Growing and maintaining
2024-10-05: I am looking forward to a renewed thrust into growing and changing the garden after I spent most of the core summer months to rebuild and reorganisde my growing and plant working area.
2023-12-23: Today published the new My Plant Story section of the plant book. This is a great breakthrough and achievement as it will now put be a position to analyse and pull together all the data in the database to a more coherent story. This is the start of a new phase of allowing me to tell the story of the plants, rather than have a collection of data.
2023-12-14: Over the last few weeks did substantial work to improve the overall display and use of the plant database information. The aim is to integrate the existing information and provide a platform to manage and enrich the information as we go
2023-12-02: overnight down to -2 last night, but the next week or so is getting above zero again
2023-11-25: first frost for this year.
2023-11-05: I am getting back to actively planning and documenting my garden and journey with the plants. Increasingly finding that my accident and broken foot is getting behind me and I can work on the here and now and future.
One of the new features and extensions for my journal is to allow for stories or more elaborate web pages to be put together and include my site using markdown text pages and including it in the site.
2023-07-02: planted out the pineapple plants into the garden
2023-06-03: most of the care in the garden in May had to be done by Mari, as my broken leg made it difficult to move around. many seedlings were planted out, but several are still in the greenhouse. I will get these out when we are back from a week in Cornwall.
2023-05-08: Mari planted out a range of plants into the garden including snap dragons, calendulas, achillea, venus, luniaria, spider plants and spider plants with more to come.
2023-04-30: This morning I slipped on a container wall in the garden and broke my ankle, making it impossible to get into the garden for approx 3 weeks and thereafter with great difficulty for the next 8 weeks. Looks like all my gardening dreams are shattered and I will have to rely on others to do care for my plants where possible
2023-04-23: Moving transplanted plants from greenhouse to growing boxes to harden off plants and grow them on for transplanting later. Including Centaurea, marigolds, achillea, lunaria
2023-04-22: planting out into final spots: corriander, spinage, cabbage, rocket
2021-08-28: Cut back the wild flower areas with the mulcher.
2021-03-29: Planted some hardy plants out into the sunny bed. Lupins, verbena, foxgloves, various grasses and Bleeding hearts. Some of the plants such as the foxgloves, grasses and bleeding hearts was grown from seed and over wintered. The other plant was bought in.
2021-03-20: Started to mow the lawn with the mulcher petrol mower. Time to cut the lawn was significantly reduced. Looks really good. I am hoping that the cuttings will continue to feed to lawn. key is to cut the lawn regularly
2021-02-06: scarified the lawn to remmove the moss and air the lawn.
2003-06-18: I have extended several beds this year. The main bed on the north border was widened quite a bit for sun loving plants; I have extended the beds at the arches, and extended to beds in the woodlands.
2003-05-18: I am still planting the seedlings out too early, partly driven by the fact that I do not have enough space to grow all the plants to better sizes. Especially the busy lillies went out too early - they are really struggling. We had a cold snap again last night with temperatures dropping to 5 degrees overnight.
2003-05-16: I almost thought that the snails will not come this year, up till now I only found the odd snail - however, in the past week I went out at night and caught about 200 of the bastards. It does appear as if the grounded coffee makes a difference. The hostas in particular are very beautiful.
2002-10-18: Received the psring bulbs that ordered: Crocus pincess beatrix and king of stripes; hermodactylys tuberorus for the dry south walls, fritillaria elwesii, ipleion (wisley blue); lilies lady alice; iris katharine hodgkin and then a wide variety tulips. I leart this year that tulips does not last very long in the ground and you need to get new bulbs regularly. They aparently rot or get eaten by something.
2002-09-29: I focussed much more this year to get cuttings from the pelargoniums and fuchias, and propagate them. The success rate is higher than last year, mainly because I used more care in making sure that they are not too wet, and that I use the heated propagator to help the rooting process, I also covered the last batch with the propagator lid, it is looking promising. I nevertheless still lost many cuttings due to too wet soil, and rotting. It is more than a skill, it is an art.
2002-09-28: Summer is closing now rapidly. It is the last of the growing season, the final preparation of the plants for the winter, the process of hardening off, preparing for that final bloom, showing off that last burst of flowers and beauty. The roses are exceptionally fragrant this year - maybe because it is so dry.
2002-08-07: I am getting better at feeding the garden with a variety of different feeds (largely trying to use all the bits and pieces that I bought over time). It is about doing it regularly. I can clearly see the difference in the quality and health of the plants. In particular, the rhododendrons have made some great buds for next year. I think the rhododendrons are going to be especially beautiful next spring
2002-08-02: lawn care has improved, with at least two applications of moss and weed killer with fertilizer applied already - one early in the season and one in July. The application in July was a bit hasty, and I found that my appliction left some burn patches on the grass. Need to see if I can fix this with some seed this weekend else it will really not recover before next year.
2002-05-10: Into May, most of the plants is out in the garden, some seedlings are still too small to plant out. I even planted some seed directly into the beds for the first time. The garden is very full, there is almost not an open spot where I did not plant something. Also, most of the beds have been cultivated in one or other form.
2002-03-30: Easter weekend and we have a beautiful and sunny weekend. I used the time to plant out many of the plants that I grew on during the winter, and planting out most of the pots and containers that was standing around during the winter months. This year I decided to have very few containers and want to concentrate mostly on gardening in the beds, rather than in containers.
2002-03-26: I did a new experiment with a patch of lawn today. It is the front lawn on the South which draditionally gets very sorry and boggy because everyone walks on in, and the path around the house is not in the right place. In the first place I relaid the path, and inserted some stepping stones around the Abelia on the corner. I relaid the path on a bed of sand, as well as the stepping stones. I then spiked the lawn with the airator extract a core of soil. Thereafter I mixed equal proportions of sand (building sand) and sifted compost, added a hand full of grass seed and a couple of cups of general purpose fertilizer. This mixure was raked into the lawn and then watered down well. They future will tell the results
2001-03-07: Ordered some snowdrops, narcissis and crocusses in the green to plant into the current bulb groups.
2001-02-27: I came across the Fragrant Plant and Lavenders brochure of Norfork Lavender. They are the premier Lavender farm in England. That has inspired me afresh to look into ordering plants for the scented garden. I need to do a bit more homework to plan the garden area, and then proceed with ordering some plants.
2001-02-26: Ordered some Impatience, Salvia’s and Rudbeckias from Dobbies in small plants. No doubt that April is going to be busy as I expect some 700 small plants to arrive in this period to be planted out. Visiting Longacres also made me aware that it is know the time to buy small plants. They are much cheaper know (60-120 p) than when they are grown into larger pots (245p)
2001-02-25: I also purchased the first herb plants and plan to create a small herb garden in pots close to the kitchen.
2001-02-15: The stocks, Carnations and Coleus came up
2001-01-19: It is quite interesting that the Hamamelis did not flower as well as last year during this winter. I am not sure if it is because of the mild winter that we had, or weather it is because I did not trim the tips of the branches, as I have done the previous year.
2001-01-18: Today I brought some gladioli and lily bulbs from Amsterdam home. I did not buy many bulbs this winter and realised that I still have potential to plant large quantities of spring and summer bulbs in the garden. I also need to become more discrete in how I arrange them in terms of color, staging and hight.
2001-01-03: I cleaned the summer pots in front garden at the house and gathered all the pots with spring bulbs and arranged them into their positions - all is now ready for a wonderful display at the start of the new season. The daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths is rearing their heads all over the garden.
2000-11-17: Johan Diederiks, my brother in Law, agreed to lend me a hand in the garden every Saturday. For him it is a great opportunity to break away, they do not have a garden, and some extra income, and for me it is a great help and a wonderful opportunity to spend more time with him.
2000-07-15: I finally decided that the gardener has worked long enough on my nerves, has caused too much damage (cutting through the hose with the lawn mower, destroying my Rhododendrons, and generally just doing the things that I do not like) - he will not be returning.
1999-11-12: The leaves is bringing me to my knees. There is so much, and help in the harden from the family has dwindled. I decided to get a gardener to help.
1999-05-02: Long time no write. The frost has damaged quite a lot of the established garden, in particular the rhododendrons and azaleas. Next year I must close them. It also damaged the roses. I may decide to get blankets next year for frost protection as the plants take quite a long time to recover. In the meantime I also put up the greenhouse, and planted some plants in there. It is a great working house, and it does keep the plants in a more protected area. It also seems to get too hot during the day in the summer.
1999-02-28: The first signs of spring is in the air, bulbs are coming up, the plum tree is in bloom, and the crocusses are opening up. It is quite evident that the spring is going to bring much work.
1999-02-20: The first daffodils started to bloom today
1999-01-25: I finished the majority of the pruning and cleaning of the garden today. We went to Kew gardens yesterday and I notices that they did not yet prune the roses. However, I have pruned our roses, and hope that we do not get significant frost in the next couple of days. I really enjoyed working in the garden and can see the bulbs and blooms slowly starting to form and come out. it is really great.
1999-01-24: I saw the first snowdrops blooming this weekend in the rose garden, must clean them out a bit next weekend.
1998-11-29: The sky is clear and we had two more days of frost. I noted that the plants on the pond must have frozen, and their leaves came off, broken in the stem. I also cut all the excess plants out of the pond to give it some space. I am somewhat concerned as I do not want the herons to catch the fish, and do not know what I must do about it (apart from putting net over the pond).
1998-11-22: The past few days was not too cold, no frost again and not any rain. I used the vacuum again to blow the leaves, and this time round it worked better. It seems to work better if the leaves are dryer. I also had to fix the vacuum bag - bad design that is. The other thing that I fixed this week that I feel proud of is the shredder. After many years I took the shredder blades to an engineer to get the blades off, and got some new screws at a specialist fastener shop, and then sharpened the blades. I checked the latest models out in the shops and just realised again that I made a good selection some years back - it can still work for a long while.
1998-11-22: I hope to get into the garden today and tie some plants up, and continue with the cutting of shrubs and trees.
1998-11-15: This weekend focused on cutting and shaping scrubs and trees for the new season, and cleaning out beds of old flowers. It also involved shredding the mountain of material. I worked into the dark, and then turned the compost. I was very pleased to see that the first batch of compost that I made some four weeks ago was really looking and smelling very good. Turning the compost and mixing it with the shredded wood chips I then stacked it in four 1 cubic meter piles, closed it with plastic and secured it with some branches. This compost should be ready as mulch within the next month or so. Creating about 4 cubic meters of compost within one month to 6 weeks has really given me a great pleasure. Working away all this material is a great challenge. I have also taken care of the shredder, and will take it to an engineering works today to get the blades loose. Looking at the shredders in the shops it is quite evident that the shredder I brought with from SA is of good quality.
1998-11-08: Today was the first day that Elmien, Johan and myself worked in the garden. We all enjoyed it very much. Notwithstanding the weather forecast that it will rain the whole day - it turned out be a really wonderful day.
1998-11-08: We spent the whole day getting the leaves together and gathered about 12 bags. We put them all, with compost maker, in plastic bags, made some holes in the bags and left them in an unobtrusive place. They say it will take about a year to decompose. We will see. Judged by the number of bags that we collect in one go, I guess that we will have many more to come during the season.
1998-11-08: Started to build a relationship with the plant park just around the corner. The lady there knows our house, and it was good to talk to her. No doubt that this is a large garden and will require much work. According to her the previous owners had garden services coming in to help - it cost £10 per hour. This is a lot of money.
20190514_194354.jpg: 2020-11-14 Staking |
IMG_0202.jpg: 2020-11-14 Taking a break |
P1030281.jpg: 2020-11-14 Dalida and Anya in garden |
Dsc00395.jpg: 2001-05-12 Josh and Elmien |
Dsc00060 (2).jpg: 2001-02-18 Rose pruning |
Dscf0906.jpg: 2000-09-24 watering |
20190602_122439.jpg: 2020-11-14 Dahlia staking |