Wednesday 23 March 2011

Face Down, Ass Up,That's the way we like to ..........

WEED !
Spent quite a lot of time on my hands and knees today weeding the herbaceous borders (again) - I suppose if you think about the old gardeners saying "One Years Weeds is Seven Years Seeds, then I'm looking at 7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7 (you do the maths !) years worth of weed seeds but of course, they are not viable for that long, though I recall being informed somewhere in my dim and distant past that Docken seeds can remain viable for up to 80 years. There is still quite a bit of ground elder in the borders but they are now mostly small pieces and hopefully I will be able to eradicate this and the couch grass this season.
Anyway, the first of the daffodils have opened and the photo below shows the variety that is on the line of the path between the bottom and middle sections of the path. This is obviously quite an old variety and I shall attempt to get it identified before too long as it would be nice to know just how old it is and possibly how long it has been in the garden.



Whilst we have a bit of colour on show, here are a couple more pics from today showing what is brightening the borders up at the moment
Pulmonaria adding a splash of early colour

Garrya Elliptica - I love these trees

Hellebores looking really good IMO

Anyway, after I get the herbaceous borders completely finished, the next big area to be tackled is the "Fruit Border", seen below as it looked today.


Now, some of this has already been weeded once but the far end is a mess of brambles, nettles, thistles, couch grass, willow herb and ground elder, with weeding not being helped by the root systems of not only the pear trees growing against the wall but also the various sycamores that were growing alongside the path, the stump of one of these can be seen just behind the strainer post in the foreground.
Got some more seeds sown today - Sweet Peas, varieties Horizon Mixed and Showbench 8 Mix



And two new veggies - Brussels Sprouts "Petit Posy" which is a cross between Sprouts and Kale and which grows like a sprout but doesn't produce the tight buttons of a conventional sprout but what liiks like very small frilled cabbages.

and some Stem Brocolli



And finally, the greenhouse was brought down to the garden today, in 7 boxes, ready for assembly at a time as yet to be decided but the sooner the better. The greenhouse is 16'9" long by 8'6" wide with staging down one length, 5 automatic roof vents and two slatted louvres.
That's it for this week, Thanks for looking.

1 comment:

  1. I have ground elder too, which I've been attempting to dig out for some time now... Any little bit I miss is enough to get it going again :>( I'm trying those sprouts too this year.

    Greenhouse sounds good!

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