Author: Julianne

Sorting and planning

Is there any better way to spend a snowy Saturday morning than sorting out your seed packets?!

I spent a very satisfying hour this weekend disposing of the old packets, rediscovering ones which I had bought some time ago (I bought dozens out of season in Lidl for 15p each!!) and then planning my sowing/planting calendar for the next few months.  Having also cleaned out my utility room in the past few days, which also serves as my greenhouse, I am now ALL SET to start growing!

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I am trying to keep it simple this year, and have plans to repeat my attempts to grow potatoes, carrots, onions and peas.  I’m also going to add some lettuce and rocket – mainly because these were some of the bargain 15p packets so if they don’t grow I won’t have lost anything!  I think these will be good to try under cover and I have a cloche which I bought in Aldi last year marked down at the end of the growing season (there’s a definite theme developing here…!) so I fancy trying it with the salad veg and maybe a few carrots.  Sowing some of these under cover also means I can start growing early, which is good because I’m itching to get started.

First things first, though, and I need some seed potatoes so I can start chitting them.  I hope to get my hands on some by the end of the week.  I’m also going to sow the first of my sweet pea seeds.  These are a must for me in the garden – they are so colourful, they flower abundantly and smell gorgeous.  I’m going to plant loads, everywhere!

2015…a summary

These pics display the best of the vegetable beds for 2015 – a poor show I’m afraid and I’m not sure if that’s more to do with my lack of expertise, the quality of the soil or the fact that this summer’s weather was frankly pretty rubbish.  Nearby fellow gardeners with a great deal more experience than I have reported that many of their own vegetable crops were also unusually bad so I’m hopeful that with a year’s worth of knowledge under my belt and a much sunnier, warmer spring/summer (fingers crossed) that 2016 will see a lot more growing in these veg beds and that they’ll look a great deal more green and fulsome.

It’s now January so I’m beginning to make a few plans about what will go in this year – for a start I think I will try to grow some more fruit.  Some Tayberry bushes left by the previous owner, which I thought I had removed (I didn’t know what they were at the time), seem to be growing back so I’m going to encourage them to return!  I’d like to have some more raspberries and on the veg front I will probably try again for some potatoes and maybe carrots.  I’m going to be less ambitious and plant more of a smaller number of vegetables, rather than a wide variety.  And I’m hoping I can pull some rhubarb this year – the plants grew ok but never looked particularly ripe and ready…

Another thing I would also like to repeat is planting a bed of flowers for cutting – this did well, although it looked very unruly a lot of the time!  But my daughters enjoyed picking the flowers and making up little bouquets and vases with different stems and I really loved seeing how quickly they grew, even if many of the flowers did take a long time to bloom (like I said, it was a cool summer!).

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The snapdragons did quite well and the sweet peas were marvellous – these will definitely be back in 2016 I think.

The Thrifty Gardener

Aldi is my friend!  I have been in need of a few bedding plants to fill some spare pots and was very keen to add some bulbs to the garden after a fairly poor showing last year.  However I’m also trying not to overspend after a month which saw a few extra payments leave the account.  So I decided to get down to Aldi, having had a good experience there previously, picking up ten – TEN! – bare root roses for just 90p each! I’ve also had a cherry and two raspberry canes from Lidl and all of these, planted early last winter, seem to be doing ok. And even if they weren’t, I would be safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t wasted my money killing off a pricey plant!

Aldi came up trumps this time too – allowing myself £20 to spend I managed to scoop dozens of bulbs, four trays of bedding plants, 20 packets of seeds (just 19p each!) and two small patio roses, all within my budget.

Here’s the haul in all its glory…

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…and here’s the final result.

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I spent sunny afternoon potting the bedding plants into an assortment of spare containers, including an old chimney pot (which I think we found at our previous home and subsequently moved it with us!) and an abandoned giant teapot which I found beside a skip at the local dump and ‘reappropriated’ for my garden.  I’m really happy with this mini burst of colour and interest in my fast-fading garden, particularly with the cyclamen – I love these little twirly flowers!

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Spring is doing its thing

I’m finding it really exhilarating to watch Spring unfolding in our garden for the first time.  Trees and bushes are budding and blossoming and little green shoots are appearing in unexpected places, so that I’m wondering what plants are hiding under there that I didn’t even know I had!  Among these surprises are dozens of grape hyacinth which are now in full bloom in the front garden, the snakes head fritillary which I posted about recently and dicentra, Bleeding Heart, which I was admiring in a garden centre recently, totally unaware that one was pushing its way up in the back garden.

One of the plants doing the best in the back at the moment is a stunning red rhodedendron.

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It’s in full flower and sort of socks you in the eyeball as soon as you step round the corner! We have a few more rhodedendrons which are also doing nicely and providing bright splashes of colour at the front and back of the house.  This pretty white one has a lovely delicate fragrance:

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Rhodies weren’t traditionally a big favourite of mine, and I confess to trimming a couple of them quite drastically and yanking out a few of their azalea cousins in the autumn when I was tidying the beds up before the winter.  However seeing their early displays of colour in our gardend also at Glendoick Gardens (more on this visit later) has definitely made me reconsider their virtues.

Finally, a wee photo of the fab little grape hyacinths – they’re such a gorgeous vibrant purple right now!

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Before – Back Garden

It’s occurred to me to take some ‘Before’ photos of the garden.  I have lots of plans which, realistically, will probably take some time to achieve, and will no doubt change and adapt over the years but I want to be able to look back in a year, two years, ten years, and see how things have changed – or not, as the case may be!

First up, the Back Garden:

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Yes, that *is* a blue toilet smack bang in the middle of that border.  (Placed there by my husband.  I have plans to fill it with something that will quickly grow all the way over it!)

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This border is pretty large and has quite a few gaps, although I’m enjoying seeing a few surprises emerge now it’s spring, such as Bleeding Heart and snakes head fritillary.  It’s also the home of several bird feeders which are attracting a very wide variety of garden birds (more on these later.)

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We have an apple and a couple of plum trees, which were producing a good deal of fruit when we moved in around 8 months ago.  Husband made plum wine 🙂

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And this is the back corner – a lovely, crazy paving area with a couple of small fruit bushes (gooseberry and blueberry I think) plus honeysuckle and a couple of clematis.  I’ve also recently planted a couple of climbing roses.  This is also the last zone of the garden to get the sun in the evening – I have plans to have some kind of table/seating area here and a vision of sitting out in the summer, surrounded by gorgeous flowers and sipping some nice cold white wine!

My corner of the earth…

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…is the garden at my home in the North East of Scotland.  We have lived here for less than a year but I already know that this garden is my favourite place in the world.  Virtually overnight, a passion for gardening and cultivating the ground around this house has seized me and I take every opportunity, especially now that the weather is improving, to walk outside my back or front door with an implement of some kind so that I can tinker in the garden. Even during the winter when the weather was poor I still walked around it, still, possibly, in a state of shock that we have managed to find the perfect house and garden for us, and envisioning all the things I could do when the spring rolled around.

And now that it has, my mind is full of those plans and I’m desperate for the next opportunity to go out into the garden and put them into action.  So I’m writing this blog to document what I’m doing in my garden, my corner of the earth, and using it as a gallery for the photos I’m taking as the seasons change and new plants emerge or are planted.  It’s only Year One of our time in this house and already I’m marvelling at what’s out there – and everything that’s to come.