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......

 

 

 

 

 

Still no daffies!

Well, the Alness Spring Show has been and gone and in the garden, there is still not a daffodil in bloom - which is a real shame as I was hoping to enter 5 of the old fashioned original daffs. Never mind there's always next year. They are about a fortnight later than usual this year, so hopefully we'll get a show soon, as the snowdops were a fortnight later this year too. With this in mind I might actually lift some after flowering and force them on in the greenhouse for next years show.
Spent most of the day weeding and tidying up the top border -more or less a full day, which is less time than last year and much much more than the year before - in fact the actual weeds are not the problem, it's the removal of the weeds without damaging any of the bulbs or plants in the border that makes it so slow.
So there you have it - nothing too exciting - the most exciting thing about the day was the discovery of a newt in the border!

Winter has returned

Friday this week wasn't too bad weather wise but it was definitely colder (and since then we have had more snow and plummeting temperatures at night)
I began by cuting away all the old foliage from the Hellebores to give their blooms the chance to shine - I can only hope they haven't succumbed to the sudden temperature drop.
Still no daffs in flower - which is a shame - I hope we have some by Friday 15th as there is a local Spring Bulb show on Saturday 16th - I'd really like to take a vase of the old original daffs that proliferate in the bottom section of the garden as I really like them....

 

After tidying up the Hellebores, I got the wheelbarrow out and trundled 14 barrows of well rotted muck onto the potato patch - ideally this should have been done in the back end of 2012 but as we didn't know what areas of the garden were going to be available for this years veg, it had to wait.

After this I planted out the strawberry runners that have been growing on in the greenhouse. These had been placed outside about a month ago - strawberry plants benefit from a cold spell, so planting them out now does no harm and frees up more time for when things start getting hectic in April.

To finish the day, I started into clearing up the herbaceous borders -a seemingly endless task "

That's it for this week..............

First Day of March

And still not a daffodil in flower ! We all thought that with the mild winter we had up here, things would be early on the go in the garden but for some reason, the oppposite seems to be true with only the snowdrops and a handful of crocus in flower - there are signs of life but not too many.
Anyway, this week was spent applying a winter wash to all the fruit trees - something I meant to do before now but forgot!.
And the Mantis was brought out the potting shed and put to work, rotovating the rosebed (where all the dahlias will be going)

followed by the cordon sweet pea bed (where the veg was last year)

 and the area of the fruit bed that was under black polythene all winter (where this years potatoes will be going.

The rest of the day was spent clearing up branches and setting light to one of the last remaining burn piles in what will be the vegetable garden - only one left now, but it's a biggie !

And to finish on a bright note - a pretty little hellebore!

A wee bit chilly

The weather has been beautiful all week up here, with beautuiful clear blue skies every day. Unfortunately it is still February so the clear skies can only mean one thing - hard frosts every morning. This morning was no exception and it was -6 this morning as I arrived at Scotsburn.
Given the ground hasn't had a chance to thaw out all week, there was lirrle to be done with the beds and borders etc, so it was out with the chainsaw and more logging and blocking done, to clear more of the felled trees.
I also cut down the cotoneaster that was growing up through the beech hedge and pulled it clear of the hedge - no point in having it slow down any growth the beech wants to put on.
In the greenhouse, the exhibition sweet peas are just beginning to show through the compost and the onion sets are putting down roots.
So, not the most exciting day garden wise but all the felled timber needs to be cut up and removed so that the next phase of the garden improvement can proceed. One more day with the saw should see the bulk, if not all, of the felled trees cleared.
Thats it for this week.

Mid Feb update

Friday was a beautiful day, although there was still a bit of snow on the ground - I am informed that about 6 inches of the white stuff fell on the garden on Wednesday (I had 4" in the forest I was working at on the same day).
First off was the greenhouse - I moved all the perennials outside...........

then set about planting up the onion sets (Centurion and Red Baron) into 12 cell trays, and started to pot on some of the larger Cantebury Bells after giving them a good soak........

and finally, there is no point in wasting the snow that was left around the greenhouse, so I shovelled it up and spread it on the greenhouse beds to help in the rehydration process.

After this it was up to the small beds either side of the summerhouse and these were weeded and cleaned up as they are full of various bulbs so hopefully in the coming weeks we should start to see some colour in these two beds.

 

 

 

And to finish the day I logged what was left of the fallen trees in the area set aside for the veg garden - the photo below also shows the beech hedge fully cut back, though there are still large clumps of cotoneaster growing through bits of it, and this will all be either cut down to about 3ft or removed altogether.

 

 

That's it for now, back again next week.