You'll be pleased to hear that I did get round to doing some actual work in the garden last week, not just stroll around taking photos 😏 I was out there all day on Wednesday, which was a glorious day, and I made my first job getting our old duvet washed and hung out ready to go in the guest bedroom in due course.
I then took a deep breath and made a start on the poor dahlias, which as you can see from the photo above were once again left out all winter 😳 I didn't bother taking photos of all the tedious emptying out of the pots and rootling around to ~ hopefully ~ find tubers that hadn't rotted away, especially as I had 19 pots to rootle through! Needless to say they didn't all survive my shameful neglect but, somewhat amazingly, 12 of the poor little buggers did!
As it was such a lovely day I made the most of it by sitting myself beside the arbour, rather than lugging the pots into the greenhouse, and emptied them into the wheelbarrow ~ which I filled up twice! I can't remember if I told you that we decided to keep the bed along the wall in the little front garden patio area after all? Anyhoo, that's where I tipped the old compost. I usually keep my old compost as "bulk" to top up beds and borders as needed, replacing the by-now exhausted nutrients in it by adding a good sprinkling of chicken manure pellets 😊
Then it was into the greenhouse to pot up the tubers. Some were able to stay in the same size pots they'd been in last year, with a handful needing to move up to larger ones. I decided to make more of an effort this time by adding a drainage layer in the bottom of the pots. As I only had a bag of rather fine horticultural grit, I thought it prudent to put something in the base of the pots so that I didn't lose said grit out of the drainage holes. I had a supply of strawberry mats that I don't now use, so was able to cut them to size for all the pots.....
then slung in a scoop or so of the grit.
Look at that lump of, well I don't know exactly what it is to be honest ~ granite perhaps? ~ that was lurking in the bag!
Three or four of the tubers are already sprouting and hopefully all 12 will grow. I would have added some chicken manure pellets just to "beef up" the compost to give the tubers a good feed but I've run out. I've ordered a couple more tubs so will sprinkle some over the pots they arrive.
I had to re-do two or three of the labels as the writing was starting to wear away. I was left with one pot, though, where the label was totally illegible so had to work out which variety it was (turned out to be Prinzessa) through a process of elimination ~ luckily I was actually organised enough last year to keep a list of what I had on the computer 😆
What I'm left with now are:
Bahama Apricot (orange)
Cafe au Lait (pale pink)
Cafe au Lait Twist (creamy-white/pink)
Creme de Cassis (purple)
Grand Prix (lemon/white)
Mikayla Miranda (purple)
Peaches & Cream (yellow)
Prinzessa (creamy-yellow, pink tipped)
Purple Gem (purple)
Souvenir d'Ete (orange)
Tyrell (orange)
White Aster (white)
I'll keep you up-do-date with their progress!
After I'd finished the mammoth task of dealing with the poor dahlias, which as usual took me far longer than I had anticipated, I decided to try my luck sowing some sunflower seeds. I was inspired by seeing the sunflowers that my Dad is growing, so thought I'd have a pop at it myself. Vincent's Mix, as the name suggests, is a mixture of different colours and flower shapes, so it will be interesting to see what (hopefully!) comes up 😊
By the time I'd sorted out the dahlias and sown the sunflower seeds, I was too tired to do anything else on Wednesday. Thursday wasn't anywhere near as nice a day; although the sun did shine quite brightly later on, there was a pretty chilly breeze out there! I was very tempted just to have another lazy day, but in the end decided to bundle myself up in layers and get on with setting the strawberry supports in place before the plants got any bigger. It was definitely easier to do with the plants now being raised up in pots and more separate from each other. I'm hoping that this will help them get more air circulation, and avoid the mildew/mould issues I had last year.
There's still lots to be done in both the front and back gardens, but I feel that I've at least made a fairly good start out there now 😊
Before I finish off this post, I must just show you what I hauled all the way back from Leeds with me ~ three lovely new houseplants from a super shop not far from the hotel we stayed in 😀 The one in the photo above is, at it states on the label, Gynura Purple Passion. It caught my eye as I thought it was quite an unusual-looking plant.
This is Coffea Arabica (coffee plant). I was attracted by those lovely glossy leaves.
And finally, here's Monstera Adansonii Monkey Mask. I did have a very small one of these but sadly it died so I thought I'd have another try at growing it, this time starting with a somewhat larger and more established plant 🤞
I packed the plants tightly together for the journey home and thankfully they survived pretty much unscathed.
The shop I bought them from in Leeds is called Nice Things, and really is chock-a-block with very nice plants indeed! Sadly they only ship to mainland UK addresses, so I had to be very good and only allow myself to be tempted by three plants. Trust me, though, I could have bought very many more had we been travelling by car 😄
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