bulbs!
In the spring, before the new shoots really get going. 🙂
I need to get a solar pond pump myself - though if I want frogs to breed, I'll have to keep it off in the spring as they prefer their water still.
You’ll be surprised. My outdoor solar lights (movement activated) work even on murky midwinter days. 🙂
My outdoor garden is a bit of a disaster mainly due to all the rain turning the lawn into a jungle. I’ve managed to keep appearances up in the front yard so I don’t feel judged by the neighbours but the back yard is sadly neglected. My embarrassing reason for lawn neglect is that my mower lives in the shed and the shed is dark and scary and I have to psych myself up to go in and get the mower out.
The hedge is in relatively good condition but I am new to hedge care so have no idea if I’m doing the right thing (erm just trimming it when it seems to be the wrong shape)
The two frangipani trees are blooming, which is lovely. They were one of the things that lead me to buy this house.
Meanwhile I still haven’t planted the Panama passionfruit vine or the maroon daisies which I bought in December but I have managed to keep them both alive. I learned that Panama passionfruit are…I’ve forgotten the term… you only need one plant to get fruit… whereas with the other type of passionfruit you need multiple plants.
But there has been a miracle with the potted gardenia. I thought it had died and was about to pull it out of the pot and chuck it when I noticed tiny green buds on the branches. So I repotted it in fresh soil, fertilised it and watered it diligently for a while and behold it has sprung back to life!
We too have frangipani (plumeria?) but they live in giant pots and get trundled in every winter. They are roughly nine feet tall already.
The gardenia is indeed a miracle--lovely.
Some sunny day you need to nerve yourself to drag everything out on to the lawn, brush down the ceiling/walls/floor. Install shelving if not present. Chuck all the corroded and/or unlabelled cans and bottles. Ditto the surplus flower pots. Arrange so that all content is accessible. (I am giving this advice sternly to myself).
My shed has no windows, but it does have the electric light. Possibly a torch kept in or en route?
I have a lawn the size of a postage stamp, and no hay meadow. It is quite tidy at the moment, though.
That's not a shed, it's a garage!
Brief prowl round the garden after dumping world's most disappointing indoor narcissi in the compost. I think I see the first shoots of the winter aconite, but no discernible signs of the snowdrops.
That would scare me too. You sound like a sensible person.
I (sorry @Lots of Yay ) felt a little patronising until I read your second post Though, we have an occasional rat. But he's not going to get me like an Australian nasty might!
Unfortunately, I then checked the tiny bed on the front drive and can’t find any sign of my previously flowering hellebores there. I suspect the exposed aspect and a dominant low growing buddleia has done it for them.
The green waste bin was filled with just the front lawn but she promises me she’ll come back to do the back lawn once the bin is emptied.
I’m a bit worried that I’ve killed the native daisy that my mother gave me a few months ago. If it perks up post watering I’ll give it a bigger pot with some of those water holding crystals in the soil.
Sorry, did I get a little excitable there? It's all in the skip, and the gravel bed underneath is nicely compacted and will be ideal for building on. To my amusement, underneath were three paving slabs, all oriented the same way, in a row - looks as though they were part of the previous garden plan, and just concreted over! I'll use them in my foundations - they're a bit broken up by the kango now.
Currently sitting with me poor 'ole back on a heatpad pondering how the flip I'm going to design the pond... and the froggies will start shagging in a few weeks!
I wanted to do this with it. Well, in the end I did it with an old sink, which was a compromise. It looks funnier with a bigger pump / more flow, than this video. One day I'd like to be more eco and set up an old high-level toilet cistern off the downspout, and 'pull the chain' to actuate the fountain!
The tap looks fun - and the cistern idea even better!
Still too early to take it outside though.
A friend cheerfully informed me that as I'd planted them in very wet soil, just before some very wet weather, the bulbs would all rot. I said they had two chances, I wasn't going to dig them up again, but I fear she may have been right as there's no sign of them.
I also have a Christmas Rose (helleborus albus) which was absolutely glorious this time two years ago but has done very little since and has managed two very scraggly-looking flowers this year. I'm wondering if our very heavy clay soil is to blame and whether it would do better in a tub?
I’d like some more as they are so cheerful on a dull January day.