Gardening: Holiday, Moving & Planting

Hiya peeps, its Gill,

Got back a week ago from my hols staying with my brother in France not too far from the Pyrenees. Glorious weather, between 26 and 30 deg every day. My brother Peter grows all his own veg and some fruit for the year too. I was told to eat as many strawberries and raspberries as I wish from the garden. Needless to say I didn´t have to be told twice lol! The raspberries (my favourite fruit) were delicious. It reminded me of my first taste of this wonderful fruit. When I was about 7 or 8 years old I had a friend on the army estate where I lived in Wolverley called Joyce McCluskey. Her back garden was about 5foot square at the most and it was just raspberries. We used to lay on our backs and crawl under these canes and just eat. What wonderful days. My Dad used to grow strawberries and I used to eat them green, I couldn´t wait for them to turn red. He often used to say what a poor crop he had, if only he had known! If he were alive now, I would own up.

Whilst in France we watched swallowtail butterflies, a beautiful creature that was plentiful in my youth but haven´t seen here for over 50 years. Also something I have never seen before a humming bird moth on a newly opened hibiscus, stunning! There were frogs croaking all day long, a flock of egrets came every day and settled near a little creek to catch the fish I guess, and we watched buzzards spiralling on thermals, as I do in England too.

My nephew 5 year old Jenson had been there for the summer holidays and had seen the chickens eating a mouse. He was most concerned and told my brother to get it because if he didn´t the mouses Mum and Dad would be sad if he didn´t come home. Isn´t that lovely? Oh and the other thing that I haven´t seen before was a big fat black bee on the runner beans absolutely fully laden with pollen he could hardly fly, I could watch that sort of thing for hours.

Well I have news, we have sold the house and will be going our separate ways soon, but there is so much to do in the garden to get it straight for the new family moving in. The biggest job is to move the chickens, my daughters friend Jenny is having them. They will have acres of bluebell woods to run around, a freer life than they get here. I did shed a little tear, I will miss Lucky most, but I will be able to go over and see them when I like she said.

It is definitely the start of autumn here so I will be cutting off all the tall plants. The tomatoes can be pulled although there is still time for a few more to plump up and redden. I pulled all the runner beans up yesterday and gave the whole plants, beans and all to the chickens. They stripped everything off and left just the main stems, they will eventually mulch down into the ground. All the leaves on the trees are starting to turn a golden yellow, absolutely stunning time of the year.

Now is the time of year to start looking at spring bulbs. There is an ernormous choice these days of colours and shapes. For me you cannot beat the every day daffodil, I am not one for the pink variety etc. The tulips are my favourites in the spring. Just check that the bulbs you buy are not even slightly mouldy, they won´t grow and they infect the others. I hate the thought of leaving my lovely English bluebells here but I´m not going to dig them up as I wont have a permanent house to go to and dont know when I will have. Most of the bluebells that you see other than the ones in the woods here in England now are Spanish. Goodness knows how that happened. I think one of the most beautiful sights in England is woodland with that glorious bluebell colour, a lilacy blue haze. My gladioli are still flowering, one of my Dad´s favourites, thats why I grow them.

Don´t forget like I said last time, if you need to regrass or have patches on the lawn that need seeding, do it this month or March only.

I have dug up and potted two of my acers and left 5 here that are too large to move without doing any damage. This week I will be potting up probably about 5 of my azaleas, one of them I brought from my last house and it survived, a vivid orange one. I have bought some ericaceous soil for that, oh and also two rhodedendrons. I must be boring you with all my things to do so I will close now and get some of them done.

Take care all, happy gardening, and will try and think of something to chat to you about next week. Luv from Gill

September Gardening Trimming

What should you do in September?

This time of year you should be watching out for hungry caterpillars and removing them from your roses before they munch them all!

Hedges need their final trims.

Vegetable Garden

• You still have time to sow salads and greens for the winter


• Plant garlic and onion towards the end of the month


• Keep the birds off your produce by using netting, at least until they have put down their roots


• Make sure purple sproutin broccoli or brussels are earthed up and staked to prevent rocking


• Remove leaves around winter squash and pumpkins so they can ripen in the sun


• Place an old plate under pumpkins and squash so the dry evenly and don't rot


• Celeriac and leeks need a liquid feed for the final growth spurt while the weather is still good


• Cover tender crops such as lettuce, dwarf beans and other salad crops with polytunnels and cloches as the nights begin to get cooler

Flower Garden

• Dead head as many plants will not produce more flowers late in the season, keep pretty seed heads on for autumn and winter to keep the insects happy


• Try not to be too tidy! If you want to see more wildlife then a tidy-ish garden is the way to go


• Plant bulbs between shrubs and herbaceous plants, and in natural drifts in the lawn, discard any mouldy or shrivelled bulbs


• If you are lawn planting choose daffodils and crocus


• Clip new hedge growth, such as yew and box for the last time this season, weed around the base of hedges, compost the weeds


• Protect your tall plants from strong winds by staking them


• Fruit trees should be planned now, the cheapest trees are bare-root plants sold to plant in late winter/early spring. Frost resistant varieties are Apple Falstaff

Seeds
Saving your seeds is an easy way to grow your seed collection. Easiest are poppy, nigella and beans. Leave your beans until they rattle in the pod, shake poppy and nigella seeds into airtight containers. Store in a cool dry place for next time

What Bulbs should I plant now?
Dutch Iris
Parrot Tulips
Alliums
Crocus
Daffodils
Hyacinths

My favourites are Daffodils and Hyacinths, I have Hyacinths in various colours growing in pots - just gorgeous!

Chickens Learning About Nature

Hello everyone, its Gill,

I hope you have all been enjoying your gardens in the last week. Mine looks like a disaster zone at the moment, we let the chickens out of their run yesterday and they created mayhem!!! I will be tidying up today so no problems. My lovely chickens are going to a new home in the next 8 weeks. We sold our house on Saturday and as neither of us can have them at our new abodes they have to move on. Luckily my daughter Michelle has a friend with acres of land and she is kindly taking them on. I have already shed a tear, you grow so close to them, they all have different characters, and are more intelligent than people think, although being thick at the same time, if you understand what I mean lol!!! I will miss 'Lucky' my bantam more than anything. When I was a small child we had chickens, mind you I grew to hate them because I fell in their run when I was about 3, I can actually remember it, and I thought they would eat me. Ridiculous but when you are small they must seem huge. My two Aunties in Crawley had them, Auntie Dorothy and Auntie Bess. I loved going over to Auntie Bess' she had 8 children and it always seemed that there wasn't a second without noise everywhere, I absolutely loved it there. We used to chase after the chickens, naughty us, but we were young then. There was always a huge plate of chicken for dinner. Of course my favourite part as always was collecting the eggs.

One of the reasons for me getting the chickens was because I was opening up a bag of compost that I had folded the top down on after using it before, and out came a spider. I am scared of spiders, I mean really scared. This was a black widow, I froze on the spot, then stood up and went to my brother and sister in law who were staying with me at the time, and told them. My brother did what all brothers do, laugh, but my sister in law said, "Look at her face she's serious". We went back to the bag and of course it had gone. I got straight on to the net and found that it was a false black widow. All I remember was that its body looked like a shiny black marble, perfectly round. They are prevalent in the south of England and have been here for about 35 years, apparently the first one coming over in someone's suitcase after holidaying. (how they know that I will never know). Hence the chickens, nothing grows or lives anywhere near them lol. Yesterday when I was in the garden with them, I heard a little scream and found 'pepper' pecking at a little frog. Poor little thing, I saved it, I didnt know they could scream.

Obviously the main reason for people loving gardening comes from their parents, but also what we used to call the 'nature table' that we had as infants. Most schools unfortunately don't have them now. Also nature walks, I loved going on those learning the names of all the plants in the area. They apparently can't do these now because of 'health and safety' what absolute RUBBISH. Never did us any harm, in fact it started off the seeds in our brains for the love of all things to do with nature.

I cannot tell you how much I love to see old gnarled trees, and I am certain that came from my infant teacher, I know I learned the names of them from her. I can remember a marshy place not far from our school absolutely full of oxlips. I have some now in my rockery, I bought them from the garden centre, I wouldn't dream of digging them up from the wild.

I have the predicament at the moment of which plants to take with me, and which to leave. At least it will be the right time of the year to dig up small trees and bulbs (my lilies and gladioli) mainly. I am hoping that my friend Wendy will take all of them to stand in her garden until I make up my mind what to do next. I hope that my son and his wife sell their house soon then I could have a wooden chalet in the garden of their new house. Luckily I have several places I can go until we all get sorted. My plants are my main priority right now.

If you have patches in your grass, March and September are the best months to seed your lawn.

Okay folks thats it for this week. I won't be doing a blog next week, sorry. I am going to France tomorrow to visit my brother who now lives there, for a week. Hope you have good weather and get all the tidying up jobs done in the garden. Take care,

Gill