Gardening & garden purchases

[bunn]

 Today I motored on with the gardening did yet more weeding, compost-shifting and removed a great deal of mahonia so that the Happy Apple Tree can get more sun.   And I cut back the big hypericum bush.

I also laid some hazel hedge, and used some of the generous quantity of trimmings to make a rather Blair Witch style new support for my prized Actinidia Arguta Issai, which rather to my surprise has survived the worst the cold could throw at it and looks about to burst into leaf.  

The temperature in my greenhouse today was just off 30 degrees!  30!  In March!   I have just bought a new automatic greenhouse vent, as mine seems to have died. 

The rosemary  bush which only just struggled through the 2009-2010 winter is, alas, toast.  I do feel that rosemary is one of those herbs that I really can't have a garden without, and anyway I haven't bought any seeds yet this year, so I have just ordered from crocus.co.uk:

A decent sized plant of Rosmarinus officinalis 'Miss Jessopp's Upright' (went for this over the species as it's a bit taller and supposed to be a bit bluer and a bit more upright in growth)
250 seeds pea 'Delikett'
40 borage seeds (impulse buy!)
basil 'Genovese' (approx 4000 seeds! Woohoo!) - to plant in the greenhouse.
lettuce 'All Year Round' (to start in the greenhouse, then maybe some outside if I can manage to remember to water them)
onion 'Red Baron' - 50 sets (never grown onions, gotta be worth a go?)
beetroot 'Boltardy'
cucumber 'Crystal Lemon' (for the greenhouse again, though I bet I don't manage to keep the watering up enough, I do eat a lot of cucumber so really should try to make the effort!)
pumpkin 'Jack O'Lantern' (to plant in the raised beds after the peas are over)

I am continually tempted to buy too many seeds, so I hope I haven't overdone it again!

  I did intend to get some nasturtians as well, but the Crocus selection of nasturtians is poor.  They only had 'Alaska' and some dark-flowered non-spreading type, and I wanted an unvariagated climbing one, maybe Empress of India or something like that.   And it's just occurred to me that the cold winter has probably seen off all my self-seeded Verbena Bonariensis and Alyssum. So I might need to get some more...

I really should have worn gloves for all the chopping and trimming. My hands were a bit knackered anyway due to their perennial annoying-skin problem, and now they have been scratched to pieces as well, they are very stiff and red. I'm going to try soaking them in moisturiser in a mo, at the moment they are sort of frozen, but fortunately they are at least frozen in such a manner that I can still type as that only requires movement of the knuckle joint.

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

Ouch about your hands! Have you tried the super strength creams for cracked heels on them before? All the kitchen work at Summerfest completely f*cks the skin on my hands up and I've found that using heel repair cream on them speeds up the recovery time immensely. I also highly recommend calendula cream for healing red skin up.

Oh and borage is lovely, great in Pimms and on salads and the bees go wild for it. You've reminded me I must get around to planting the seeds I got from my Mum's garden last year.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I have had Lush's 'Helping Hands' lotion before and that's very good, but at the moment I have a couple of other random lotions that I've been given so I'm using those up...

I plastered myself in cocoa butter last night, and that seemed to help a lot by the morning.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Wow you do keep busy, hope the hands have healed up. Miss Jessop is one of the characters in The Herbs (which Na'Quis has taken a liking too although aside from Parsley & Dill her favourite character is Belladonna the witch). The gurtbigeffoff bay bush in our garden seems to have suffered in the winter and is half dead, we've been wondering about a major prune to see if that brings it back but the sparrows love to hide int it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

My ability do Do Stuff as displacement activity for Stuff I Really Should Be Doing and Had Promised Myself Would be Done by Now is sadly all too good :-(

I've been wondering about planting a bay, but as you say our current winters do not suit them, plus I am a bit low on places to put sunlovers...

I would be inclined to give it another month before you prune yours, if you do - you might still get a late frost, and the dead bits will be protecting the surviving bits at the mo.