Tag Archives: clematis

Getting ahead of it all

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Of late we’ve had some lovely days and then days of greyness and a little rain. Even if we don’t, the garden likes it and is starting to bolt ahead. The clematis which has taken a few years to establish itself is now doing well (above).

We were thinking had we put the potatoes in too early, but we cover them at night (and on cold days) with fleece and left over plastic and they seem to be doing alright. We will start earthing them up as we go along, as there’s nothing as bad as pulling up your potatoes and finding a load of green ones. We know that’s a long way off yet but it’s good to plan and prepare! Fingers crossed there’s no surprise frosts to come.

The (non) Frost report

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Things are looking good in the garden, the clematis (above) is flowering profusely this year after a couple of years of not doing much. We once heard on Gardeners Question Time if you threaten a plant with a “final cut with a pair of secateurs” it can do the trick but it’s not something you want to do as it doesn’t seem right. Nature just did its thing with the clematis.

The bottom part of the garden has now vegetables starting to germinate (the sticks keep the cat out) even though the home-made plant labels have the touch of small gravestones if viewed at the right angle.

And we remember the late great Joe Maiden mentioning on the BBC Leeds gardening programme many moons ago that Good Friday is traditionally when you plant your seed spuds. These cara potatoes are starting to sprout now, and we’ll be earthing them up as that hopefully will keep them protected if there is a threat of frost over this weekend.

Happy Easter everyone and we hope you get the Easter eggs you desired. There was a bloke we worked with once when asked what he thought of Green & Blacks 70% chocolate and “quality” chocolate he replied, “I’m a cheap easter egg bought at the local market type chocolate person myself, none of that posh stuff, real chocolate”. And on that note…

Meanwhile, back in the Midlands…

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Thanks again to Mike and Julia for the pics of their back garden when they returned from their holiday. “We now have two sunflowers and those purple things in our wild patch are chicory. The flowers close up at night when the bees have gone home.” Brilliant Mike!What we love here is they’ve got an olive tree, called Olive (of course). She’s in the top laft hand corner of the picture and as Mike says “seems to be benefiting from the high temperatures”. Excellent!

And here’s a great rich coloured clematis and a “Ms Mars” sunflower, all looking wonderful. That’s it with holidays when you come back you will notice the difference in your garden.

Spring must be here!

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Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.

Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.

We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
So cheers Mike and Julia for sending in the pictures of your great garden and do let us know how things are going later this season!