Horticultural highlight of the week (2014 week 9) - Narcissus 'February Gold'

The first 'plant of the week' of 2014 is a bit of a blatant excuse to post some photos with my recently purchased squidcam lens for my iPhone 5 - which has a great macro lens which of course is fantasitc for some amazing close-ups of flowers, plants, insects and nature in general!

Anyway these little beauties opened up in to the world last week and provide a welcome splash of colour in an otherwise dull and soggy garden. The original bulbs were planted in November 2011 so have started to form nice clumps. Bulbs purchased from Avon Bulbs.

The photos speak for themselves really.

Clump of narcissi 'february gold' -  with aphid!

Rain-splashed narcissus 'february gold'

Narcissus 'february gold' - close-up of trumpet - taken with SquidCam macro lens

Narcissus 'february gold' - close-up of trumpet with water droplets - taken with SquidCam macro lens

Garden Snapshot - February 2014

Here's the first garden snapshot of 2014 - and the garden is just re-emerging from a pretty gloomy and miserable state of affairs. The hellebores and narcissi bravely flower on.

Garden snapshot - February 2014

Two sections of the neighbours fence have been blown away (I had to remove some of the flapping panels before they took out the young cherry tree thats situated just the other side of the trellis fence. The rose arch has collapsed (just on the left of the shot) - I'm waiting on delivery of a stronger replacement but its been out of stock for a month, possibly there have been many replaced garden arches this winter?

Broken earthenware strewn across the patio, weeds everywhere - and that was after I had tidied up! At least the sun was out today...

Greenhouse repairs - replacing glass panes with acrylic panes

The terrible weather here in the UK in December, January and February didn't hit us anywhere near as hard as it did some parts of the country, fortunately being inland and on a hill (50m above sea level and no rivers nearby) the flooding and damage was minimal.

That said, there was some damage to fencing, the rose arch and more urgently the greenhouse - three panels of glass needed replacing.

Broken greenhouse glass panes

The problems with the greenhouse were partly my fault, I made a fatal error when erecting it. The error was in securing the corners with post-crete before placing the glass in the roof. This meant that the structure was cemented in as a slight parallelogram rathan than a rectangle, meaning that even though the aluminium frame in the walls of the greenhouse remained square (so the glass fitted perfectly) the roof frame formed parallelograms where the square glass was to be fitted. The glass just about went in on the roof but it was a tight squeeze. Any movement in the frame would have put pressure on the sides of those panes, causing them to shatter if the force was too extreme.

(Maths) lesson learned the hard way!

I opted to replace the glass with 3mm acrylic panes from Greenhouse Warehouse. 3mm is the minimum thickness you should use for roof panes to avoid bowing. The reasons for choosing acrylic were:

• Easier to handle than glass (which actually gives me palpatations!)
• Can be ordered and delivered easily online
• Seven times stronger than glass
• More likely to withstand the strain of being fitted into a poorly erected frame.

This is now fitted and the panes are almost indistinguishable from the glass panes.

Greenhouse with replacement acrylic pane (top right)

Greenhouse with replacement acrylic pane (top centre)

The acrylic panes are slightly more opaque  than the glass ones and hold on to water droplets/condensation whereas water runs off the glass panes keeping them clear and transparent.

The last of the winter firewood will stay dry now. Job well done!

Back in the garden again - first time in 2014

So this weekend I managed to get out in the garden at last. First time since November! My attempts at any garden activity had been hampered by three major events:

1. A fantastic holiday in Tobago over Christmas and New Year
2. Minor surgery on my leg which meant I wasn't able to walk for a couple of weeks.
3. The worst wind and rain in the UK I have ever seen - meaning the lawn was just too flooded and muddy to be able to walk on it much.

Fences need repairing, the greenhouse needed glass replacing and the lawn in in some serious need of TLC.

First job of the year was to turn the raised bed over to wild flowers for the year. With the potential that we may be selling up and may not see the whole year out in this garden, the vegetable patch will become a wild area.

Wildflower seed packs - butterfly and bumble bee attractor plants

I bought two packs of wildflower seeds from the RSPB online shop. One pack of butterfly attractor wildflowers and one pack of bumble bee attractor wildflowers. Not the cheapest of seed packs but at least the money goes to a very worthwhile charity, and I love bumble bees.

Hopefully I will get to see some of these flower before we move!

These two packs covered an area about 4 square meters in the raised vegetable patch, minimum effort and maximum insect attractors. Did I mention that I love bumble bees?

Plant of the week - Miniature rose

A bit of catching up to do with my 'plant of the week' posts - the photos were taken but the posts never made it to being published!

Plant of the week for 17th October is this tiny miniature rose. I can't remember the name of the rose, but it was bought for me by my good friend Sonia. As it's a miniature rose, I planted it at the bottom of the rose arch so that the red flowers would be visible as its base as you walk through the arch. Unfortunately the herbaceous perennials around it overtook it and crowded it out and it was lost.

Miniature rose

It finally got it chance in mid-October after all the other plants had died down, a proliferation of tiny buds appeared - these were the only flowers in my garden this week. Sadly the buds didn't open fully - maybe it was too cold or just too late in the season.

Plant of the week - Chinese Lanterns (Physalis alkekengi)

Just in time for hallowe'en and brightening up the view into the garden with pumpkin-like orange seed pods are this weeks choice - chinese lanterns.

Chinese lanterns - Physalis alkekengi

This was my second attempts at growing these plants from seed - the first year I tried, every plant was instantly devoured by slugs and snails as soon as they were planted out. This year I transplanted the young plants into a pot, protected with copper tape, which has worked well to protect them from hungry gastropods.

I'd also read that physalis can spread rapidly throughout the garden if unchecked, so better to contain them in a pot. That's worked well as they are on the patio and in full view from inside the house.

I got my seeds from Thompson and Morgan and they were easy to germinate in the greenhouse - the plants in the photo are now two years old - so not long to wait to see the rewards. Despite their almost poisonously bright colouring, you can eat the fruit from some physalis species -  they are hidden inside the 'lanterns' - I remember them as being bitter but juicy when I tried, and subsequently discovered that P. alkekengi is not grown for its tasty fruit!

Chinese lanterns - Physalis alkekengi

Fortunately their ornamental value outweighs the inedible nature of this species. And no, I didn't adjust the colour on these photos!

Garden Snapshot - September 2013

Late again - here's the garden snapshot I took in late September at midday. Looking back at the previous month's snapshots its interesting to see the changing intensity of the light, and the longer shadows cast by the plants.

Garden snapshot - September 2013

Not much is flowering anymore in this part of the garden - a few remaining crocosmia, a couple of fuschia, you can make out the orange fruits of the physalis in a pot on the right hand side. There's also a small shrub in the middle that gets a rosy tint to its leaves - haven't been able to identify that one so far. Anyone have any ideas?