A pretty “rain catcher” for our garden.

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Well, I think it’s pretty!  This is our new “Terracotta Look Water Butt” (rain trap system).  It’ll hold 245 liters of water.  It’s hooked up to our drain pipe.  We saw this when we were at the Dublin “Bloom” festival last year.  http://bloominthepark.com/   I like the idea of using rain water in the garden, and I think it looks nice too!  We aren’t currently charged for water use in Ireland, but they are planning on introducing charges in the near future.  Either way, I like the idea of “catching” rain water and using it.   Funny thing is, the price of the rain catcher has taken a big jump up this year. I’m guessing it’s because of the impending water charges.  That’s too bad.  We thought it was a reasonable price that we paid (160 euro).  It’s now 245 euro.  http://www.rainbarrels.ie/cascata-authenthic-terracotta-look-water-butt-p-843.html?osCsid=lbu9dkp336urikn9g3o1cq9sj7

I used it this morning to water the garden.  My watering can fits right under the water tap.  It’s nice and easy!

We are finally getting some real heat!  It was 22 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit).  By Irish standards, this was quite warm!  I have to say it really was a comfortable temperature.  The sun is what made it perfect.  Everything is taking a growth spurt in the garden (including the weeds)!  I’ve had a very unglamorous week of weeding.  I thought the two pictures below were pretty enough to show you.  I hope your garden is getting some sun, and you too!

Dana

Blue Geranium in the evening.  These were given to me by my friend Susan, and they have just thrived! Such an easy plant to tend.

I think my Hawthorne is really looking well in full bloom!

Ditch wall and our Hawthorne trees.

A wee stone wall at the front gate garden.

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It is sunny today!  And even somewhat warm (14 degrees Celsius, 57 degrees Fahrenheit) so out in the garden is where I was all morning.  I came across some really nice stones in one of our local fields recently.  The owner had a laugh when I asked, but he agreed to let me have as many stones as I’d like, so long as I didn’t disrupt his potato crop.  That was fine by me!  The kids and I hauled a bunch of stones  back to our place. There are big ones, small ones, flat and rounded ones.   I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing with them, but for starters I’m using some to finish off the front garden at our gates.  I think it’s a stretch to call it a wall, but for lack of a better name, that is what I’m calling it!

There are two hostas in the front garden by the gate, and two newly planted climbing roses (Zephirine Drouhin 1868).  My hopes are that the roses will climb along the fence (we’ll see!).  I’ve put down wet newspapers to keep down any grass,  and then some topsoil.   I think by Fall I’ll have some more ideas of what I’ll want to plant here.

I also took some more pictures of life around the garden.  My Angelique tulips are really in full bloom now, and look so much nicer in sunlight!  The cherry tree, and maple tree are showing their beauty.  I wasn’t sure how my new Tree Peony would do when we planted it as there was very little of a root system on it. But it seems to have taken hold and is growing.   I didn’t take a picture of our Japanese Maple because it is completely wind destroyed!  We will be looking for a new location for that very soon.  My purple anemone have to be one of my favorite flowers this year  with their amazing color! (called Mr. Fokker).

There are just two days left to my swimming course this weekend, and then I can work a lot harder in the garden!

I hope you are able to spend some time outside in the sunshine!

Dana

The wee wall, hosta, and climbing rose plant.

Cherry blossom.

Maple leaves.

Tree Peony.

Double late Angelique tulips.

Mr. Fokker Anemone.

A peek at the garden in late spring.

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April 30th!  Where has the time gone?  I have really missed writing about my garden, and especially working in it!  Where have I been, you might be wondering?  I coach swimming for young kids and I absolutely love it.  I’ve been coaching for two years and decided it would be helpful to take a course for a higher qualification.  I’ve been completely tied up with that course over the past month.  It’s been great, and I’ve learned a lot so I’m very glad for having taken it.  This coming weekend is the end of the course, and well, I’ll be glad to have my old schedule back and some free time for gardening!

In the meantime, I’ve gone through my garden to see how all the plants are doing.   My pictures show very dry soil, but actually our area is very windy (super, super windy!).  So even though the top of the soil might look dry, just underneath it is fine.  Garlic seems to be the most eager to get growing, as it is coming up rather quickly.  The shallots are just starting to pop up.  The early spuds are doing fine.  Probably this weekend we’ll cover them with more soil (called earthing up).  I’m delighted with all of the blooms on our apple trees.  This is the first year our pear tree has blooms, so I’m hopeful that we will have fruit on it this year!  The blueberries & strawberries are looking really good, too!  So hopefully I’ll be trying my hand at making jam this year.

The blog has become a bit of a family project.  The kids like to know what I’m writing about and taking pictures of, especially if they are helping in the garden.  My 12 year old daughter laughed at my Rose Garden post since I hadn’t actually posted any pictures of the rose plants.  There really wasn’t any point in posting pictures of small little plants with no roses, though!  The tulips are much prettier!  So I did throw in a picture of one of the rose plants that is now coming along nicely.  More in the rose garden, my late tulips (Double late Angelique)  are blooming, too.

We haven’t really had a pleasant spring in Ireland. It’s been cold, windy, and somewhat dry.  I’m really hoping we get some warmth soon!  At least we have had some sun, which is always such a blessing.  One day I managed to capture a Goldfinch on our fence.  Since we have a cat I don’t get many opportunities like that!

I hope your garden is bringing you joy, and  coming into bloom too!

Dana

A Goldfinch sitting on our fence.  He has a lovely red head.

The garlic is coming up nicely.

Shallots.

The early potatoes “Colleens” are coming up.

Pear tree blossom.

Our two varieties of apple trees; Arthur Turner which is a cooking apple, and the second is an “eating” apple tree.

Our blueberry, raspberry and strawberry plants are growing nicely.

A couple different varieties of hosta.  Slugs love hosta, so I put some organic slug pellets around them (works ok, but daily checking is only sure way to keep slugs from devouring the plants).

Rose plant.

My Double Late Angelique tulips (in the rose garden).

I’ve planted some Senetti in a container.  The color is “baby magenta bicolor”.  A very cheerful flower!

Life is … A Bed of Roses!

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I love roses, especially fragrant ones.  So it was no surprise to my husband when I planned out a rose bed for one of my first gardening projects.   And plan I did!  The area that is our new Rose Garden was simply grass last year.  I marked out the area I wanted with layers of newspapers and added compost and seaweed on top, and a few stones to keep the papers in place.  I then left it alone for the grass to break down.  As for the next step of  picking a border, I have to say that there is something about boxwood plant borders that I really like.  I think it is the functionality of the plant!  So boxwood is what we went with (as soon as it went on sale locally).  The garden had quite a few months of really not looking all that pretty, I have to admit.  This doesn’t bother me as long as I have a clear vision of what it is going to look like in the long run!

Last fall I decided that tulips would be a nice flower to have in the rose garden.  I planted bulbs and then covered everything up with some local horse manure (see my previous post: https://mominthegarden.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/laying-down-manure/).  Some of the tulips are up now (Blueberry ripple & Innuendo). I’m still waiting on a few double late tulips.  I was all ready to plant some roses this weekend  so I gave the garden a really good digging through!  I used my hoe and mixed in/up/around everything! It’s a good thing I love gardening, because this was some seriously hard work!   This was it, I was finally ready to call it a garden bed.   We  planted 3 Rosa Jacques Cartier roses (what a fancy name!), and then 3 roses with names not nearly as exciting.    My husband and I have a little debate going on.  The debate is whether or not it is worth buying special (read “expensive”) roses via catalogue, or are the inexpensive “sale” ones just as good.   We’ll have to wait until this summer to find out which roses are the winners!

How about you, which do you prefer?  Buying through the catalogue or locally?  I’d love to know!

Dana

Future home of a rose garden (newspapers, compost, seaweed & rocks)!

Getting closer to being a rose garden (with horse manure).

My new rose garden (with tulips)!

My new rose garden (with tulips, too)!

“Innuendo” tulips.

“Blueberry ripple” tulips.

“Blueberry ripple” tulips in my new rose garden.

Strawberry Plants expanding in the garden.

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Our garden is a constant work in progress.  It was so nice to have a blank slate, so to speak, to work with when we moved in as the yard  had nothing!  We have started small, and are adding on as we go along.  We have a few fruit plants so far: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples & a pear tree.   We weren’t really sure how many strawberry plants to plant last year.  We planted “a few” and hoped for the best.  Our plants have come from two friends who are wonderful sources of gardening information (and plants!).   It really is great how generous people are with their plants!  We were warned that they like to expand, and this past year expand they did! So this spring we had to adjust their area.  We added on a few rows, and removed the runners (baby off-shoots would be my unofficial description!).  My husband put the runners in pots, and they are now in our cold frame.  They’ll go back into the garden probably within a few weeks.  We’re still working on what to do with the walkways between the plants/gardens.  What you see in the pictures is a black garden carpet to keep the grass down.  It really is not very pretty.   I keep browsing through Pinterst to get ideas!  Our garden is changing and evolving all the time.  I think the perfect solution will  be clear when the time is right.

Here’s to planning for perfect solutions at the perfect time for all of our gardens!

Dana


Expanded strawberry bed.

A close-up look at the strawberry plants.

Potted strawberry runners.

An evening rainbow view from our backyard.

View from our front yard on rainbow evening.

Planting maincrop potatoes on Easter weekend.

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Easter weekend is a great time of year to really clean up the garden.  I was able to finally finish putting all of the new soil on my one flower bed, and move the sod that was just lying around in the bed.  Phew! That was hard work!  We had company coming for Easter, so I spent a lot of the weekend baking, and cleaning, and well, not being in the garden.  My husband was a real trooper and did a great deal of gardening work for me!

There was a real focus on potatoes at our house!  I can give an update on our first planting of early potatoes: the organic Colleens are just starting to sprout up!  Yay!  As for the second bed, my husband decided he wanted to dig a deeper trench for our maincrop “Sarpo Mira” organic seed potatoes.  He dug about six inches, as we were concerned that the cardboard wouldn’t be rotted through enough for the roots to grow down.  Now the roots can grow, and hopefully the cardboard will prevent grass from growing around the rest of the bed.  He also planted them a little differently than the earlies.  After he placed the potatoes in the trench, he added compost on top before covering them with soil.   We did some further reading and decided this would be a great way to feed the seed potatoes.

I’ll just add a quick word about how great it is to be able to use your own compost, and it really is easy to make!  See my link to my previous post on composting: https://mominthegarden.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/valentines-day-love-your-family-and-your-compost/

The maincrop potatoes are planted a little further apart than the earlies.  If you place them too close, you’ll just get smaller spuds.  We spaced  them about a foot apart, and the rows were about 1 & 1/2 feet apart.  This is our first year growing spuds, so fingers crossed that everything goes well!

It was a great weekend for gardening, and for getting together with family!

I hope you had a productive gardening weekend, too!

Dana

My husband, working hard (captured by my son who found photography more fun than digging!).

You can tell I’m a fan of no energy laundry drying – the laundry drying rack always seems to be in the background of my pictures!

Chitted (sprouted) Sarpo Mira Organic Maincrop seed potatoes.

Two potato beds with black “carpeting” between them to keep grass down.

A bloom from our “early” Colleen organic potatoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a small before and after look at the flower garden that I’ve been covering with new top soil.  The views are from each end.  The big lumps in the right hand picture are overturned sod. I moved them for another wee gardening project I have in mind!

Fragrant and pretty daffodils to calm a hectic day.

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Busy. Boy do I feel busy.  There’s  kids’ activities, shopping, cleaning, more kids’ activities, gardening (if I’m lucky), oh and the swim coaching course I’m taking (must finish up my homework before class this weekend!).    This week seems a bit more full than usual.   Deep breath in, hold, and exhale.    I’ll just have to take it one day at a time.  The weather has been so glorious this past week.  That’s part of the problem, actually. With such good weather I want to spend every minute outside in the garden.  But my  schedule has other plans for me right now.  So I take what gardening time  I can get.  Today  I managed to cover my second plot for potatoes with soil.   I was very happy to be able to cross that off of my list!  Do you remember the containers outside of my kitchen window?  The daffodils are finally blooming and they are so pretty!  They are a little unusual and fragrant, too.   Little rays of sunshine to compliment the wonderful weather we’ve been having!  I was glad to stop and smell the “roses”, and photograph them too, of course!

I hope you have some sunshine in your garden!

Dana

Geranium, daffodil, multi-headed.

Pheasant’s Eye, daffodil.

Geranium, multi-headed daffodil.

All of the daffodils.

Lucy relaxing under the plastic from stone pathway between the raised beds.

The potato bed that I covered with soil today (bed in front).

A stone pathway between raised vegetable beds.

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Sometimes it takes doing things a few times to get it right, don’t you agree?  Last year, we put together  raised beds, threw in some soil, and off we went. “Learn as we go” mentality,  or maybe “fly by the seat of our pants” would better describe us.  As the soil settled in our  raised beds, we began to remove the stones.  We didn’t really think much of this process, and kind of just tossed them.  That’s right, anywhere.  Pretty quickly we realized that there were way more stones than we’d realized.  So we dropped them between the raised beds.  I thought there would be enough stones to  just lay in between the beds all nice and neat. I was hoping they’d kill the grass and look great as well.  I mean, there were a lot of stones!  But that’s not exactly how things worked out.  The pile ended up being a heap, and the grass managed to grow over the heap.  It wasn’t pretty, and it was rather awkward to walk on.  It was so bad, I didn’t even take a picture of it (and I photograph just about everything)!

You may notice a theme throughout my gardening.  Frugality. That’s right, I’m looking to save money where I can.  Why buy gravel when I’ve got three million stones right here in my soil? I needed to find a way to make this work.

For the past week I’ve made “the stones” a little project for my kids.  I threw down some cardboard and asked them to move the stones from the heap to the cardboard.  This was turning out to be a painstaking process of trying to cajole them into moving more than 10 stones in the five minutes that they’d dedicate to helping.   None of us were happy with the stones.   Today I made the time to really look at the project and see if this was going to work.  I decided that I wasn’t going to take any chances with grass coming through, and I put down plastic under the cardboard.  Oh boy, this meant moving the stones that were moved this past week!  I guess it was good that the kids hadn’t gotten too much done!  I had the help of my two girls today, and I have to say they really did a great job.  They alternated between shifts of moving stones and jumping on the trampoline. I’ve never seen them keep such precise track of time before!   This  worked well for us.  We managed to clear all of the “heap”!  My daughter exclaimed “Daddy is going to be so impressed!”.  Funny, she must have been reading my mind.    The project isn’t completely finished.  I need more plastic and cardboard, and actually more stones, too!  But with all of the new soil I have, I know I have more than enough stones to fill the gaps.

Happy homemade & frugal gardening,

Dana

One of the paths between the beds is tidy now.

This is where we had the “heap” of stones.

It looks nice when you can’t see the plastic and cardboard. Great motivation to get the job finished!

There are a lot of stones.

I love the sunsets.

Making a flower bed, one bucket of topsoil at a time.

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Ever look at a garden project and just think “no way”?  Or maybe the project is there, patiently waiting for your attention, yet the thought of tackling it is a bit overwhelming?  Well I’ve had those thoughts!  Lots of them.  That might be because I have grande plans for our garden!  But nothing is going to happen if I don’t get started on it.  It all happens with small steps.

Dreams are a good start. I have dreams about what I would love to see for my garden some time in the future. I also collect pictures in gardening books and magazines.  I recently (as in last night) came across a picture that I saved from years ago.  My 12 year old daughter actually laughed at me, since the garden is seriously amazing,  and she thinks I might be a tiny bit crazy!  There are three pages of pictures of this garden.  It really  is beautiful!   I love it as much today as the day I first saw it.  The design fits nicely with  what I have been planning for our garden.  Now to just get my husband on board!  One tree, shrub, and flower at a time!

The pictures below are before and after views from the front of the house when we first moved in (you can see some of our moving boxes!)  and the two work-in-progress gardens that are, well,  still a work-in-progress.   What you can see is (a big mess!) weathered cardboard, seaweed, and turned over grass from where the boxwood was planted.   In September we placed the cardboard and newspapers where we wanted to kill the grass.   Yesterday  I laid down more thick layers of newspapers  before putting down the soil, just as a precaution, to keep grass away.   That garden already has a small Japanese Maple tree and a hydrangea (I don’t know the variety, unfortunately) and some Allium which I planted in October, so I haven’t seen them in their glory yet.  You can also see some tulips coming in to bloom.   This week I was also working at the front gates.  We planted a couple of Hostas there last year, but this year I’m hoping to give them some attention, and hopefully some more plants to keep them company.

I hope if you have a big garden project which you’ve been avoiding, that you’ll be motivated to dig in and get started with it!

Happy digging,

Dana

Here is the bucket I used to move the topsoil Patrick delivered to us.  I should have taken a picture of our desperate wheelbarrow – we are in need of a new one!  But for me, it was easier to work in small batches (both mentally, and physically!).

This is the front of the house garden in progress.  The potted boxwood plant was just placed there to keep newspapers down.  It is patiently waiting to be planted.  Not all of the grass was covered with cardboard originally, which you can see peeping out.  I managed to cover about 1/3 of the garden with topsoil.

Pretty hydrangea.  The picture above shows more of the covered rock wall, through the Hawthorn, ivy & brambles!

Two Hostas live on the left. They aren’t visible just yet.

The water main cover is in this garden.

Planting early potatoes … and raspberry plants.

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Yesterday was such a wonderful, sunny, glorious day!  It was a mild 11 degrees Celsius (52 degrees Fahrenheit).  It just happened to be Mother’s Day in Ireland, and I was in my glory working in the garden with my husband.  Our kids were a big help, too.  Sometimes, though, the pull of the trampoline was simply too great for them to resist.

We worked on the rock wall… again.  That wall is going to be a long term project!  I’ll show you pictures as progress is made.   We planted a very young Hawthorne at the wall where one of the old trees is very much dead.  My husband has been impressed with all of the work I’ve done on the wall.  Honestly though, last year when I had cut down and moved piles of brambles which were taller than myself, he had thoughts that his wife had totally lost her mind.  I think finally being able to see the wall has been a great motivator for him to join in the fun!

Today, Monday, is a bank holiday following St. Patrick’s day on Saturday.  Yay! More time in the garden with my husband!  I really am thankful for his help.   Another “top guy” is my husband’s brother-in-law Patrick, who delivered a (huge) tractor trailer of topsoil to us today!  I am so lucky to have a farmer in the family! The soil looks fantastic! With this soil we were able to plant our Colleen early potatoes.  I have quite a few ideas for where I’m going to use the rest of the  soil.  All in good time.

I have had the Colleen’s on the counter in my laundry room where the temperature is cooler.  They were sitting in egg cartons, sprouting, for about 3 weeks.  My husband dug trenches  about 6 inches deep in our preplanned “spud” area. We placed the potatoes, sprout side up, every 12 inches.  Then we just raked the soil back over the spuds (carefully so as not to damage the sprouts).  We added some new soil on top as it just needed a bit more on top of the compost & soil that was already there.  After the plants grow to about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in height, I’ll cover them to about 2 inches from the top with more soil.  Everyone says it is easy to grow spuds  … we’ll see!

In addition to planting the potatoes, we planted some raspberry plants which my neighbor James gave us.  Yes, that’s the same James who gave me the manure!  The canes were nice and sturdy.  He had his raspberries lovely and neat with rope to tie them steady.   We had some raspberry plants that didn’t survive last year.  I’m hoping that after adding the manure earlier this spring, the conditions will be more conducive to success! We used tomato stakes on the canes, planting them about 12 inches apart.  The soil should be somewhat acidic, and well drained.  Ideally, it should be somewhat sheltered. That might be the hardest part for our plants.

Since I was outside with my camera (of course!), I had to take some pictures of what’s happening in the garden.  There are some pretty little flowers forming on our apple trees.  It’s always hard to imagine the flowers forming when we just pruned them a month ago. It is so lovely to see!  Our daffodils are rather droopy after the heavy rain & blustery wind we’ve had.  Even still, the yellow color is enough to add cheer.  My favorite flower today, though, was the blue Anemone “Mr. Fokker”.

I hope you see your favorite flower today, too!

Dana