Weekend Work September 18, 2009

Bless the summer for its long days, warm temperatures and reliable ability to never live up to expectations. Childhood summers were much hotter, longer and drier, weren’t they? (I’m actually sure they weren’t but the collective consciousness suggests otherwise – or at least the mass media do).

In window-box gardening this means that with a minimal amount of care and attention (regular watering, occasional feeding) you too can end up with a small jungle within arms reach.

But all good things must come to an end. Finally having a bit of spare time to really get stuck in and have a good look at what was going on outside my window it was on with the gardening gloves and out with the secateurs. And boy, was there some work needing done!

Care and Maintenance July 24, 2009

Thank you Mother Nature – doing all the hard work while I get to sit back with my feet up and enjoy the mini-forest growing outside my window. A little bit of dead-heading here, a lot of watering there and hey presto! everything keeps on chugging away – day AND night it seems (I’m sure things are visibly bigger when I look in the morning that when I go to bed.

Of course it’s not all sweetness and light in these northern climes. A couple of thunderstorms and a stiffer breeze have tested the hardiness of these flower boxes. But with eight weeks or so of good growing behind them the majority are proving robust enough to cope with the slightly harsher conditions. And I’m confident that even if we go to gale force for a couple of days they’ll be able to bounce back in good time.

Picture Post – Chris June 12, 2009

After the initial planting Chris was left with lots of small seedlings and not much chance of growth.

Off the Scale June 3, 2009

So now I know why I need to take good care of the watering during the summer – or at least those days that count as summer up here.

This photo was taken at the weekend with the guage on the outside of the window in the sun. If the picture is too difficult to see lets just say the needle if off the scale – above 120F or 50C.

Even allowing for the cheapness of the product it was seriously warm.

I guess this is what the plants and soil have to deal with, rather than the actual air temperature.

And yes, I do need to clean my windows!

Weekend Work June 2, 2009

Back to sporadic posting after a couple of weeks of catching up with all my efforts to plant my window boxes. It takes much more time to write about it than it does to actually do it!

I was a bit lucky with the weather which treated everything very kindly for the first week or so, then turned properly hot (well, hot for this far north anyway) for the last few days.

This has given everything a chance to bed in. As you can see from the picture the marigold’s are in bloom and smell lovely. They only get the morning sun so in the circumstances they’ve done really well.

I’m quite proud of my geraniums too. Although they aren’t flowering yet (unlike one neighbour’s which I’m a little envious of) they are better looking than most of the garden centre varieties so hopefully they have every chance of coming good. Fingers crossed.

Planting the Window Boxes II May 19, 2009

Having gathered everything together, and concocted a planting scheme, the next step was to systematically work my way through each box, trying not to mix everything up on the way.

Counting all the possible seedlings and plants, I had 105 plants at my disposal, six of which were shop-bought. The geraniums and marigold, which had been on the go for the longest time, were quite sturdy and matched up well to the purchased plants. Others like the verbena, brachycome and nasturium were much smaller and leggier.

This made me wonder whether I was doing the right thing in planting them now but I didn’t think they were going to improve much more being kept inside rather than being outside and having time to root properly so these five plants made up the core of my planting scheme. Overall I knew I needed about 75 plants so the remaining ones would be kept as spares and will provide a comparison in terms of development.

Weekend Work – Part 4 May 15, 2009

This is turning into a bit of a mini-series but I wanted to go into some depth about replanting the boxes. Partly so that I can refer back once I see how things develop and partly in case any new gardeners stumble upon the site and want to know about each stage.

I was largely inspired to write this blog because I couldn’t find the kind of advice I wanted online so thought I’d share my experiences as I went so that others could perhaps could get the benefit.

Cactuses Updatesus May 11, 2009

In a moment of profound weakness six weeks ago I filled up a seed tray with an odd mix of soil and sand, and planted some cactus seeds. Although I was aware that these could take some time to germinate I started taking a picture of the tray every day, even though I had no idea what I was looking for.

During those first few days any unrecognised lump or shift in soil seemed like it might be the imminent arrival of the first cactus seed. Well of course when the first seedling did make an appearance I realised that all those other possibles were nothing of the sort, just the eyes playing tricks on me.

It’s now been about seven weeks with the seeds kept in a moist and partially humid environment in an unheated propagator. There are now around 12 seedlings from 40 seeds although each of them are about the size of a very small stone. This really is an act of patience now just to leave them alone and take a look once in a while.

With all the regular seedlings now planted on into little pots the cactus seeds are enjoying the warmer environment of the heated propagator. I need to do a bit more reading on what the optimum conditions are for cactus seedlings but they’re kept wet and given lots of light. The reading I did do suggested lots of specialist conditions in everything from the type of soil and sand to use to the type of water (rainwater is best). I’ll admit to making the best of what I had rather than getting stuff especially so so far so good! Another update when they’ve grown a bit, which should be in about six months.

Watering Woes April 25, 2009

For better or for worse each season has its challenges. In winter it’s simply about keeping things growing during the short cold days. But in spring it’s back to my old nemesis – watering.

I’m not good at judging how much to water the boxes and over winter that hasn’t been much of a problem. But now that the days are both longer (in terms of sunlight anyway) and warmer, my shaky watering judgement is back on the agenda.

It doesn’t help much that the signs of overwatering and underwatering are, by all the internet and book advice available, broadly similar. I suppose it shouldn’t be difficult to tell the two apart really. Simply by looking at some wilting plants (see pansies at left!) and asking the question “when did they last get watered?” a reasonable conclusion can be found.

Weekend Work April 5, 2009

Lots of yellow in the garden at the moment . A little bit of blue as well, not all of it entirely natural and as this picture shows, not all of it mine!

The weekend was all about tidying up and seeing what was left after the windy weather over the past week. I should say that it’s not been really nasty, just bad enough for the tulips to take a beating.

The lovely row of crocuses (I’ve had a full on dictionary arguement with myself and will stick with this plural form for the time being ) all fell over during the week so they got removed. Not sure if this is just nature or my old watering problems but seeing as the flowers in the municipal displays have retreated I’m absolving myself of blame for now. The remaining foliage is actually quite pretty in it’s own way and without the flowers I noticed the silver stripe up the thin leaves for the first time.