A word on weeds and a little something for those of you with snow covered gardens...

I'm linking in with Garden Bloggers Bloom Day this week at May Dreams Gardens. Many of the blogs posted have gardens under snow.  Even the usually milder, wet Irish climate has been delivered a wallop of white so that my mother's garden (and the whole island, from what I hear) is knee-deep in the stuff. So this post is for all you snow bunnies...

First, I'll show you some of the lovely flowers that are defying the frosty nights and still blossoming, in the hopes that that will cheer you up.

Above is a snap dragon, and below are some dianthus, followed by close-ups of them as I felt this first picture did not do the individual flowers justice, and those of you who are bloom-starved might like to feast your eyes on them.

Do you notice a color theme going on? I can't help myself with pink!  Even my Primulas are pink...

I've always loved fuschias.  The blossom reminds me of a ballerina in a tu-tu - the stamens and style are her legs...

My petunias are bravely soldiering on too - I planted these as annuals in June.  They are starting to behave like perennials!

Allysum reminds me of my Grandmother - she used to have lots of it growing in her rockery.  I like how this one catches the winter sun...

Another plant bought during the summer, and expected to be a shorter lived annual - I think its a verbenna but I've lost the plant label for it...can anyone confirm that for me?

And then there is the Bird of Paradise - I can't claim credit for these - they were here when we moved in, and they just do their thing.  This year, I might even fertilize them!

If all this only serves to make you jealous, I'll demonstrate the downside of all that growth - Weeds!

My word on weeds is "Therapy"!  For some gardeners that may mean they need therapy when they see a garden full of weeds.  For me, strangely enough, the process is therapeutic.  Am I crazy?  Don't answer that.  But many gardeners I've met say the same thing.  It gives us great satisfaction to pull out weeds.  Mind you, most of the people I've discussed this with were weeding voluntarily with the Edgewood Weed Warriors at the time of the conversation, so perhaps my surveying methods were flawed!

I've been very vigilant about keeping the veggie garden weed free, since last year when I tried to convince myself that it was really a "green" mulch and that I'd dig them back through as "green" fertilizer!  That did not work out so good - especially for the poor over-run beets that never quite took off.  In the end, I had to weed and then cover them with compost mulch during the summer, and that has kept me on top of things here. Now, the raised beds look much smarter...

The wood chip mulch is doing a pretty good job at weed control in the front garden, and now that I've planted the as-yet-baby-plant natives, the front garden looks clean and weed free.

 

In the foreground, the Deer Grass is looking happy. In the background, I have the aromatics planted close to the path - Cleveland Sage, Coyote Mint and Desert Lavender (from bottom of picture up).  But look closely at the bright green patch just beyond the railings.  A totally different story!   That is the long forgotten side yard, and the weeds have been having a jamboree.  They've invited all their friend round too!

So - getting back to my word on weeds. I do love to look back on a patch of ground that I've cleared of weeds, and the denser they grow, the greater my gratification with the job.

The trick with weeds is to not let yourself get overwhelmed by the task at hand. Set yourself a target and work a little bit a day - ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour - whatever works for your concentration span and what your back can manage.  Don't worry if you don't get it all done in one sitting. Those blighters aren't going anywhere - more's the pity!

It's best to get them out by the roots. I think that there is an optimum weed pulling size.  Too small and it's way too fiddly ( and not quite as satisfying)  Too big and the roots are too hard to get - I like my weeds about two inches long.

Each day, I roll back the weed frontier by a couple of feet.  I like to keep it geometric and work in foot wide strips each time.

There is a big rain storm on us now, so the weeds will think that they are winning.  But in the end they won't, because we may not have come here for the grass, but we certainly did not come here for the weeds either!


Byddi Lee

Finding it hard to contain myself

I attended a Master Gardener talk on container gardening a while back.  Not that I don't have plenty of room to stick plants in the ground, but initially, I wasn't sure where I wanted to put things.  I have this vision of growing garden 'rooms'.  There's the vegetable patch, the native garden at the front, but I also want a butterfly garden, a spring bulb garden, a small 'needs watered' flower garden (for pretty pretty!) and underneath the bedroom window, I dream of planting a night scented garden.  So until I get all that in place, container gardening sounded like a plan.  Also, it's a good way to grow those plants that are inclined to invade the garden, like a lot of herbs.

The front of my house has a bench all along it that I thought could be used to display plants in containers.  Inspired by the aforementioned talk, I decided to get creative and went to a Goodwill store.  That's a charity store for us Europeans.  For under $30 I picked up four baskets, one decorative wooden box, a blue wire frame thing, another wire basket with beads on it, two cute miniature metal pails and a miniature milk urn.  I am well aware that putting moistened soil in many of these vessels will spoil them but at an average of $3 each I thought it would be worth it.

We-ll, kind of...  I just could not condenm this gorgeous basket to rotting.  I now use it to gather in my harvest.  It sits on the back door step (the sun will take its toll on it over time). I keep my trowel and secateurs in it - I regulary lost these items by setting them somewhere random - now they have a home.

And this lovely basket was great for a table display at a BBQ I had, and I just couldn't pull it apart - I'm thinking with some added foliage it might make an attractive Thanksgiving centerpiece.

So, this was the first of the baskets that I actually potted up.  A trip to the garden centre and another $30 later I arrived home with way too many chrysanthemums and annuals, such as snapdragons, dianthus, dahlias, moss rose and alyssum.  I lined the basket with a plastic bag that I'd put holes in the bottom of to slow down the rate at which it will fall apart.

Then I chose an autumnal color scheme of mums.

The fourth basket I just planted with a Native Australian Grass that Rosella gave me.  I think I've over watered it though - it seems to be struggling.

I had slipped an interesting couple of vines that Laurie and I had come across on one of our walks.  In both cases they had grown over onto the street and I didn't think that anyone would mind if we took a couple of tiny wee cuttings.  Of course I got them mixed up.  But three out of four of them took, so I wanted to put them in the big wooden box.  My husband drilled a few holes in the bottom - not that I can't drill a few holes myself, but he likes  to play with his toys!  I put  an old weathered plank in there that I'd found in the front garden for the vines to grow up.
 
One vine in particular was very happy.  It blossomed.  I don't know the name of it, and if you do know please  drop me a comment.  The other vine is jasmine.   It hasn't blossomed yet and has lost a couple of leaves.  Fingers crossed it lives.

I planned on lining the blue wire frame thing with moss but I'd so many mums left over that I just plonked one in to it in a pot.  I think my report card on this one should say "could do better"!

The wire basket with beads is a similar story - I have it in the bathroom but the clear plastic drip tray, showing the dirty water, takes away from it... "must try harder"

The cute pails are good plant pot covers.  They have no hole in them.  They are also handy for scooping seeding and potting soil out of the bags they come in.  They spill less than the trowel.

This snapdragon looks cosy in the little milk urn!

I had a metal box left over from flowers that were sent to us when my mother-in-law died. I punched holes in the bottom of it and planted it up with dianthus.

The rest of the plants I used to spruce up the Sam Maguire - seeing as how the real one is on its way to Cork - Maith thu, Cork.

I set all my containers on the shelf at the front of the house and 'oohed and aahed' at them for a day, until I realized that these flowers need 6+ hours of sun, and this was too shaded.

So I reorganized..


They seem more happy here...

And I get to start the whole process again and pot up some begonias and fuchsias.  Please leave me a comment if you can think of any more showy flowers that love the shade...

Byddi Lee