A Cherry Blossom Time Of Year.

Hello everyone, 

This week I have been spending a lot of my time cutting grass, in particular the lawns. I have been over them a couple of times this year already with the tractor and whilst it does an okay job, especially at knocking off all the winter rough so making it a more manageable job for the Allett mower which does a much better cut. Because it's the first cut with the Allett mower I also need to mark out the lawns so as to get the stripes right, this takes up quite a bit of time which is why it's taken me twice as long as it would to normally cut the grass. If we don't have rain soon I won't have to be bothering myself about cutting grass though as everywhere is getting to be very dry.

One of the main features of the garden at this time of the year apart from the Daffodils are the Cherry trees which are all full of blossom. Below are a few pictures for you to take a look at.

 

Sweet Peas

Hello Everyone,

On Friday afternoon I planted the Sweet Peas but didn't have time to net them so I've just done that this morning.

This year I have put them in a new place as I think they will have a better impact here rather than the veg garden/Orchard area. For the last few years I've been planting them against the north facing wall of the walled garden and they have done very well even though they never get any direct sun on them. The netting they climb up is hooked on top of the wall and the plants eventually reach the top.

Geranium Planting.

Today I spent most of my day in what we call the courtyard although strictly speaking it is actually the old stable yard which long ago would most likely have been home to the horses and carriages.

I started with a general tidy up of the center area which involved the usual weeding forking and edging type thing. I have some Pelargonium Geraniums and an ornamental Banana plant to go in the center bed when the weather warms up. 

To finish off I did a little planting job around the wall bottom. At the far end of this wall there is a Geranium, not the Pelargonium sort that I have for the center bed but the hardy perennial kind. Anyway last Autumn I split it much the same as I did with the crown bud cuttings on the Delphinium except the cuttings were shoots rather than just buds. These have been grown on over winter and are now able to be planted out. As you can see you can soon have a lot of plants from just one mother plant. In fact what you see here is just a fraction of the plant. Since planting these I have taken as many more cuttings again which I intend to use to reduce the spacing between these plants, and there is still quite a big plant left at the end of the wall.

 The frustrating thing for me is that no one ever sees this sort of work or the savings. All anyone ever seems to talk about is grass cutting and the things one doesn't do. It's that time of year where everyone is making comments about lawn mowing as though I have suddenly got something to do after sitting around twiddling my thumbs all winter.

Dahlia Planting

Since returning to work after my extended Easter holiday I have been planting up Dahlia beds. The weather has turned quite cold here so as it's a job that involves some digging it's proving to be quite beneficial, especially as the soil is also dry and working well.

Below is a picture of one of the Memorial Garden beds with the tubers set out ready for planting. If you are planting a whole bed with a limited number of plants it's best to set them out first so as to get an even spacing They are planted in staggered rows but once they get going they soon become a single mass and even when planted that far from the edge of the lawn they will eventually grow up to the edge. So as you can see from that it's good to give them plenty of room, especially if you are planting large tubers. If you click on the (Memorial Gardens) label you will see what I mean.

Before placing the tubers I also give the ground a dressing of general purpose fertiliser which then gets worked in to the soil as you do the planting work. To finish off the job I went round the borders with the edging shears which I always think is a worthwhile thing to do if you like it nice and tidy looking.