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.

Micro Management June 23, 2009

Because my garden is constantly within reach and the maximum amount of effort required to get to it is the strength to open a window, there’s a great temptation to interfere with mother nature.

As I have a minor aphid problem that’s normally how it starts. I’ll look at the plants to see how everything is doing then I’ll notice some aphids hiding like a column of camouflaged squaddies out on patrol.

The brachycome and verbena are particularly prone to this and once you find one group it’s only a matter of time before others become apparent, hiding under leaves and making their headquarters near the base.

With those taken care of a bit of deadheading looks like a good idea. Then you notice that the aster is being overrun by the petunia so a bit of rearranging sorts that out. Then the geranium seems to be producing lots more leaves and you’ve read that pinching those out can help the plant strengthen and so produce more flowers so you do that.

And before you know it you’ve spent an hour going round the various window boxes, repeating the actions and generally trying to improve on nature. It’s at this point that you think maybe just sitting down with a nice cup of tea and letting the plants do their own thing (which is what they’ll do anyway) is probably a better idea – well, maybe I’ll just get rid of those aphids first… and untangle those nasturtiums …

Staying Buzzy June 15, 2009

Mine .... all MINE

Rubbish pun but I had some visitors to the garden this weekend and managed to capture one as it made its way around the superstore.

Those of you with a aversion to bees or insect photographs might want to look away now although they were so small and pics taken from a comfortable distance that there’s not much to bother anyone.

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 .. Maggie May 27, 2009

I shouldn’t really admit to having favourites but Maggie was my first window box and sits proudly on the longest window ledge in the house, facing front and looking out on the world. This position gets a gentle touch of morning sun but from late morning only benefits from reflected light rather than direct sun. If I was more experienced I’d be able to tell you what flowers would be best for this type of spot but I’m not, so it still trial and error for this year.

At 30″ inches long it’s also one of the two (along with Chris) big boxes and you can really pack the plants into them. Even with all my seed growing since January there still wasn’t enough good quality plants to cover all the boxes but Maggie had to get her fair share.

Planting … Joel May 26, 2009

I think it would be fair to say that the marigolds were both planted too shallow and more than ready to be planted elsewhere.

This picture of the extensive root system was repeated in all eight of the marigolds that were grown from seed. It’s quite satisfying to see just how much they’ve developed and they must like the conditions they were grown in. Some others like the nemesia and convolvulus haven’t fared so well while the verbena and brachycome have grown quite slowly and are still weak even though they’ve had lots of light and heat.

Planting … Ed May 25, 2009

It really was dark by the time I’d finished with Ed but this suits his temperament. Poor thing, he spends most of his time literally in the shade with hardly an ounce of direct sunlight to brighten up those corners.

With that in mind the geraniums were left for other boxes but, more in hope than expectation, three strong looking marigolds were planted. I really hope they flower as they would provide a nice consistent look across the three boxes at this side of the house, but if they don’t then it’ll be another little lesson learned and something to consider again next year.

Planting … Chris May 23, 2009

I really do feel a bit bad for Chris. Out there on his own ledge, doing his own thing, travelling the path less travelled. And in this case, getting a random mix of everything that wasn’t getting used somewhere else.

The phrase ‘runt of the litter’ might be a bit harsh but the reality is that this is where all the strong, well-developed plants ran out. No geraniums, marigolds or shop-bought plants here. Instead it was a rather sad mix of verbena, asters, sweet pea and brachycome – none of which looked truly ready to flourish outdoors.

Unfortunately for them, and for Chris, this has become my experimental box. The remaining seedlings were basically split 50/50 between being planted outside and remaining indoors on the sunny ledge. We’ll see how they compare in a couple of weeks.

Planting … Holling May 22, 2009

We’ll start off with a prettier picture this time as there’s only so much scratchy handwriting that’s interesting.

Here we have the finished window box which looks an awful lot scrappier than the lovely ones in the window box book I reviewed a while back. That book has lots of healthy, upright and flowering plants pictured in folksy locations and they really are a joy to look at.

This blog however is the ‘warts and all’ variety of gardening so here we are, at the end of lots of planning, growing and tlc, and yet it still looks like a bunch of plants have been hapharzardly thrown into a plastic container. Ho hum!