Dioon11's Blog

* Its Raining Yet Again, So Write A Blog!!*

Posted on 3 Jun, 2008 2 comments

Having waited three months for my heavy clay soil to moisten up for planting, the rains of the past 3 weeks have made it possible for me to plant up my renewed Herebaceous Border. I have been planning to do this since January but the ground has never been in the best condition for ‘working’ and planting. In October 2007 I collected up about a 1.50M3 of leaves and made a leaf mould heap. By the beginning of April the resultant compost was ready for use as a final top dressing once planting was completed.

The section of border being renewed is about 9 metres long with width varying from 1.5m to 2.5 M and contained alot of weed infested elderly plants and a couple of bucket loads of Convolvulus ‘spaghetti’. Since January I have been gathering up plants from various sources in order to build up a stock of about 100 suitable specimens. I used mail order – Parker Bulbs – to obtain 18 Primula viallii, which I potted on into 4” pots and are now fully flowering:

Primula Viallii

In February I bought three Monardia didyma for £1.50 each, carefully divided each in half with a sharp bread knife, and potted these into 5” pots. A similar approach was used for 4 Papaver orientale ’ Chequers ‘ which produced 10 suitable plants all in 3” pots. Other plants treated in this way include: _ Astilbe, Echinaceae, Solidago, Heuchera, Lobellia cardinalis, Eryngium planum, Gaillardia, sisyrinchium californicum, Campanula carpatica_. By buying in advance of permanent planting I was able to produce over 100 suitable sized plants for a very low outlay in cost terms.

Heuchera Group

On Saturday 24th May, our first reasonable day for working on heavy clay soil, I commenced digging only to be twarted by further inclement weather on Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday and it was not until Saturday 31st May that I was able to complete the digging task and start planting. By Sunday 1st June the weather had returned to being overcast and then rain so perfect for newly planted border.

In addition to this little project my front garden Vegetable raised beds are now fully into their second year of production, with the footways housing 16 planter bags of Potatoes; Parsnips, Carrots and Swedes in the ‘roots bed’; Shallots, Garlic, Red and White Onions in the ‘Bulbous bed’; Sprouts – Trafalgar, Cauliflower – Andes, Cabbage – Excel and Radishes in the -‘Brassica bed_’, Pea – Kelverton Wonder in a large tub and assorted salad leaves iin planting troughs.

Brassica bed

Nb. I had anticipated being able to download photos direct from my camera to the blog page. I had not realised I needed to download them to GOY my photos before starting to write this. So if you are at all interested in seeing some visuals of these writings please have a look at my photos.

And Finally, I hope the italics works otherwise there will be some odd looking text appearing on this blog

Dioon 11 (Tuesday 03.June 2008)