Now I remember why I love succulents

Today I am fondly remembering the days when my gardening consisted of  pulling up the odd weed, and removing dead leaves.  Planting was easy in the gravel and most importantly there was NO DIGGING!

You may have guessed that the digging and levelling at the side of the patio has progressed with mixed fortunes, surely it shouldn't take that long to double dig such a small area, should it? I'm not sure what hurt more the repetitive lifting or the judder every time the fork hit a bit of concrete (of which there was lots). I obviously jinxed it mentioning yesterday that it was not too bad. I should probably have had a day off from digging. However most of it has now been dug, except along the edge of the patio where it is too tough to get a fork through.

The garden end is softer, so after a rest I will try again from this end and see how far I get. It would be nice to have the whole lot dug, but if we can't the plans should be ok with minimal soil on that side.

I was too sore to try this evening, so instead spent a bit of time playing with the layout for the paths and flower beds.  Those bricks from the old patio came in handy.

The first go wasn't quite right, so some fine tuning.

A couple of changes and a bigger curve to the path seemed to work better, it should make the end more private. The aim is to have a little shady seating area with a cafe style table and two chairs. The flower beds on the left will be filled with bamboo and tree ferns to make it nice and green.  The area on the right will be more spikey, with a raised rockery to home the large cycad among other things.

Hopefully when sitting there we won't be overlooked from the houses in the cul-de-sac. Currently the greenhouse hides them a bit (although this will be moved at some point), but it will look much nicer when there is a lush green screen instead.

Apart from giving somewhere more shady to sit, it will bring a bit of variation in planting to the garden. To tie everything together there will be a lot of rock with almost the whole garden being a rockery of some form or another.  This will give me a chance to try a little moss garden, that is if I can keep it damp, watering not being my strong point.

Then it was on to test a run of vertical posts that will continue through the garden (somehow). I saw this somewhere and it looked great to provide different views as you move through the garden. We set up a few to see what they would look like. The actual ones will be taller and will vary in height but have to decide what size and type of board to use. I like the effect though.

It's a little strange to be doing all this for non-spikey plants. Don't worry though, this is just to get me started, I will move around onto the succulent bank once my thoughts have developed a bit on that area. There may be a post on that one soon, to help with the decision on which way to go with the design.

Now all I need if for the weather to hold so the work can continue.

The final weekend of pre-preparation

It was a lovely weekend, which made a great change after the cold wet week.  I would have liked to spend the entire time outside, but the weather and the builders being gone meant lots of people wanted to come over to see the house. So instead it was a case of fitting work in between visitors.

One of the jobs for the weekend was staining the fence.  Stain doesn't go very far and it ran out half way through Saturday, so it was time to see exactly what the builders had left under the top bit of soil.  I didn't want to start digging up the main garden area, and thought a good place to start was along the fence towards the house.  The plan is still to make this a little enclosed shade garden, so it needs to be dug over, levelled and then paved (or something).

The first bit was fine, the ground was compact but nothing too bad.  With people turning up for the evening it was time to call it a night. Sunday started with finishing staining the fence and then back to the digging. Sadly the bit by the house proved more typical of builders as we came across a brick, in fact quite a few bricks.

It turns out that instead of digging up the brick patio (which we think had a coal bunker on at some point), they just shovelled soil over it. To be fair it may have been buried before they started, but with diggers on site it to turn the soil over before they left, I'm not sure how you miss a brick patio!

On the bright side those bricks will come in very handy and it wasn't too much work to dig them out. Then they also protected the soil below, so there is no concrete mixed in. One aim for today was to set a final level for that part to the garden (the top of the manhole cover).  The idea was to dig and level a strip along the fence to see how much it slopes from the house into the garden and how much soil needed removing.

I hoped that I wouldn't have to shift too much soil around, or dig through too much concrete. Thankfully it looks like it wont be too bad. There will be some shifting required, from house to garden end, but it will be manageable. Once it's all dug, simply raking should grade it nicely without needing more strenuous work. Not that my body feels like the last two days were easy going. It is going to take a few days to get back into the physical sides of gardening again.

The fun part is going to be avoiding the drainage pipes that run through that bit of the garden. The bricks will come in handy to mark out the pipes so I don't accidentally dig them up. Then we can get onto the real fun of working out how to plant it all up!

Some goodies from the greenhouse

It has been horrible weather over the last few days, so it was nice to spend a bit of time in the greenhouse after work. Most things are fully into growth and starting to look good.  My replacement aloe suprafoliata is now in full juvenile form.

It will stay in this form until it flowers for the first time at which point it will start to spiral and will end up looking like my original plant.

I'm still upset to have lost the original plant, it will be years before my current one gets anywhere near as nice.  It seems to divide opinion: a lot of people prefer the juvenile form and are upset when it spirals, I much prefer the adult form. 

The miniature aloes tend to go a little wild at this time of year.  My clump of aloe viper is a decent size now. It's not the best for keeping its colour in the UK, probably needs stronger light.

I am undecided if I want to keep it as a single plant or clump, no doubt it will be a spur of the moment decision next time it gets repotted.

Last but by no means least is the largest pot of echeveria 'Compton Carousel'.  Having got leggy last winter, it produced lots of pups on the stem and for once I was able to restrain from cutting them off.  The plan is to find a nice pot and plant it in a mini landscape. I will probably cut the parent plant off at the same time, unless it would work grown up a rock.

Now we are a bit more settled in the house, I will hopefully be able to split my time between working on the garden and taking care of the plants in pots.

Let the garden fun begin

Yes the builders are gone! Well technically they have a couple of jobs in the front garden and to touch up paintwork, but the back garden it totally clear so we can actually start thinking about it being a garden again. Forget the shiny new kitchen, heating and all the other stuff, I can get to the greenhouse and water the pots.

After they left on Friday, this is what we were left with.

After the shock of actually having a garden that wasn't full of rubbish, or having builders everywhere a weekend of fencing was planned.  It was a bank holiday in the UK, so three days to get it all done, protected and maybe start loosening the soil. 

Saturday morning, it was clear that it was going to be a typical UK bank holiday with lots of rain. Between showers we only managed two panels on the neighbours side, not quite the first day we had planned.

Sunday was better and it was due to be clear, so we went for it.

Road side done, onto finishing the one with the neighbours. Legally I can build fences up to about 2.4m high, but always feel it is rude not to take the neighbours views into account. Lets face it as gardeners, light is extremely important to most of us, so can I really take all the light form someone's garden. We agreed privacy by the house would be good, but that they would prefer lower fences with trellis for the rest. 

Ideally I would have continued the high fences another panel, especially given the cherry tree (don't get me started on that one).

Sadly that was it for the garden as on Monday it rained, and rained .......

Not quite as productive as I would have liked, but to have the whole garden fenced, to be able to see the size and how it works with the new bits is a start.  My thoughts for the design are getting there and everything is looking good for a summer of gardening. Even I would struggle to make the garden look worse than it does at the moment.

Although one full day of shifting piles of fencing, hammering and garden clearing was probably not the most gentle way back into gardening after a year off.

A day in the green house

I had a great time in the green house over the weekend starting the job of re-potting. I did a lot last year, so not everything needs doing, but there are still quite a few plants that need more space or that I want to combine into planters. Starting with a couple of the agaves. This one is a compact form of agave parrasana. It has the word "minor" in the name but I'm not sure if that is official or just to say it stays smaller.

One of the variegated filiferas, the two offsets appeared last year and have done really well. This was potted into a larger bowl with the hope of creating a more natural looking landscape clump. 

The problem is what to add to make it stand out. I had a look through my small rocks and can not find a nice one. Where do you find get really good rocks from, maybe a bit of volcanic pumice or something a little different.


The main focus for the day were the haworthias I bought on my last tip and those that have been sitting around since last year. I have quite a few now and thought I would try a haworthia bowl. Originally this was going to be purely the dwarf haworthias, but  thought it needed a bit of height.

I don't like the gravel, like the agave it needs something to make the plants really stand out. The two forms of H. parksiana (if they are really different), are cute little things and I can't wait to see how they develop.

Does anyone else notice that the plants they buy tend to cluster around certain looks. As the potting continued I noticed a certain trend in the type of plant. This is aloe harworthioides, I love the almost furry look to it.

Then aloe haworthioides x descoingsii, slightly more spiny this time

I think I am going to have to change the gravel in this one, the plant has vanished. It is even worse from above.

There are two or three other plants with a very similar look. Thankfully the the next one was at least slightly different, haworthia acuminata "white ghost".

 

I am not a massive fan of this form of haworthia, I know people go mad for them and there are a lot of different varieties.  The variegation on this one was too nice to pass up, so it managed to sneak in.

It was lovely to be out pottering around the green house again.  The plants are starting to be moved into their summer locations, even if those going outside are only somewhere temporary. A few more days should see all the potting up done for this year, then I just need to find some nicer top dressing and some good stones to set the plants off.

The cacti are back

Many of my cacti flower early and this year has been particularly good. Last years star shows signs of being even better this year.  I must try and dig out a name for it.

I seem to remember that last year the colour got stronger as they opened. It is also good as the flowers last for almost a week, instead of a day or so.

The next one is a first for me, oroya peruviana, delicate waxy flowers on this one. 

Then the mass of flowers which are the rebutias, this one is rebutia x aylostera

The only problem with rebutias is that while they always flower well, sadly the flowers don't last long, only a day or so, so there is a short period when they look this good.

It is good to be out in the green house again.

Straight in at the deep end.

Having not been able to garden so far, I finally got into the greenhouse and started the re-potting.  It is typical that we had an early spring and it is only now I have been able to even start on the pots.  There was to be no gentle break in, the first job was to sort the largest echeveria agavoides ebony. 

I spotted that a couple of the lowers leaves did not look great a month or so ago. I treated them but it has got much worse and there was no choice but to operate.  Top cutting should stop the spread and while it will set the plant back this year, at least there will still be a plant.  First stage was to remove the lower leaves.

It gives a chance to remove the pups I guess, these will still be kept as a group, as I want a large clump of these.  Having exposed the stem and felt that it seemed solid, it was time to cut the top off.

The stem seems good, so it will be rested on the bench for a few days and then potted up with the  pups.  If all goes according to plan it should be rooted and back into growth in a couple of months giving it time to have put on a bit size ready for next winter.

It is never nice cutting up a prized plant, but sometimes it can't be helped.