March 31st, 2019 - small garden ideas, Spring gardening

Note I didn’t say Six lessons learnt as I find I make the same mistakes more than once because I forget.  My London cottage garden has its ups and downs and here are some of them.

One

My daffodils are being eaten by tiny snails and it results in this below

 

Some varieties were more eaten than others.  Tall multi-headed scented ones were eaten so I will dig them out. The short early simple ones like February Gold, Jack Snipe, Pipit  and Tete a tete were left alone.  These short small varieties are perfect for the cottage garden style rather than the fancier newer ones. One of the disappointments of gardening – wait 5 months for them to come up and then turn your back they’re eaten.

Two

I grew pots of heavily scented narcissi for cutting and had vases of them for about 2 weeks.  I also had a blocked nose, itchy eyes and acute breathlessness and thought it was a cold/hayfever/asthma.  However, it might have been the flowers.  On enquiry I found that 15% of people suffer breathlessness from the scent of  Tazetta varieties and these were exactly what I have been growing.

Here are the culprits ( and I note the snails hadn’t bothered to eat these )

Even dafter, someone reminded me the same thing had happened last year.  I had totally forgotten.

Three

A big cheer for yellow in the garden.  Here’s a snap showing daffodils, forsythia from next door and the fabulous mahonia  shrub in the centre  – all providing yellow.  I learned that lesson long ago – yellow is a fabulous colour.

 

Four

Some daffodils just never flower.  It’s called “coming up blind”.  There’s lots of stem and sturdy leaves but the bud never develops.  A whole pot of them failed to flower.

 

 

I dug them up and they looked big and healthy but something had gone wrong.  I think they were too crowded in the pot so I will replant them at the allotment giving them more room.

Five

Tulips for cutting – wondering if it was worth it.  I must have planted 30 plus tulips in this plastic pot.  I’ve had a few vases of them for ten days now and given some away.  They are lovely and the cost was minimal but to wait 3/4 months and have cut flowers for 2 weeks? And since I foolishly planted them all at once, they have all bloomed at once so now there’s no point in cutting the open ones.

I can buy a  supermarket bunch for £5 too.  I will rethink this for next year (and of course I will plant them again because that’s what I do.  It’s just what we gardeners do.)

In past years my tulips have been stunning – you can see them here

 

 

Six

A reminder that plants will grow where they want to if we just let them get on with it.  Here are forget-me-nots in the cracks in the paving.  Yet people are sowing seed, pricking out, potting on, planting out – work, work, work, but these have self-seeded and are wonderful.  Clearly if you want something other than forget-me-nots somewhere other than in your paving then yes of course you have to do all the above.  But let’s remember that many plants do the work for us.

 

Thankyou to the Propagator for hosting these blogs on the theme of Six on a Saturday and over on his blog you can find other people’s.