Hobbies and Crafts

Von that is interesting, not sure that I would be brave enough to try it with petunias, maybe before we go away for a month! Chelsea chop petunias????

Maryanna Oh dear and lupins are such a pain to grow. I noticed yesterday that OH has taken the pruning a bit far with my variagated holly. When I challeneged him he said, yes, he was thinking it hadn't gone to plan. Just hope it eventually grows back :-(

sounds as if your pound shop buys are doing well. not so mine, no flowers on the gladioli so far and the unknown bulbs are leaves so far too.

We have had quite a lot of cherry tomatoes so far and also cucumbers. I also replanted lettuce as mine bolted while we were away.

I am so pleased with the garden this year. You can see for yourselves on the blog if you look. :-D

Quick update, my Freesias have produced about a dozen flower stems in varying colours, not bad but I planted about forty bulbs.

My £ shop Lilies are gorgeous, all colours, will deff. get some more for next year.

My Calla lilies are out, white, pink and yellow and I gave in to temptation and bought a bright red Canna.

Went to Homebase earlier and got a steel bucket type contaner with rope handles, filled with purple Petunias, Surfinia and Verbena for a fiver.

My Tuberose seems to be sending up its first flower stalk, am very excited.

We have picked three courgettes !!!!

We had one ripe tomato but the wee one scoffed it.

Runner beans and Broccoli will be ready in a week or so.

Have planted some more lettuce as the last lot bolted. I get those containers of mixed lettuce 99p in the Supermarket and separate them out, get at least a dozen plants and you can just cut and come again, they last longer than when left in the container.

Himself cut the Forsythia back, did his usual trick, poor thing looks very sorry for itself. He raked up all the branches and proudly showed me his efforts. He had only gone and raked up my last surviving home grown Lupin !!!! He denied all knowledge, said it hadn't been there, ( it was half an hour earlier when I watered it ) I found it in the green waste bag. Have replanted it but it looks a bit worse for wear and droopy.


M. :-)

Ann
I was watching a programme that was giving you tips about plant care whilst you were away on holiday.
Most of them were naturally about watering but another tip was to give your petunias a good cut before you went away then they would flower again.
Not quite what you want but maybe a cut now and again won't harm them and save constant dead heading.
My personal preference is only for the fragrant ones so I don't usually grow them.
Take care
Von

I have a love hate relationship with petunias. In the baskets and three of the tubs we have the Surfina variety which grows large quite rapidly. I love their colours and they brighten the garden but hate the dead heading and, because they are so prolific there is a lot of dead heading to do. Every year I say 'no more', but here we are again, another year with petunias. :-D :-S

OH has been working hard out in the garden the past two days so I thought I would take some updated photos. Those are now on my photo blog.

Will have to look out for Twynings after eight. Really don't know what varieties OH grows as he has kept them a few years and always always loses labels. He also grows sweet peas, sometimes more successfully than others, this years are just about to flower and seem to be growing well. He usually, because of lack of space, grows them in tubs but this year he has them in the garden. A favourite of ours is Beaujolais but really I love them all particualarly the strong scented. The only thing I don't like is when the leaves go mildew.

I did have a new Cosmos this year a different shaped flower, almost trumpet shaped pale pink inside dark maroon pink outer rim, but it doesn't look very good at the moment, looks like it will die, flowered well to start with then the buds died before flowering. :-(

Twynings After Eight is a lovely variety. I fell in love with the similar Joe Swift and have grown it for a few years now. I also grow the rather wacky Rebecca's World dahlia which I got on special offer years ago and I have manged to keep the tubers going. I mix them in a border with white hydrangeas and cosmos and so far the slugs seem to have missed them. Tried a new cosmos this year - Rubenza - which starts off a rich burgundy red and fades to a softer shade as it ages.

Anyone else grow sweet peas? My father grew them for years and I grow a number of varieties each year and am still searching for my favourite mix. My sense of smell is not good so have to reply on others to rate their scent. :-)

We had a few small dahlias with very dark, almost black leaves, but we left them behind when we moved as I felt we couldn't bring everything with us. I remember one was called Twyning's After Eight but can't remember what the other one was. I wouldn't mind getting a couple for pots.

We were out today in an area we don't know very well when we came across a large garden centre that we didn't know. So we had to stop for a look didn't we? Definitely wouldn't buy anything though. Famous last words! We came out with a load of low growing and small flowered petunias in a dark purple and white and a few pots of nemesias in pink and white. And I don't even like petunias much! But the colours were just right to replace the violas that are just going over and as they are fairly low growing with a smaller flower I think they will be a good viola replacement.

I have a very pretty pale blue dwarf agapanthus just come in to bloom and it looks so attractive in a pot in front of the pots with the tall ones in that I am now going on a hunt to see if I kept a note of the name of it so I can look for some more.

All in all, a good week for the garden

:-D

EDIT: Found my agapanthus labels. My tall ones are unnamed but I have a deep blue fairly short one called Lilliput and my little pale blue dwarf one is called Streamline.

OH digs his dahlias up and puts the tubers in the garage, seems to work, there are a couple of huge orange ones out at the moment.

We have potatoes growing in bags and large containers, carrots and lettuce and salad leaves in troughs and beans in the garden (runner) plus tomatoes everywhere. Today he picked his first bowl full of cherry tomatoes grown in baskets. The only thing, they have a lovely flavour but why are the skins always so tough? :-S

I think Dahlias are probably my favourite flowers.

I hadn't really grown them until a couple of years ago. My Mum always used to have a fine show of them and used to dig them up and dry them and keep them in the loft over the winter.

I couldn't be bothered with all that so I tend to grow them in pots and when they have died back after the first frost, stick them in the garage as they are, bring them out in May, put them by a wall for shelter for a couple of weeks then bring them into the sun and so far so good.

I even forgot a couple that I had planted in the vegetable patch and they are probably the best of all. I don't expect they would have survived a colder winter though outside.

We are growing potatoes for the first time, in bags, an early and a main crop, although we bought them late, 25 p a bag in Wilkinsons so they are probably going to be more like main crop and lates. Look good and healthy so far and are just starting to flower.

We are growing quite a lot of vege this year, Runner beans, broad beans, Broccoli, Purple sprouting, Swiss chard, courgettes, lettuce and radish in the plot which is about ten by four feet. Tomatoes and cucumber in the conservatory, all the new herbs in troughs along the drive and two bags of spuds.

Last year the runners and purple sprouting were the most successful, we didn't grow so much of the other bits. Both years the peas have been a disaster.

Himself thinks we are going to save a fortune on the shopping bill but I have a nasty feeling they are all going to be ready just as we go on holiday.

M.

OH's love is dahlias and this year he managed to save them from last year. They have grown well and some are already flowering. We have had 3 meals so far with potatoes off a couple of plants in a small space, if he had not lost the labels we'd know what they are. :-D

I did the same at the weekend Ann, this year I wrote everything I put in the garden in a notebook along with a little map as to where it was planted.

There are a good few things no longer there, including most of my home grown Cosmos.

I grew four Lupins, three I put in the back and one in the very small bed we have by the front door, that is the only one that has grown. The three in the back are reduced to what looks like a load of skeleton fingers. Someone has had a lovely meal of them.

The bigger ones that were in already are doing O k but they have still been got at.
Someone also demolished my lovely dark red Hollyhock.

I have just about managed to keep the Dahlias slug free ( ish ) so far.

Other things have grown so big they have just smothered other, smaller plants who have given up the ghost.

It's a bit of a battle sometimes isn't it ? Love it though !!!!!!

M.
:-)

Llooking round the garden at the new plants put in during June I have so far lost a lupin, I don't know why I try I invariably lose them and also a new type of Cosmos doesn't look like surviving. Poppies grown from seed succumbed to the heavy rain and are battered down, just one remains upright., of the two roses we bought one is struggling. :-(

Not a lot then !!!

Actually, I also bought a lovely red Potentilla but I am keeping that one hidden for a day or so until I can find a hole to squeeze it into without Himself noticing.

They also had some of the most gorgeous Canna Lilies, too big to sneak in but only £7.99, which I thought was reasonable. The one I have had for about eight years has a label on it that says £12.99.

Might have to do a detour on the way home again tomorrow as he is out in the afternoon. ;-)

M.

I don't have any salvias in the garden. No room for any more plants at the moment but we did succumb to a pretty dahlia (OH likes them) for a pot and a butterfly pelargonium. Oh and a sweet pepper reduced to a £1

I called in the Garden Centre on the way home from school and bought a new variety of Salvia. It is quite tall with a big flower and called Black and Blue. The bud heads are black and as they open are blue inside. Thought it looked interesting, I am into Salvias at the moment. Love blue flowers.

M. :-)

Yes, I think Maryanna is right Vera so better stake them, I love them in Tenerife as they grow whole beds of them together.

Maryanna, I have about four or five of those little bulbs come up but not sign of flowering. the gadioli are up, very small leaves though and don't look like flowering. Your tradescantia sounds like the one my Mum called Moses in the bullrushes.

Thanks Maryanna. I thought that would probably be the case as the flower bud comes up on a single stem but I'm ever optimistic and hoped someone would say it would be OK to do it!

Vera, I think the problem with cutting back the flower stems is that you won't get any flowers.

The Agapanthus flowers are on a stem, whereas the leaves are separate, you only get one flower head per stem, I think.

On things such as Phlox and Geraniums ( Not the Pelargonium type ), the leaves and flowers are on the same stem so cutting that back to a third or half its length doesn't affect the flower growth as they just produce flowers lower down that stem. Those flowers then come out later than they would have done, thus prolonging the flowering season. If you see what I mean.

When my big Agapanthus used to flower, which it hasn't done for a few years now, I used to have to stake it. I think I need to re-pot it..

M.

Garden is not looking bad at all now. We brought some grasses in pots from our old house. We've only put them against the fence still in the pots but they look quite attractive and give a bit of movement when they wave in the breeze.

The only plants here when we moved in, or at least the only ones still alive, were 6 very sorry looking roses in a bed. We cut them right back and waited to see what would come up. Well, they are now all blooming away like mad. I don't think I would have chosen 6 different colours but they were obviously picked for their fragrance. All six have a wonderful perfume. They are by the shed but we are getting rid of that soon and plan to have a table and chairs there so I think we will keep the roses - it'll be wonderful to sit by them with a coffee or a glass of vino :-D

Changing the subject and looking ahead to next year, does anyone know if it's OK to do some sort of Chelsea Chop on Agapanthus? I've got some in pots and the flower stems are so tall they can hardly stay upright. Even the dwarf ones are well over 2 ft. If I cut them back when the flower stems are first coming through would they be shorter or would they grow as tall but bloom later? All advice welcome. Thanks