Free plants a plenty

Late again I know but here it is now, First off as usual here is this weeks pic from the potting shed,

The borders are beginning to fade now and so it's time to start sorting out freebie plants and seeds.

First off there are the lupins - and whilst initially I was pleased to see so many self seeded lupins this Spring in the border to the left of the photo above, they have continued to appear all year and the lupins were in danger of smothering pretty much all the other young plants in the  borders, so a gret many have been removed. I have the seedheads  from a lot of these in bags in the potting shed - one bag of pink lupins, 1 of blue / purple lupins and an empty compost bag filled with seedheads of a general mix of colours. Ther is a bank down where the greenhouse is that these seeds will be broadcast onto in the Spring where they will be allowed to grow and spread to their hearts content (within

 reason).

The next major freebies are the buddleia - not only have I dug up and potted up six self seeded young plants of the purple variety which are now in the greenhouse, I have removed two section s of the trunk of this one, one about 18" long, the other about 30" long and these have been planted at depths equivalent to half their length in the banking outside the greenhouse. Both sections have planty of green growth buried so should grow away and form decent sized shrubs fairly quickly. The reason for cutting back the trunks is to try and curtail the smothering effect that the original bush was having on the Governor Cheery tree which more or less dissapeared from view from Mid May onwards. I split some more clumps of Achillea Summer Pastels and these have been planted in such a way as to to hopefully provide more of a drift effect in the border than a large clump.

Other plants will be divided over the coming weeks, including hemerocallis, iris, centaurea and geranium.

I also erected the supports and wires for the forthcoming raspberry canes. Theare will be two rows each 5 metres long. The frames are constructed from deer fenceposts, chapped in til only 5ft remains above ground. To these are attached cross members each 2ft long, the first 3ft from the ground and the other at the top of the post (5ft from the ground). Wires are then run the length of the beds between the supports then additional wires are strung across the wires at 1.5ft intervals. The canes will be contained within these wires and the crosswires will help provide additional support for the growing canes.

 It may well be that when the canes are planted we shall enclose them in  a wooden surround / mini raised bed to make future feeding / mulching easier and then any canes that appear outsideof this  wooden frame can be removed  whilst those within the confines of the bed will be allowed to remain and grow on.

Anyway here is a pic of the finished item

I also sowed some Astrantia seed and pruned some more climbing roses.That's about it for this week. Back on Tuesday night.