End of April

So much for it warming up - it is still cold and wet and Friday saw several heavy showers of hailstones in the garden. On the plus side, things are starting to green up and we have a semi decent amount of daffies in flower in the herbaceous borders.
Along with everything else greening up, there has been the usual explosion of weeds and so the weeding continues apace - this weeks main efforts being focussed on the top of the west facing border which is now home to the 130 or so onions that were started of from sets in cell packs in the greenhouse, another session on the cordon sweet pea bed and one of the beds by the summerhouse.
I'm sure that I failed to mention that I have now planted out 5 x tree peonies that were started from seed two years ago - I do hope they flourish as it would be a shame to lose them after waiting for so long!
BIG NEWS!! The work has started proper on the creation if the vegetable garden. Alan arrived with his track digger on Friday and spent the morning digging out stumps and the old cotoneaster hedge from the allotted area. And after marking out roughly where the edges of the veg plot will be, he started work on terracing the area. There will be three levels, each with three beds and the centre bed on the middle level will have Tim's apple tree as a centrepoint. However, this meant Alan digging up the apple tree which was done with as large a rootball as possible and placing it to one side whilst he worked on the terracing. There is a lot of willowherb and ground elder in this area but hopefully the digger's work will kill off a lot of this.
I am really looking forward to seeing the garden on Friday as the terracing work had just got underway when I was finishing up for the day. Expect a few pics of this next week !!
What else has been happening - Sally has grown some Cosmos "Purity" from seed and these are now all potted up into individual 3" pots, all 56 of them,  and will be planted out en masse in the lower of the two long borders when they are ready.
I sorted through the dahlia tubers as well - we lost three over the winter but all the remaining ones are now snug and planted up in the larger greenhouse bed to get them underway.
So as per usual, here is a pic of the borders this week...........

Warming up now

A glorious day on Friday which hopefully is the start of a longer spell of warmer weather!
So first off , apologies for not updating this for a wee while but there hasn't really been too much to report of interest - weeding isn't exactly top of the "lets see that" list!
However it is a necessity and I have now weeded both herbaceous borders, the west facing border, the fruit bed (incorporating this years tattie ground), the dahlia bed, both beds either side of the summerhouse and the long bed for the sweet peas and gladioli.
I have started chitting the gladioli and have erected the first row of 50 x 8ft canes for the cordon sweet peas, which have now all had their growing tips nipped off to encourage side shoots. At planting out time, the strongest sideshoot will be the one that is trained up the canes and any others will be removed - this is done as it is common for the main shoot on sweet peas to go "blind" and not produce any blooms.
The tatties are chitting away in the house and will be ready for planting out just as soon as the soil has warmed up a bit.
The borders are starting to show signs of life and have had a few additions planted out - some pinks, and astilbes which came from some of my other gardens and were surplus to requirements. as well as some Campanula carpatica in the beds by the summerhouse which came from a neighbour of mine.
The daffs are beginning to open (finally) so hopefully we should start to get a bit of a decent show next week.
Elsewhere, I have started off 8 dahlia tubers in the greenhouse - these are the only ones we will be taking cuttings from this year, the remainder will be planted out direct in the Dahlia bed (the old rosebed by the summerhouse).

Anyways, here is a pic of the borders from April 12th last year......

 

And hers is one taken on Friday............

 

 

Considerably less greenery in the one taken this year!!.But with the arrival of warmer air from the South, things should hopefully get a move on now.

We now have a new door to the garden - the old one was a bit past it.....

 

 

So Matthew made a lovely new door which looks really good - though I think I have to agree with Matthew when he says that although the colour is called "Woodland Green", it looks more like John Deere Green !

 

 

And finally, the digger should be arriving in a fortnight to start clearing up the area of the proposed vegetable garden - much excitement on my part as veg are my passion !! So hopefully it won't be like this for much longer......