August has been full on with the weather and all the birthdays. I did my seed sowing earlier in the month with the first quarter of the moon. Alot of those seedlings are up and looking pretty healthy. We had a good spring rain this weekend quite warm and wet. I put all the seed trays out in the rain as rain is better for them than being watered by the hose. I think they get nitrogen from the rain? While the "red head" was at Montessori this afternoon I potted on corn cockle, Phacelia, cornflowers and statice from their seed trays to punnets. They all help attract the beneficial insects into the garden. I separated and planted out some parsley and lettuces, then potted up my beefsteak tomatoes. My back gets sore at this time of year from bending over the seedlings and bringing them in and out of the glasshouse so they harden off. If you put them straight from the window sill or glasshouse to the garden the wind and cold is too much of a shock.
I put some sweet peas into the garden too, scented plants remind me alot of my grandmother's garden. She had Winter sweet, Daphne, Freesias, Violets, Hyacinths, and Roses. I think of her when I smell any of those.
I put some sweet peas into the garden too, scented plants remind me alot of my grandmother's garden. She had Winter sweet, Daphne, Freesias, Violets, Hyacinths, and Roses. I think of her when I smell any of those.
Kez asked me about frost cloth.It helps in spring to stop the frost killing plants. It's a loosely woven, white, light cloth which we get in our garden centres. We need to start alot of our more tender plants under it and things like young avocados and citrus spend the whole winter underneath it. In my old garden we used fronds of a native? fern commonly called "pig fern" draped over things to protect from frost. It was more aesthetically pleasing than the frost cloth.
The family sit on the sun room steps eating fruit and throwing the stones into this skinny wee garden next to the neighbours driveway. I let this apricot grow from seed and have espaliered it's branches about 3meters along the fence. This is it's 3rd or 4th winter and this year for the first time it has a couple of blossoms at the end of it's branches.
Giant red mustard, just because it looks so good.
2 comments:
It's inspiring to read what you are doing in your garden Gill. I've got tomato and basil seedlings on the windowsill here in the study, near me as I write. No true leaves though as I only planted them last week.
Oh it's looking great! My apple and quince are just starting to get leaf buds, I'm so happy :)
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