Tomato Planting.

Today the head gardener and I have been planting the first lot of Tomato plants. We will be planting another lot later outside.

The ones planted below are in the greenhouse border and will obviously stay there for the rest of their time.

I have moved away from having the greenhouse full of Tomato plants all summer mainly because of whitefly problems. Instead I now plant most of them in containers and sit them outside in the potting shed yard which catches lots of sunshine and are protected by high walls. In the picture below are some I have planted in potato growing bags. I will keep adding more compost to the bags through the summer as the plants progress.

Below is the same as above except here I am using pots. I do prefer the bags actually but I only have three of those. The plants in the containers are being put out during the day and brought back in to the greenhouse at night as we are still getting a few cold nights ate the moment.

We finished up with a couple of plants left over so not wanting to throw them away and with nothing to lose I planted them in the open garden and covered them with these two cloches that I am restoring. I have another lot of plants coming on behind these which I will be planting in the open garden which will be for later in the year.

A Tip For Cuttings.

The other day I had need to pot up some Geranium cuttings and it reminded me to share with you a little tip that seems to work well for me. Geraniums are not a difficult plant to increase by cuttings but they can rot off quite easily if you aren't careful so I've devised this method to prevent this to some extent. As you can see from the picture below there is sand in the pot and things can actually be rooted in to sand alone although I have never tried that myself. Instead I do a mix of compost in the bottom and sand on the top.

I part fill the pot with compost and then add a thin layer of sand, this just gives me something stop the cutting falling over while i arrange them in the pot. When adding the cuttings try not to push them through the sand into the compost. As you can see in the picture below I pushed this one in a bit further than I should but there is still sand around the stem so it wasn't too bad. When you have the cuttings arranged around the outside of the pot then back fill around the cuttings with more sand to just below the level of the pot and then water in, this settles everything down around the cutting and also adds water to the compost below. I add the compost in the bottom as this stays moist but isn't actually causing the stem to sit in a lot of moisture. I also hope that it encourages the cutting to send out roots to reach for the moisture just below it.

The picture below is a good example of how it works. The idea being that the moisture is where it's needed in the base of the pot and the stem remains as dry as possible to prevent rot. Also if there is a need to water again before rooted water from the bottom by standing the pot in a saucer of water. By the way, when I talk of sand it's actually horticultural grit that I'm talking about.

Sweet Pea Planting.

Hello everyone.
Today the head gardener and I have been working flat out planting sweet pea plants.

Because I went and changed my plans I didn't have the ground prepared so the first job was to fix netting for the plants to climb as they grow. I then had to dig over the row to a spades depth.

As we went we incorporated a mix of compost and manure and as there was a bit left over after we got finished digging I just sprinkled it over the surface.

When this was all done we put in the plants around nine inches apart, I wasn't too exact about that. The green netting along the bottom is temporary to protect the plants from pigeons. Some times they bother them and others they don't so it's not worth taking a chance if you have a bit of netting to spare. The final job was to water them in.

A Good Day To Feed Grass.

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. Today I want to show you some pictures from the South Front as it's all very bright and cheerful at the moment.

Today we have had the first drop of rain since the airplanes stopped flying which I'm sure is just a coincidence but it's been nice to look up and see fluffy clouds instead of the long straight ones. Anyway the thing is, because rain was forecast I decided it was a good time to give the lawn a bit of a feed so after calibrating the spreader I got on with that job after lunch. I think it took longer to calibrate the spreader than it did to apply the feed so much so that there was enough time at the end of the day to plant 72 Geraniums in the South Front wall beds. It is still a bit early to be putting out summer bedding but Geraniums will stand a slight frost and we haven't been having anyway so I am risking it as the plants are ready to be moved on. This year all the plants for the South Front walls have been grown from cuttings taken from last years plants.

Ways To Brighten Up Conifers.

In the last post I showed how I tidied up around the base of the conifers by the greenhouse lawn. Well in this post I will show you the other side to the conifers and how I have married the two sides together.

Occasionally a branch will die back leaving a hole so as you can see from the picture below I filled the hole that was left with this earn which will have some kind of a plant in it for the summer. This die back happened some years ago now so things have grown back enabling me to train things to look the way I want it.

In this particular case the die back only occurred last year and was cut out the winter past so things are not looking so good at the moment. In time though I hope to turn this set back into something more positive. The chair is an example I just had to hand, it would be better with two chairs or even a small bench.

This view over the rose garden is what you would get from sitting on the chair as it is.

In this picture you can see how I have married the two sides together with the Ivy on one side and the earth and neat edging on the other. There are a couple more things that I've done to add some interest to the conifer trees but I need to take some pictures and will add another post in the near future.

Tidying Around The Conifers.

Today the head gardener and I have been busy tidying up around the base of these conifer trees. I cut a new edge around them last year so it was just a matter of cutting the grass with the shears and then working over the soil to remove any weeds before throwing back the soil to make a nice edge.

We managed to get this done with time enough to spare to cut the small lawns in the walled garden. I've been going easy on the grass cutting because it's very dry and still early in the season, also with everyone on semi lockdown there is no one around to see what anything looks like.

A nice place to sit

Here is the bench by the lily pond. When the former gentleman was alive he used to enjoy sitting here to do his paperwork. Occasionally I will take a break here myself.

Relax

The head gardener relaxing in the sunshine. 

Planting Day

Today we have been doing some planting in the vegetable garden. We started with the onion seedlings, it's the first time I have grown onions from seed so it will be interesting to see how they do. There also cabbage, celeriac and runner beans. It's a little early for the beans but they have come on well and so I didn't want to check them by making them hang around in pots so I will have to protect them if frost is forecast.  The celeriac is also something new to me, I've never grown it or tasted it so that's something to look forward to.

Some of the seedlings planted today.

The head gardener supervising.

Timothy-Michael Takes A Break.

The head gardener taking a break from pruning the Poets Wife..