What do you get.....

...if you cross Santa with a duck?

 

Today is Christmas Eve, and by now most of us are thoroughly fed up with the whole holiday thing, having been suffering it in the shops since early November.

But it wasn't always like this.. I have a series of school books about the Chalet School, they were written by a lady called Elinor M Brent-Dyer, about a pair of English sisters, one much younger than the other, who moved out to Tyrol and started a school. The first one was written in 1925, and she kept banging them out at a rate of more than one a year,  right through the war (which had quite an impact on the school), through rock and roll (which bypassed it altogether) and right up into the 70s. They are utterly fascinating as a social history of private girls' education, continent-based but still very "English".

The parts of the earlier books that always caught my interest - quite apart from the fact that having their hair washed was something they were taken to a hairdresser for - were the descriptions of Christmas, which didn't start until late on Christmas Eve. That was the day when the servants - servants!! - were given the afternoon off to go and do their shopping for gifts, and was the day when the tree arrived and was decorated ready for Christmas day.

So different now....

They didn't do a lot of gardening when they were based in Austria...

 

 

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What do Santa's little helpers...

 .... learn at school?

 

Come on, this one's easy!

Really easy! There's a clue in the picture... what is it, what is it? Go on then, extrapolate....

No? You are really going to make me say it? I might get thrown off the internet for this. OK then, brace yourself:

 

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What is Santa's favourite pizza?

 (Does Santa even eat pizza?)

OK brace yourselves, it's the run-up to Christmas, so it's time for some truly dreadful Christmas jokes. I did try to find ones with a gardening slant, but alas, it was not that simple.

What, then, is Santa's favourite pizza?

 

 I mean, Santa eats mince pies, and drinks sherry, we all know that: he probably gets a lot of those mini-pork pie things as well, the ones where the ratio of crust to air, jelly, and meat is strongly biaised against the meat part...  I can sort of imagine him eating a bowl of thick, warming soup, with crusty bread, perhaps....

 

 

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Bulbs: when are they not fit for planting?

Last week, I was carrying out an end-of-year garden tidy-up, and had almost finished for the day, when Mrs Client asked me, very tentatively, if I'd be prepared to do some planting, for her.

Nothing unusual about that: I plant things all the time, it is rather part and parcel of being a gardener... so of course I said yes, no problem, and I was handed a boxful of packs marked Tulip bulbs, cultivar “Cherry Delight”:

 

 They are rather delightfully red, aren't they?

So why was the Client asking me, in such an apologetic way, if I would plant them? I found out when I opened the box.....

 

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Ivy Myth No. 3: “Ivy damages house walls”.

 Ah, this old chestnut!

Yes, if you live in an old, stone-built cottage with lime mortar, ivy can utterly destroy your house. It squeezes tiny stems into the soft mortar, then they grow and expand, and in no time it is dislodging the actual stones, and you are in dead trouble.

But with a modern red-brick house, built to modern standards, with modern mortar: then no, this simply won't happen. The ivy will cling to the bricks, and to the mortar, but as long as they are all in good condition, it won't penetrate, and it won't damage the bricks.

Personally, I think it's extremely unsightly.....

 

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Strulch - No, I'm not a fan

For anyone who hasn't heard about this stuff, it's a product made from chopped straw, partially composted, and “mineralised”, which came into popularity a few years back, as a mulch material.

This is one of the promotional pictures, from their website:

 

They do state that it darkens, over time.

Normally, if I want to add nutrients, I would use our own home-made compost as a mulch, although you always have to be aware, when using home-made compost, that it may well contain weed seeds. Here's a wall-mounted Strawberry Box,  mulched with lovely rich home-made compost:  here it is, after the owners were away for a couple of weeks, and not there to notice the weeds...

 Yikes! Tomatoes!! (And this, dear reader, is why I always advise Clients not to put kitchen waste into their domestic compost pens...)

 

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Tree Peony: Autumn pruning

 This is one of those topics which is just soooo much easier to demonstrate than to describe... but I've have five people ask me about Tree Peonies in the past few days, so - as I still haven't managed to get a Go-Pro sorted out - you will have to bear with my descriptions, instead of a quick five-minute video. Sorry about that!

Right, Tree Peonies: these are actually small shrubs, and instead of being cut down to the ground every year, which is what we do with our “normal” bush Peonies (I wrote about this recently), they have stout woody stems, and can get quite large.

The most popular one - in the photo above - has yellow blooms: it is variously called Paeonia lutea var. ludlowii. or Paeonia delavayi var. ludlowii, or Paeonia ludlowii... obviously a chap called Ludlow was involved in the breeding of this shrub, at some point, and he is determined that we all know it!

Anyway, although most of the Tree Peonies you will encounter.....

 

 

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Gardening with Pliers

 Now, when gardening, there are certain tools which we all expect to use:

 ...and when doing more specialist tasks, we might need additional tools, like this lot which my arborist partner and I used for a day of hedge trimming and tree work:

 ... but how many gardeners, I wonder, are in the habit of carrying a pair of pliers? Is it just me?

 

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Peony: autumn tidy-up

 Yup, it's that time of year: the bush Peony flowers are long gone, the seeds - if we left them un-dead-headed (if there is such a word) have disappeared:

 

 .. and the leaves have gone brown. There is nothing attractive left...

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock: better in a pot, or in the ground?

I had a question from Gita the other day (waves - “Hi, Gita!” ), about her Salix Kilmarnock, which - as we all know now! - is a small, grafted, weeping ornamental tree.

Hers had been living in the pot in which it was bought, for a couple of years: then Gita noticed that the leaves were yellowing out of season, and the soil seemed to be really compacted, so she decided to take it out of the pot, and plant it in the ground.

I specify “take it out of the pot” because there have been several occasions, over the years, where I have found trees planted without the pots being removed....

 ...anyway, hers was planted properly, and it did much better: the tree is healthy, the branches are growing, in fact that has become the problem.....

 

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Using shingle in a decorative garden

 A while back, I wrote about the perils of using cheap membrane: specifically, using it under shingle, not because it's less efficient at quashing weeds, but because it's horrible to work with.

 

I've had a couple of people asking me for more details about the picture which I used to illustrate that article, so here are some details of that project.

The garden in question was a small, secret garden: it was made up of four sections, one of which had been laid out on a strict geometric formation, in neat squares.....

 

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Squirrels: the saga continues

 

Ok folks, you remember the plot: back in July, I shared the story of my fortified birdhouse, intended to keep marauding squirrels out. 

 

A fortnight later, I put up a low-quality video of the squirrels tearing into it, in frustration. Or so I thought.

At the end of July, I sadly had to report that they had breached my fortifications, prompting me to announce "now it's war!" and to butch up the wires, and a few days later, all seemed to be going well.

So, three months on, how is it faring?

 

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Penstemon v Willowherb: how to spot the difference

It's that time of year when the Penstemon are still going strong, and we all love Penstemon, which are going from strength to strength these days:- more variety of colour, longer-lasting, and often truly perennial.

 

They have trumpet-shaped flowers, often with a splash of white inside them, and they flower for a long time, through summer and right into autumn.

But at this time of year, the weeds are also springing up and, more to the point, starting to set seed.

I was working with a student last week.....

 

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Pond planting - the cheap way

 

One of my Clients asked me to dig them a small wildlife pond, and they asked me what plants they should get, to go in it.

First - as Mrs Beeton would say - Dig Your Pond

 

Having dug out the shape, with various depths, shelves etc, we then lined it with old towels (and a few tea towels, we didn't think it would matter) to prevent damage to the liner, which we then spread out.

Traditionally, I believe “one” uses sand, but we didn't have any sand, and we did have a huge pile of ancient towels....

 

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Lavender: cutting back into dead wood

 You know how “all the books say” not to cut Lavender back too hard, as it won't grow back.... well, a fortnight ago, I was doing the annual clip of a low Lavender hedge, and I spotted this:

 

Uh-oh... is that a bare brown patch coming up?

Hahaha! I'm teasing you, this was not a case of it having been cut back too hard, it's a case of two of the plants having died off, completely.

 

Oh dear! Quite, quite dead.

Why?

Well, probably not any particular reason: Lavender are not long-lived plants......

 

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Three Bags Full...

 Or in this case, six bags full.

 

New Clients often have no idea how much waste I am going to generate, when I spend a morning (or afternoon!) in their garden....

 

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Dianthus, by any other name would smell as sweet...

Although, strictly speaking, that's not true... because the genus Dianthus includes Pinks, Carnations and Sweet William, and carnations are not scented, whereas Sweet William are, hence the name.

 

I'm often asked about “Pinks”, and there seems to be some confusion regarding the name, but it's quite straightforward: all plants in the genus Dianthus are commonly known as Pinks, and yes, that includes carnations.

And they are called “Pinks” not because of the colour, but because.........

 

 

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Reseeding a bare lawn

 I had a question from a Patron a couple of days ago (“Hi, Becky!”) asking about my views on reseeding bare patches in a lawn, which is probably looking something like this:

 

 

Well, I'm not really an expert on lawns, but I can certainly offer a few comments.

Firstly, I have to ask the “before I start...” questions.

Why is lawn bald?

 

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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

 ... or so someone said, Shakespeare, probably.

Then, while looking for a particular photo to illustrate a forthcoming article, I found this in my "used photos" archive:

 

And it made me laugh so much that I thought I'd share it with you.

Yes, I know that "one" is not supposed to laugh at "one's" own jokes.. but I thought it was funny!

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock - how to tame an over-exhuberant one!

 

I've written about this particular plant many times over the past few years - if you go to my “archive” blog: oh no, wait, you're already here! 

So you'll already know that if you type the word Kilmarnock into the search box, top left, you will find a whole heap of articles about them.

For those who are not quite sure what I'm talking about, this is a small grafted ornamental tree, which is incredibly popular for smaller gardens, because it is - or can be - so dinky.

And every so often, I get a photo of a particularly shaggy one, and a plea for advice....

 

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Squirrels: So far, I'm winning. So far...

 Well, it's been two days since the Dreadful Incident, where the squirrels found the weak spot in my fortifications, and chewed through them: and so far, the newly wired anti-squirrel cage is holding firm.

Not for lack of trying on their part: I have just spent ten minutes watching one particular thug wrenching on the bars, chewing them, pushing them with his head, pulling them with his claws: I tell you, if squirrels were sized up to be as big as dogs, they would be bears - if you see what I mean....

 

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Did you know that "Hellebore" means "poisonous food"?

No, nor did I, until I did some research for the eBook I've just published - or rather, re-published.

This one originally came out in 2015:

... I wrote it for a Client, who could never remember which type of Hellebore was which, in her garden.

I didn't expect it to be a top-seller, because most of my Field Guides are for Botanists, so they cover plants which are found out in the wild (or "Weeds" as I call them), whereas this one is mostly garden plants.

But I've been surprised that it sells quite well.

Then I got some bad feedback - not for this eBook, for the one I wrote on Snowdrops - which complained about the shortage of photos, and how "short" the book was. Well, a Field Guide is exactly that, a Guide, it's not supposed to be a novel... but at around the same time, I had some good feedback from other of my eBooks, commenting that they liked my "chatty" style.

So I decided I would revamp the Field Guides, with the addition of more description, more photos, and a bit of general information, which apparently people like, in addition to the strictly relevant botany stuff.

It's taking me months to go through them all - am I the only one who finds it a lot easier to write something from scratch, then to go back and revise a past work? - and I finally reached the Hs, so here is the revised, expanded, and enhanced Hellebore eBook:

...and yes, I re-did the covers, too!

Check it out, to find out the truth about "poisoned food", the reason why Hellebores hang their heads (well, my reasoning, at any rate) and several other mildly interesting facts - as well as how to tell the difference between the various Hellebores you are likely to find in your garden, and occasionally out in the wild.

Let me know what you think of it!

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Reversion: what, why, and what to do!

I've had a couple of questions, recently, about reversion of variegated plants, and as luck would have it, I have photos of an example from my own garden, to illustrate the point, so now is a good time to talk about it.

This picture shows some variegated Lonicera nitida (Shrubby Honeysuckle, also known as Blimey Does It Need Clipping Again Already?) which is showing some reversion:

 

The shrub was bought specifically for the variegated leaves which, instead of the normal plain green, are attractively edged with silver.

Now, I say “attractively” because I like variegation: I think it brightens up an otherwise slightly dull shrub, but I know that some people......

 

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Mistakes Wot I Have Made: a GRAVE error!

Under the general heading of Mistakes Wot I have made..... 

 ...the Client has a row of roses, running alongside a path. 

I like to neaten up the holes around roses, for many reasons.

So I did.

But why do they look hauntingly familiar??

 

 

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Squirrels Ate My Fruit Bags!

 Last week I shared a picture of my chewed-upon watering can:

 

..showing the destructive power of squirrels. For those who have asked me why the squirrels were chewing my watering can handle, I have no idea: other than just “to be a flaming nuisance”.

They also chewed their way into my propagation units, as mentioned in May's newsletter, which was pretty annoying.

I won't even mention the hose pipe, or the bird house....

 

 

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Ivy Myths: No. 2 - “It will absorb water from the air”

 

Following on from my earlier article on getting ivy down from a wall, here's another myth about ivy:

“If you sever the trunk at ground level, it won't die, because the upper leaves will catch water and sustain it, and it will keep growing.”

Definitely not true!

 

Before we look at the reasons why this myth is not true, let's take a quick look at the ivy plant itself.

Ivy, as a plant, is quite remarkable in many ways.....

 

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How do Honey Bees process poison?

 Here's an interesting question:- Carol asked me (“Hi, Carol!”) about Aconites: why some had suddenly popped up in her garden, and whether the honey from them would be poisonous.

 Carol is talking about Aconitum, and the usual garden ones would be Aconitum napellus, or Aconitum carmichaelii: the common names of which include Wolfsbane (because it was reputed to be fatal to wolves, which were more of a pest back in medieval times than they are today), and Monkshood (because the shape of the flowers looks a wee bit like the hood of a monk, assuming it was a liberated order who wore shades of blue instead of the traditional brown, black or grey)......

 

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Fruit trees: time to spray against aphids

 Yes, it's that time of year again: this is how it starts, with just a few black dots on the undersides of the leaves, this is on a Pear tree which is being trained as a cordon:

 Can you see those black dots? Those are the first few blackfly, or aphids - same thing, they are all sap-sucking critters which ruin our plants. You might also observe that the leaves are starting to curl under: this is a very typical sign of aphid infestation, because the aphids are not content with just sucking the sap from the leaves and getting a free meal: no, they have to......

 

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Forget-me-Not: it's that time of year again!

 Yes, the time of year that every professional gardener dreads - well, not exactly dreads, perhaps, just “moans about to every other professional gardener of their acquaintance” - that moment when the Forget-me-Not have nearly finished flowers, and are shedding seeds as though there were no tomorrow.

 Most people love Forget-me-Not - in fact, I have one slightly dotty Client who insists that if I remove any whilst weeding, I have to pot them up so that they can put them elsewhere in the garden. I know, I know, but apart from this one quirk, they are a lovely Client, so I let them get away with it... and in case you are wondering why this is so dotty......

 

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Watering pots when they are bone dry

 This might be a surprising topic, considering how much rain we've had over the past spring/winter/autumn/last summer...

... but last week, one of my Clients asked me to set the irrigation system going again, now that we are nearly in summer (hollow laugh), because some of the plants in their pot garden were visibly wilting, despite all the rain, and although they had tried to water them manually, the water was just running straight through the pot, and the plants were still wilting.....

 

 

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What's “No Mow May?” I hear you ask.

I mentioned this in a short article a few days ago, and I've had several people ask me what No Mow May is; is it worth doing; and why, when they tried it last year, did they not get a single wildflower appearing.

So, what is it? It's a well-meaning (but not really very well-thought-out) suggestion or “movement”, aiming to persuade the owners of small domestic gardens to stop cutting the lawn throughout May, in order to “encourage more bees to their lawn”.

The idea is that if you leave the grass uncut for a month, lots of wildflowers will pop up, surprising and delighting you, and giving the bees some early nectar.

Nice idea... but does it really work?....

 

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June Newsletter

 Welcome to June... will it be a traditional Flaming June? Will we ever see the sun again? Will there be a hosepipe ban?

Thank you to everyone who is following me, over on Patreon:  it's nice to see that many of you are converting to paid membership, and I'm really grateful for everyone that does so, because although - as you know - I hate to sound like a money-grubbing errr, money-grubber (laughs in embarrassment), I do have bills to pay, so do please consider converting your free membership to a paid one: you can give as little as a pound a month, and I like to think that I'm good value.

As an incentive, here's what you missed last month: posts about No Mow May (not something of which I approve, read all about it!), and - in a related theme - scything down the overlong grass: Ladders, Ivy Myths (the first in a short series of about four...), "Wisteria Ate My Obelisk", how to remove Forget-me-Not, Watering pots which have been allowed to dry out (yes, we all do it!!) and a reminder about getting to grips with your Sticky Willy before it gets out of hand.

However, the long-awaited philosophical ramble into miniature eco-systems, which didn't make it into February's selection, nor that of March, has also failed to make it into May. One day. One day....

So do please think about supporting me: just go to any of the articles  - just click here - and click the "Join to Unlock" button. Follow the instructions, and once you have joined, you will get access to all of the previous "locked" posts, as well as all the future ones!!

Oh, and the photo? The only good thing you can say about the excessive amount of rain we've had in the past several months, is that weeds with long taproots have been easier than normal to remove!

Ivy: Myths: Number 1: "Cut it at the base, it will fall off by itself...."

Oh no it won't.

Exhibit A, M'lud:

 

If I had a fiver for every time I'd heard this myth...  people think that by severing the stems, they won't have to pull out the ivy, whether it's growing up a tree, or up a wall.

“It will fall off, by itself,” they say.

No, actually, it won't.

Fascinating fact: ivy clings to trees, walls, buildings, anything it can, and it clings using aerial roots. These are roots which grow out from the upright stems, even though they are above ground, and are exposed to the air.......

 

 

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Mistakes Wot I Have Seen.... Cotoneaster over a shingle drive

 

This is not a Mistake Wot I Have Made, as I didn't personally plant or recommend planting a large Cotoneaster alongside a shingled drive.... but it's worth mentioning in passing, that this is an unwise choice of planting.

Why?

Well, this is the sort of Cotoneaster in question:

 

There are many different species of Cotoneaster, this one is, I think, Cotoneaster x waterii which is one of the larger-growing, evergreen ones, which grows into a small tree, usually with nicely arching, overhanging branches.

It is generously covered in bright red berries, making a wonderful show in autumn and through into winter.......

 

 

 

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Forget-me-Not: it's that time of year again!

 Yes, it's the time of year when we gardeners find ourselves covered with masses of tiny Forget-me-Not seeds:

These are my gloves, after an hour of weeding yesterday morning: and no, they are not supposed to be speckled, those are the seeds...

The front of my fleece was likewise liberally covered in the little blighters, and my socks were unspeakable: when I got home, I just flung them in the washing machine along with everything else I was wearing, along with a promise to myself that I would find out where the mysterious "fluff trap" of my washing machine actually was located, and would empty it. Apparently other people do this all the time? Every six weeks? 

Well, I've had this machine for at least ten years, so it's probably time I found out where the fluff trap lives, and emptied it....

Moving on...

 

 

To see a longer article about how to remove Forget-me-Not with style and ease, please hop over to Patreon.

 

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Muscari: this time it's War!!

 I hate these flowers.

Yes, I know that they look lovely in that photo, but in real life, they never look quite that nice, they are actually tiny, and photos never show the stringy, ratty foliage... and somehow, photos never convey the relentless self-seeding that these little beasts indulge in.

In case you are wondering, I am talking about the perennial bulb, Muscari armeniacum, commonly known as Grape Hyacinth. Or “The Scourge of South Oxfordshire”, as I call them......

 

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Roses are things of beauty: or are they?

 Not always... take a look at these, found during a garden visit a couple of years ago:

I mean, just look at them! What colour are they supposed to be? Dirty Blue? Gruesome Lilac? Tainted white?

I love roses, but not like this..... it reminds me of that bit in Jurassic Park....

 

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Giant Hogweed - horrible stuff!

There's been some interest lately about Giant Hogweed, a plant which can cause serious injury to children and adults. 

 It is not the only commonly-growing plant which can hurt, annoy, or injure us: but it is one of the worst!

If you are not sure what it looks like, or how to recognise it, here is the answer - for less than a fiver! (Or FREE if you have Kindle Unlimited) 

 Available from Amazon Kindle, here: Horrors of the Hedgerow   and don't worry if you don't have a Kindle, Amazon kindly provide a free option to download it to your PC, phone, or tablet:

There, on the right-hand side, it's called "Read on your device" and it's a quick, simple, free little app (or "programme" as we grown-ups say), which allows you to download it to any device, not just a Kindle.

I've ringed it in red, so that you can find it!
 

So don't delay, download it now, read it, show it to your children, then get outdoors and enjoy the countryside without having to worry about accidentally encountering this plant - once you know what it looks like, you can avoid it!

 

 

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Compost - hamster bedding? Chicken bedding? No thank you!

One of my friends recently started receiving donations to their compost pens - their daughter has hamsters, and a couple of chickens, and (for some unknown reason) does not have a composting arrangement of her own, and therefore asked to dump the cleanings onto their parents' compost pens.

My friends were so proud of having sawdust, chopped straw and assorted poo, to add to their compost pens: “Oh, it'll make brilliant compost, won't it?!” they exclaimed excitedly.

I was not quite so excited...

 

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Mossy wooden steps - not quite gardening, but...

When does it stop being gardening and start being something else? And, does it really matter?

Over the years, I've done all sorts of things, for my various Clients, which were not, strictly speaking, gardening.

Another one cropped up last week: these wooden steps are steep, narrow, and their fan shape (whilst very attractive) makes them quite tricky to negotiate.....

 

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Toilet roll etiquette - The Great Debate

I was struck by a philosophical question the other day, while gratefully using a Client's loo:

Why "grateful"? 

Because although I am perfectly competent at taking a discrete pee behind the shed (“Ladies! Get yourselves a P-style and never again have to drop your trousers when you have to pee outdoors!”), it is rather nice, on a cold and windy day, to be able to use the “house” loo.

Back in the days when Covid was striking us down en masse, it was not possible to go into someone else's house, so peeing behind the shed very much became the “thing” to do. Those days are gone, thank heavens, but the memory lingers on, so I am grateful on a regular basis, to be allowed to use the indoor loo again.

The debate - which might be philosophical, or might be moral - is what to do when this happens, as in the photo above: the perforations fail to tear neatly, and you are left with a ragged bit of loo paper.

“I can't leave it like that!” I say to myself, “What will the Client think?” .....

 

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Fuchsia - time for the spring cut-back

 Everyone is asking me about their Fuchsia - it must be that time of year again!

 

And the answer is Yes: it is time to cut back the hardy Fuchsia in your garden, the ones which have been bravely standing to attention all winter, and which are now just a collection of brown sticks, with maybe - if you are lucky - a hint of new shoots at the base.....

 

 

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“Help! My Clematis is flowering, but the leaves are going brown!”

This is the plea for advice which arrived last week - this lady has a clematis which, she said, is “currently flowering (early March) it seems healthy in terms of flowers but the leaves look like they are in poor health or dying. They don't drop to the floor. “

Here's the picture that came with the email:

Aha, I can see what the problem is!

Well, it's not a problem at all, it's just a question of......

 

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How to deal with a sodden bed...

No, this is not an advert for avoiding embarrassing nocturnal incidents, nor tips and hints on how to deal with a leaky roof (sorry, Linda!!) (my neighbour's roof needs replacing, and is dripping through her bedroom light fitting...), but a sodden herbaceous bed:

 

This is a problem that I'm encountering more and more, this year: apparently the February just gone (2024, for the benefit of future readers!) has been the wettest since records began, for several parts of the UK: and I would say that Oxfordshire is definitely one of those parts......

 

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How to work on really, really claggy soil...

 

Here's a border I planted recently:

Nothing special about that, you say?

What you can't see from this photo is that the soil is absolutely sodden, and “claggy” is the only suitable word I can use to describe it, even though I'm not from Yorkshire, or wherever that word comes from...

In fact, it's worse than it looks, because this was a border which sloped down towards the shingled area, and had desperately poor soil, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone, and bring in a large amount of topsoil which had just been generated by removing a lawn, elsewhere in the garden....

 

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My Hellebores are being drowned!

 We've been talking about Hellebores quite a lot - well, it's that time of year! - and I had a question from Linda the other day (“Hi, Linda!”) about her Helleborus orientalis, Oriental Hellebores:

 

She's lost nearly half of them, due to a thoughtless and unheeding neighbour whose gutter is leaking over her garden, turning her Hellebore bed into a quagmire.

The neighbour won't fix the gutter: and there is nowhere else for the Hellebores to move to, so what is Linda to do with them?

The short-term solution is going to be........

 

 

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