Tag Archives: perennial flax

My Patch – A Garden update: April 2019

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This month I have concentrated on trying to get the garden into a tidier/cleaner state for the planting out of the flowers when they are ready.  It has meant a lot of work so other aspects have suffered a little! 

April 1st – the basil has started to grow 🙂

April 2nd – as it is meant to be frosty for the next few nights I thought I would leave my cowslips and garlic mustard outside to ‘chill’.  They are meant to have a period of cold to start germination so I thought it can’t do them any harm as they don’t seem to be doing anything anyway! I tidied a little more of the glasshouse and found another five terracotta pots I will be able to use.  They will all need a bit of a clean, I just need to work out if I have any shorter plants which I can put in them; probably birdsfoot trefoil and sweet williams.

April 8th – tonight I potted on some of the sweet pea, sunflowers and borage.  I know I should have probably potted on the sweet peas earlier but I wasn’t sure where to pot them on too!  I knew I needed a deeper pot, I still have more that need rescuing from their small trays.  

Last year I removed a purple/red coloured steamed plant from the raised bed as it was in the way of the bird feeder!  I put it in a pot as no one knew what it was – thanks to @porridgebrain on Twitter who posted an image of her peonies I discovered what it was! It is still alive! I have removed all of ‘weeds’ from its pot and moved it to a sunnier spot – I plan to put it back into the raised bed but in a more suitable location.  

April 9th – This evening I decided I needed to take some images of the garden before I started to tidy/clean.  It does look a bit of a mess and its starting to make me stressed!  I know gardening isn’t meant to create stress it is meant to reduce it, but when there is so much to do it gets a bit much.  

I also potted on more of the borage and removed the ‘weeds’ from all the pots in the left garden.  The mint looks much better now I can actually see it is growing; I think it will need to be re potted this year.

April 10th – I finished potting on all of the borage today; I think I should have potted them on when they were a little smaller.  I have 73 plants in total.  I was going to sow some more though I think that will probably be more than enough for this year! 

April 11th – my common fleabane has started to sprout 🙂

I have only just thought about taking photos of my seedlings so I know what they look like in future years – I hope the flowers will seed themselves in the garden so next year I need to know what they look like so I know what is growing!

April 12th – So today I jet washed the left side of the garden’s patio; it only took 10 hours!!

April 15th – the mint has started to grow 😊  I have sown more rudbeckia as for some reason it hasn’t germinated.  

April 16th – sowed red campion, tall marigolds (I collected seed form the garden last year so I don’t know exactly what they are!) and perennial flax seed which I also collected from the garden.  

April 18th – painted the left fence, ‘weeded’ the raised bed and one of the love-in-the-mist has sprouted.

April 19th – was also a busy day, I moved the garlic mustard from growning in the right hand patio to the raised bed in the hope that it will survive, jet washed the patio, looked at repairing the garage guttering so a water butt can be fitted; we had to remove one of the branches from the hazel tree as it had caused the guttering to break.  I also potted on 62 cornflowers, potted on the rest of the sweet peas and put up a bee hotel 🙂

April 20th – I concreted 90% of the right hand patio – it took all day!

April 24th – Potted on 37 cornflowers and  33 teasel, the marigolds, red campion and the new batch of cornflowers and rudbeckia have sprouted.  I wasn’t expecting the perennial flax to germinate but it is doing quite well.

April 25th – Potted on 36 teasel and 21 sunflowers.

April 26th – Tonight I tweeted a photo of a tiny daffodil looking flower that is located in one of the window boxes.  @Mark_Couper replied to let me know they are daffodils; a variety called ‘new baby’. At least now I know what to do with them when they are relocated out of the window box, as at the moment they are surrounded by ‘weeds’ and very little compost!  

April 27th – today I visited a nursery sale with my Mum.  We went last year; this year I was going with a list of what I wanted to buy.  I managed to find only one plant on my list echinacea, I did also buy martin’s spurge as I thought it would look nice against the green of the fence and also add some foliage in the winter as I believe it is evergreen.   

April 29th – tonight I concreted where my potted plants are going to go so I will be able to start moving them about later in the week.  It will be nice to know some are planted up and are ready to just grow!  I have a few large pots that I assume had shrubs delivered in them, the pots have been kept for years so I have started to utilise them.  They aren’t the most attractive; black with handles on the them but I intend to hide them behind the more ‘attractive’ pots!  Tonight I put some borage in one of them.  I have probably made a mistake when putting 3 plants in one pot as I have read they can grow rather large, I think it might just be trial and error this year!  I also thought I probably needed to plant out the Martin’s spurge as their roots were coming out of the bottom of the pots.  I know they will expand and fill the pot; maybe when they do they can be separated into two pots.  By potting the plants out it meant I had some more small pots I could then use for potting on the remaining sunflowers 🙂 

Also throughout this month… the strawberries, field forget-me-not, garlic mustard, red campion, lilac and choisya ternata have all started to flower 🙂 

So far this year; total number of plants grown from seed and potted on…
99 cornflowers
73 borage
27 sunflowers
69 teasel 

My Patch – A Garden update: August & September 2018

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August

I like how the garden looks in summer but the amount of patio is starting disturb me!  There just seems to be so much of it which is not covered in greenery! Seeing this is only one half of the garden and the other half is all patio I find it even more disturbing! 

I was hoping by the end of August the patio will have been concreted – since it was cleaned there are now huge gaps in between the slabs that concern me, they are more than big enough for a hedgehogs leg to fall down!  However I have only managed to complete half of it  and unfortunately I don’t think the rest of it will be done this year!  

I have found some of the taller plants have needed to be staked up this month as they have been falling over onto the shorter ones.  The method I have used this time is to just put a cane at the back of the plant and use some twine to wrap around the plant to hold it up.  I might have to look for a better method for next year.  I have removed some of the leafy weeds that have been taking over the garden, I don’t have any idea what they are but they have gone as they just seem to be smothering everything else! 

August 1st – a small purple flower has been teasing me all summer, its either a bud or a seed head and its taken me ages to figure out what it is…well I think I know what it is… a perennial flax.

August 8th – I sometimes get a small helper in the garden!  He sits there looking grumpy until he gets cuddles and then thinks its helpful to use the raised bed as his bathroom facilities!! There’s a field behind that fence – why can’t he use that!!! 

August 14th – I have been around the garden this evening and deadheaded the roses.  I keep forgetting to do them so tonight they have all been cared for.  I have also been collecting some seeds from the plants that have been going over. 

August 21st – I’m rather pleased with the tomatoes, I have never grown them before and there seems to be loads of fruit forming on them 🙂

August 27th – I have been gifted a couple of lavender plants, they will have to live in pots as there isn’t really any where for them to go in the garden but at least the pollinators will appreciate them when they have grown a bit bigger.

August 29th – I had to cut back some of the jasmine tonight.  It was on the list of things to do but the task had to be brought forward as the brother of my friend decided he didn’t like it dropping water on his head and took a chainsaw to it!  I was going to cut it back so that it would have the best chance at flowering again next year but I don’t really know how it is going to do now 🙁

August 31st – I ordered a compost bin so I can make the most of the ‘waste’ from the garden 🙂

September

September 2nd – Last month I sowed some Sweet Williams and they have sprouted 🙂 

September 10th – I cut back some more of the Jasmine, half of it has now gone! 

September 12th –  I trimmed back the hedge at the front of the garden and collected up the fallen blackberries for the birds.  I removed most of the brambles from the front garden as they were running very wild and tangling themselves around everything, they were newly established so thought it was best to get them removed before they took over entirely! The ivy has started to flower 🙂

September 17th – I’ve had to pulled up a few of the leafy ‘weeds’ as they seem to have taken over again!  I really hope they aren’t so much of a problem next year! Also I have had to relocate some of the daffodil bulbs as a certain four legged creature has broken the pot they were in and dug them up! He wasn’t admitting responsibility!  

September 20th – I have been tidying up the jasmine by pulling out the wilting vines which we cut off the other week.  It still needs to be reduced and weaved into the arch way to make more of a feature out of it.  It has become obvious as it has been cut back that it has been winding its way into the cables for the house which has made it a little more difficult to deal with. It has however started to sprout at the base again so I am hoping that the new growth can be weaved into the trellis on the wall and then managed as it grows so it doesn’t become unmanageable again.     

September 27th – The jasmine was finally fully cut back tonight, I feel awful for it!  I just hope it does okay over winter and bounces back next year.