Gardener's back - or is it?

Gardener's back - or is it?

Hmmm... I am unhappy to say that I have done my back in! After all the hard slog lifting and humping sacks of compost and all that and planting big shrubs and allsorts, this spring, I do my back in now... now there's not much left to do but water, deadhead and weed. Well I can still do the watering but the deadheading and weeding is harder because you have to bend to do that!

Fortunately I saw a physio yesterday and today I am feeling much better but it was agony for the first two days. Did gardening cause it? No, actually I am convinced it was bellydancing! But it only hurts you if you do it wrong and I felt all wrong with it on Monday night, so there's a lesson - go very easy if it just doesn't feel right!

Seen an RHS Member's Garden

Seen an RHS Members Garden

We went to a barbecue the other night at the home of a couple of friends who live with an aged Aunt. She is a keen gardener and member of the RHS, so I was keen to have a look around the garden with her. She was very sweet in her own way, offering cuttings to anyone who wanted them. There were some plants there which I couldn't identify and she helped me out; some of them are actually in our garden. Mind you some things she couldn't remember the name of either.

She had some quite impressive Echiums, which I understand are fairly tender but do well in a mild and sheltered dry garden, which is what she had. It was intriguing that she hardly waters the garden at all, except the pots. So it can be done.

She had a massive variegated Phormium which was twice the size of ours, and I consider ours pretty darn big! They do get massive. I give ours plenty of water but hers hardly gets any. She had some wonderful climbers grappling up the sides of her big old house, a fig tree and wisteria. It is so educational to visit someone else's garden, especially when it is mature and the gardener has years of experience.

The Bamboo is Revolting!

The Bamboo is Revolting!

I noticed whilst weeding the exotic bed that the bamboo which is at the back of that bed (and established before we arrived on this plot) is straining on the leash of the root barrier we had placed in there last autumn. Basically it hasn't worked and the bamboo is still popping up all over the bed!

The lesson is that root barrier should be placed around bamboo at the same time that it is planted. We had a gardener put some in after the event (through no fault of our own: the previous owners neglected to put root barrier in) but so far it seems the parts which had already bolted are still sprouting.

All I can do is cut it down to ground level when it does, and hope that this weakens those parts.

A Windy Day in the Garden

A Windy Day in the Garden

Not much gardening was done today - life got in the way, but I did have to go around tieing in a few more plants as the wind really got up later on. It's raining now at almost 11 pm, which is great. If only it rained every night we wouldn't have to water, and the days would be nice, if humid. Mind you that might encourage the slugs more than one would like.

I have just ordered a load of seeds online as they were half price. I'll be going bonkers next spring, but I have vowed that I will sow less in numbers and more individually in pots, rather than these trays which got very congested this year. I won't sow a lot of things quite as early either. Mind you next year we will have a good greenhouse from the get-go, which will make all the difference I hope. This year most of the stuff was grown on in the conservatory as the greenhouse wasn't ready. Nightmare. But I must remember: by all means sow a few spares, but I have ordered a lot of varieties so I mustn't over-sow or I will be having a nervous breakdown trying to keep it all alive!

Weeding, deadheading and tieing in

Weeding, deadheading and tieing in

That's what I was doing today. It was quite windy so I decided I had better go around with a lot more canes and tie up the larger Foxgloves, Delphiniums etc. Also I have sort of lashed the shrubby Lavatera to the fence as it is inclined to flop forward all over everything else.

I was also deadheading pansies like mad, weeding like crazy (by hand) and cutting back old daffodil foliage and other tatty looking spring flowerers which have gone over. Unfortunately I only got to do about a third of the whole plot, so more tomorrow!

Apple tree diagnosis

Apple Tree Diagnosis

Well, apparently it's got just about everything - fungus, scab, you name it! The problem is that there are two schools of thought on gardening - the organic, leave it all to do what it likes and the spray everything whether it needs it or not bunch! I try not to spray things unless they really need it, and watch them until they tell me they need it.

We took the specimens of poor shoots to the garden centre and asked their advice, and he said it had various fungal problems and this was all because we had failed to spray the darn thing early on as soon as it set flower. I hate having things in my garden that you have to spray all the darn time, and I am not even that keen on apples except in pies, but still, it is a pretty thing in flower and the birds and my husband like the fruits. So, preventative spraying with insecticide and fungus killer is apparently the thing.

Ours is a family apple tree which carries three types of fruit on one tree. I find that a bit confusing but I suppose they do all look a bit different, so it's not all that hard to tell the apples apart.

So, spray at the ready!

Dead oriental poppy

Dead oriental poppy

Yes, I believe it is called "allegro". We only bought and planted it about a month ago, or less. It produced one spectacular flower and then it has died back. Now I know oriental poppies have a habit of looking pretty awful, foliage-wise, after (or even during) flowering, but this one just turned totally yellow and drooped ground-wards with undue haste. I pulled it and it just came away, vitually rootless, as if it had been attacked by vine weevil grubs or something! How upsetting, I was planning on poppies being a mainstay of the garden.

It is also situated right under the apple tree which I said had a problem. I wonder if that has any significance?

Problem with the apple tree

Problem with the apple tree

We seem to have something very wrong with the apple tree. It is getting sort of foxy colored tan-brown splotches on the leaves, but then the leaves are totally dying off and drooping as if they are totally dead. I wonder if it is fireblight?

Would that account for the paucity of tulips in this garden? The previous owners seemed awfully keen on bulbs but there are very few tulips.

We plan to put some of the dead leaves in a bag and take them to a local garden centre where hopefully a more experienced gardener will be able to tell us exactly what is wrong.

I don't have any special love for the apple tree. When we moved in last autumn it yielded some edible apples which my husband likes, and quite a few for the birds. I got the idea of making apple crumble which was nice but we put on a few more pounds as a consequence and believe me we can do without that! Still it is upsetting when part of your garden goes bad.

Planted some more

Planted some more plants, Tagetes, (grown from seed), also Nicotiana, Calendula and Verbena Bonariensis. I now have a glut of plants which are looking at me reprovingly and saying "why are we not in the ground by now?" Most of them were sown as spares but now they are looking so nice and raring to go out of their pots and trays, it seems sad to just throw them on the compost heap.

The late spring tidy up

So I have been going over the rockery and pulling out weeds, deadheading the pansies and bellis and primroses. I intend to cut back the aubrieta as well but I want to wait until I am ready in the potting shed to make cuttings for next year.

It's amazing how many self-seeders we have in there, primroses, aqueligia, etc - and some of them have to be weeded out. One or two are like "hooray, free plants" but more than that and they are just crowding everything else. Now I need more gravel to top up where I have yanked things out.

More Chafers and Maybugs

More Chafers and Maybugs

So the lawn doctor guy came and looked at the lawn. The good news is that he said that so far there is no evidence of pest (chafer grub) damage in our lawn. There is "red thread" fungus though, which is something that apparently happens as a consequence of the damp mid-spring we have had, followed by hot weather.

We have found a few more dead Maybugs in the greenhouse, they seem to fly in there to die. I wonder if they lay their eggs immediately upon emergence from the ground, if so killing the bugs is a futile exercise in cruelty against a beast who is destined to live a very short time anyway. Don't know though.

So we are watching the newly fed and weeded lawn with interest, but at least for now we are not experiencing pest damage in the lawn.

Chafer grubs and May Bugs

So we went to a garden and food show at Pensthorpe Wildlife park this weekend. We spoke to a lawncare expert who was most dismayed that I found a number of chafer grubs when I was digging up the turf. Also we have had quite a few Maybugs, mainly clicking against the windows at night and two flew in to the conservatory last night as we had the door open (it was warm and stuffy). We have found three in the greenhouse.

He is going to assess whether we need to have the lawn treated. There is a new treatment come out which is a low level of the stuff you use for Vine Weevil, as far as I can see. It is called Merit and it is only licensed for use by lawncare professionals at the moment. The treatment needs doing in June/July when the blighters start hatching so if it is to be done we need to get on the case quickly.

The thing is that I am still not sure if we are overreacting. I don't think it is a massive infestation at the moment and they are quite common in the area, I think. but I guess that with a four year lifecycle the problem, now we have seen it, can only get worse. And when it gets bad it gets very bad because they totally destroy your lawn. And I just don't like big flying beetles, call me old fashioned, but I don't! I'm not normally squeamish about the natural world but flying beetles give me the heeby jeebies.

Apparently the beetles feed on beech leaves amongst other tree and shrub leaves, which is great (not) as we have two huge beech trees and two beech hedges in our garden, so that would attract them anyway, wouldn't it? I think I know more about Maybugs/Junebugs/Cockchafers or whatever you want to call them than my lawn man, indeed probably more than most people! I am becoming a Cockchafer bore!