"in the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer" Potting shed chat continues here

[funnyperson]

So as agreed (by 2 other people!) I have started this thread for spring gardeners follwing on from the previous thread : Welcome one and all. experts and novices alike and draw up your chairs and join in discussion on all things garden related (and even not garden related)

Yes agree, amazing people, amazing Monty, voiceover improving slightly. Loved Noah and his parents and grandparents and the front community garden. Those bbc researchers do a good job.

Daphne with yellowing leaves may need nutrients or epsom salts according to my internet researches.

Mulched one of the beds after the drizzle and before the big rain.

Got given lots of plastic boxes by a hoarder so don't have to go out and buy seed trays on easter sunday when everything is closed anyway and can sow lots of seeds. Very happy with this.

Seasons are playing silly beggars here. A cactus orchid that usually blooms in early winter has been and gone already. A slipper orchid I divided last year, and is usually seen in bloom from the comfort of the front room window, all toasty warm while it's cold outside in the deep mid winter has put out flowers, and it's 19 outside.

For info, spring is March 1st; winter, June 1st, spring September 1st and summer December 1st. They like it tidy down under. Hang on, that sounded a bit rude:o

All this got me tearing around feeding all the orchids and pushing them into the sun.

On the veggie front I've sown broad beans, snow peas and daikon. And breathe.

Those orchids sound well looked after echt!

My balearica euroatar orchid is flowering its socks off indoors. I had a look at the roots of all of them after the Gardeners World masterclass and think they are probably OK

The plastic boxes have been just the thing, they are 3-4 ins deep with drainage holes in the bottom and everything. Probably had strawberries from the market in Praise hoarding little old ladies.

So this morning I mixed up some compost with perlite and sowed seeds in 11 of the boxes: Salvia patens, angelica, anthrecis sylvestris, calendula, cornflower snowman, verbena bonariensis and heartsease.

I dont sieve the compost just like I don't sieve flour when baking scones, but I rubbed it well with light fingers and decompacted it so it was nice and crumbly and that seemed to help the texture. I wasn't quite sure how much compost to put on top of the seeds when sown and so sprinkled about half a cm worth and patted it all down lightly as Monty seems to do only he has a wooden patter which is very neat.

I didn't soak my seeds before sowing , though I do with sweet pea seeds. What does every one else do?

Also, how thinly do you sow them? I sowed about 12 seeds in each box.

Also, do you water from above with the sprinkler on the watering can or do you put them in a shallow tray of water to soak water up from below?

Searabbit my Edgeworthia is flourishing but hasnt flowered yet. I think they need sun. The one at Wisley is very lovely when in flower. It is just by the entrance as you go into the garden.

Despite telling myself that I am absolutely not buying anymore plants, I have just,ordered 3 Bishop of York Dahlias. I wil not, I will not I will not buy anything else this year.

I have killed more Bishops than someone in Midsomer Murders! But I do so love them.

I have never owned one. I actually prefer the leaves to the flowers. I have a spot where I think they will be ok. I am going to keep them in posts rather than the ground I think.

I am a bit gung- ho with seeds. I tend to just fill a pot with ordinary multi use compost, sprinkle the seeds on, then either push them gently under the soil if they are largish, or sprinkle a bit more compost on top if small. Then watered with a spray attachment on my watering can. Cover with either a plastic bag, lid, or sheet of plastic until they are germinated. Then leave open. No soaking, even of sweet pea seeds .
Today has been a bit heavy duty. DH and I needed to move a tree peony seedling, which sprung up near my back garage door. Its been there 4 years now...it was a little large, and attacked you getting through the door. That done, while on a roll , we then decided to split a large clump of aster laevis Calliope, which has really thickened up a lot. I knew where a spare clump was going, and the biggest bit back in the hole, but I now have another 5 pretty large clumps sat in a wheelbarrow, awaiting me after my cup of coffee - and its started to rain.

After I pruned my forsythia last year I used two pruned branches to support another plant. Just chucked them in to some rubbish soil. Hey ho... I have two new flowering forsythia. That never would have happened if I had followed the cuttings book.

I just divided my Fargesia murielae. I feel like I've been through a war. It took two spades, a pruning saw, 2 hours and a LOT of swearing.

Genius idea about using a wormery to heat a greenhouse Searabbit!

Crikey shove -I am impressed. It's DH who gets to do jobs like that in our house. I can see why the plants are so expensive. It's not the growing but the dividing!

I'm pretty gung ho with HHA/perennial seeds too - just sow and cover lightly: this year I am using seed compost but I usually use multi-purpose. I use Wilko plastic cells (re-washed each year) for larger seeds to save on pricking out, and old Waitrose tomato trays with holes made with a hot skewer in the bottom for smaller seeds. The tomato trays are just the right size to fit 6 in a seed tray, and still hold more than enough seedlings.

There was a good example of seed sowing by Frances Tophill on Gardeners World on the TV today. I am pleased they have recruited her. She is really very good on 'love your garden' but I've always been unhappy at the way she is filmed by ITV to come across as Alan Titchmarsh's pretty sidekick even though he does know a lot about gardening and I suppose she was serving a sort of tv apprenticeship. I really liked the way her brains and beauty and gardening expertise came across today. I hope the BBC offer her a proper contract because Carol Klein, amazing though she is, cant go on forever and Rachel de Thame isn't really up to the job.

More and more of the hellebores are flowering still, in my garden, and the squills, primroses, forgetme nots and daffs are all in flower. Tulips are coming up. The clematis are all putting on new growth. What is flowering in your gardens?

In the centre of London the Magnolias are over already but round here they and the cherry trees are yet to flower. The warm weather has woken up the herbaceous plants which are pushing through, where I thought nothing grew!
It will be soon time to take cuttings.

Ammi majus and visnaga have germinated!

I'm saving GW for tomorrow- I don't know Frances Tophill, so look forward to seeing her. I have the same types of flowers out, funny, plus snowflake- that has had flowers on since early January. They are about to stop - but still ! Also all my old previous years' hyacinths that I buy for inside scent in January are flowering. I bung in the whole pot of 3 & usually 2 survive. Such gorgeous blues.

One of our neighbours' magnificent magnolia is flowering and doesn't seem to have been affected by any of the frosts we've had. Its glorious. Off to meet friends near Basingstoke tomorrow - taking in a NT garden or two.

The Forsythia that I stole from my son, when I was minding his plants during a house move is flowering. Not as well as it flowered in his garden though. Maybe that is my punishment. . I have four small Acers that I bough cheaply last year and they are doing really well. Our large Acer, that we were worried about during the winter is slowly coming back to life.

All the clematis are romping away, and our prunus is just showing tiny flowers. My next door neighbour has magnificent purple and blue hibiscus which tower over my fence. I can see them swelling nicely. She was a lovely old lady with the most amazing green fingers. She died last year and seeing her garden neglected by her son is heart breaking.

Oh Querky I know just what you mean about seeing a once loved garden left to fail .It's very affecting ,death by a thousand cuts .

We have a neighbours garden like that ,neglected and now vandalise .Plants removed and bark smothered everywhere with a couple od acers poking through .A tree with all the branches removed on one side to display fairy lights .Containers with a single small box ,unwatered and now yellow .

But they're young and foolish/have different tastes I suppose .And I must learn to be tolerant .

Hellebores in full glory ,Forsythia just coming out, along with Kerria and flowering currant, Viburnum Tinus , Mahonia, Amelanchier just the merest shimmer of purple pink . Chinodoxa in the pot containing my (deciduous) azalea. Lots of primroses, daffodils, tulips, anemones, variegated dead nettle, muscari and a lovely dwarf hebe with purple pink leaves ( I know its not a flower) I also have an unknown in my garden, bought off death row, no information with it. ( If I didn't know better I would say its a heather, its in flower now, but I garden on chalk, and its looking far too healthy, though it is in a new bed with a lot of mulch and extra compost.)
Should really be down at my allotment this morning, but its raining, so at least it is doing some good for all the plants DH and I dug up , split and planted earlier this week

Should mention my dead nettle is looking lovely with it's pretty yellow flowers against green and silver leaves. My OH, for some obscure reason, dislikes it. So, after flowering, I yank it out. Little does he know that it then doubles it spread every year to compensate. He shakes his head and wonders why I can't get rid of it.

I have a camellias, black currant, the first couple of tulips, daffodils, primroses, azalea, Iberis, bluebells, hellebores, one snakes head fritillary, a heather.

DH and DS are try to put up the last section of the garden set thing I bought end of last summer, much consternation as the bag of bolts etc have vanished.

If they don't turn up in a minute then I'm fairly confident they have just taken them to the charity shop by accident earlier this afternoon...

Phew. I just managed to have a tidying-up session in the garden before the thunder started (although it's not yet raining).

I've put some of the winter casualties in the compost bin, where I see a frog has taken up residence and is (I hope) living on a sumptuous diet of slugs. DH helped me (man)personhandle the new cover onto the pop-up greenhouse and I transferred some tulips into empty troughs. However, I then undid all this good work by aiming for what I thought was the dead stem of last year's dahlia left in its pot, but picked the wrong stem and so truncated a cheiranthus bicolor that was just on the point of flowering, Oh woe is me!

Oh no Maud!

I moved a few things today, sowed some vegetables and put up my pea structure - very Heath Robinson - 4 spaced-out bamboo poles with Wilko wire netting tied on. It works well, and normally looks ok but that's because it's usually end-on: this year it's across the garden so its wonkiness shows up. Oops.

I also have some wallflowers out, along with forget me nots, pink dead nettle and Corydalis ochroleuca, and a single snake's head fritillery. All the rest were destroyed last year by lily beetle. I thought I saw one of the little devils today but it may have been a ladybird - there were loads of them out, and they were more orange than red.

Oh no maud sort of thing I'd do!

I have spent all weekend emptying out the compost bin- (8 wheel barrows) and distributing it on the beds. It was actually Dh's job but he has man flu and I was impatient. I feel quite accomplished!

I had to google dead nettle I have a pink version that I keep pulling from the path - I hope that isn't causing it to multiply.

Well done on the compost distribution, Geoff!

I do feel a chump, on a par with the occasion when I chopped through my iPod wire when pruning. I had meant to say, too, that one of my pots of lilies has already been chewed by lily beetles, and I crushed six of the little monsters yesterday, so they're definitely about.

The yellow deadnettle is lamium galeobdolon ("archangel"). It is one of many things my mama gave me when I started planting this garden and now rather regret. The leaves and flowers are both very pretty, but it's so vigorous that it attempts to take over the world and I have to pull out years of it every year.

Yards of it ...