I finished digging out the rhododendron stumps on Tuesday, but I didn't mention it at the time. I didn't feel like writing another blog post about stumps and witch hazel. Today it was the turn of the climbers on the veranda to start facing the chop.
There are at least two basic approaches to growing climbers up the side of a building. There is the RHS or National Trust house approach, where each branch is neatly tied in and pruned to within an inch of its life (nobody says 'within a centimetre of its life'. Makes you think English is still not metric at heart, even if we dutifully use metres and centimetres). The resulting wall shrub sticks out 30cm max from the face of the wall. Very tidy. Then there is the romantic profusion approach, where plants are tied to the wall and scramble into and over each other. Spasmodic efforts are made to remove forward facing growth, and the resulting tangle protrudes 1-2m from the supporting structure. Meanwhile birds nest in there, and it is all very naturalistic and charming. There are no prizes for guessing which category our garden falls into.
The jungle along the veranda has got to be reduced, so that we can get the scaffold in there to paint the barge boards and fit new guttering. And since there is a fair amount of dead wood mixed up among the live, it will look better for a good clean out. It is a complicated tangle. There are the remains of a Solanum crispum that was there when we bought the house. Most of it has died through old age, or the cold winters, or a combination of both. There is a climbing rose, also there when we moved in, which according to the label we found on it is 'New Dawn'. It has grown larger than some books say that 'New Dawn' would, but otherwise looks right. It is not so vigorous as it was, and could probably do with an intensive feeding regime to give it a boost. Also, I don't think it likes being overrun by the Clematic montana, another legacy of the previous owners (they had a Russian Vine as well, but I resorted to strong poison to get rid of that). There is a Clematis of the texensis type, yet another legacy, whose label I think said 'Duchess of Albany' I've added Trachelospermum jasminoides and Berberidopsis corallina, both refugees from the conservatory. Neither have formed much of a tangle yet, but the Trachelospermum looks happier about life than it did under glass. There is an inherited honeysuckle, species unknown, and I tucked in a Jasminum beesianum, which has finally grasped the idea that it is supposed to climb and not run about over the ground.
I thought I'd better start on this job fairly soon, partly because February is the target month for the last of the exterior decorating, and partly because I don't want to leave it until spring and then find birds nesting in there. I began by burrowing inside the mess, to cut and pull out any dead rose branches, bits of decayed Solanum, and so on. There was a fair amount. Then I cut down a large elder sapling that had seeded itself a pace out from the line of the trellis. This was performing a quasi-useful function acting as a prop for the climbers, but couldn't stay there given the need to get the scaffold in. Removing it had the predictable effect of causing a mass of Clematis montana to collapse on my head. Having cleaned what dead stuff I could from the inside, which reduced the bulk, I'm now working along the outside, cutting growth back and tying it in.
The Clematis montana is reluctant to grow along the bottom of the veranda, and keeps flopping forward and trying to set off across the rose bed. Clematis climbs by winding its leaf stalks around anything it touches, mainly other Clematis stems, and separating the branches enough to haul them back up to the top of the trellis means cutting through dozens of dry and tightly twisted leaf stalks. This is slow and fiddly, and there would be a quicker and more brutal way, which would be to reduce everything, accepting that there won't be any flowers this year, and assuming that all will grow back. I don't want to do that, as I would rather have some flowers this year than not, and I'm not keen on the scorched earth look. Some might see it as a symbol of humanity successfully subjugating nature, but I prefer to hang on to a bit of unsubjugated nature, wherever possible.
Last night I started a similar job on my desk, and finally cleared the last data off my old laptop. I got my current laptop last spring, when my previous one (an ancient hand-me-down from the Systems Administrator, but it worked well for years) and my moderately aged desktop both showed signs of becoming alarmingly unstable. I transferred essential files at once, and started scrubbing things I didn't really need to keep, but never completed the task. Since April of last year I've had two geriatric computers sitting on my desk, taking up so much room that I had to retreat to the kitchen, when I wanted to type and refer to a reference book at the same time. Before I resumed the clearance, the Systems Administrator disabled the laptop's connection to the net, so that it couldn't try and start collecting nine months worth of downloads.
It is rather poignant clearing an old laptop. All those letters relating to woodland talks going back to 2006. I don't need them. The talks are done and dusted, the donations handed over to the charity. I don't need a record of how many people were in the audience and which group asked the question about UK versus European provenance for tree seeds, in the light of climate change. And yet it is a little archive of my life. I chucked it out. I won't throw the computer away, even now, just in case. It will go and gather dust in the spare room for another decade or two. The last stage of the project will be to fire up the desktop and do the same final clear-out from that. And then I shall have so much space on my desk, I won't know what to do with it.
Showing posts with label pruning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pruning. Show all posts
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
out of season
It was a beautiful warm, still, sunny day. I keep finding more signs that spring is approaching. In the so-called Italian garden in the turning circle, a group of purple dwarf iris have suddenly burst into bloom. The last time I looked there were just the snouts of new buds emerging through the gravel. Now there's an entire bunch of flowers, and another clump nearby not far behind. In the back garden one witch hazel is fully out. It is the mid-orange flowered variety Hamamelis x intermedia 'Orange Peel', and I sniffed the spicy fragrance on the air before I saw it. The scent of witch hazel is a curious thing. I seem to notice it more in wafts in passing than when I stick my nose right up against the flowers.
I hurried along and pruned the vines around the veg patch. This is a task I meant to do before Christmas, or at least between Christmas and the New Year, as vines bleed badly once the sap is rising, and you are advised to finish pruning early. I don't know why I didn't do it then, except that I was engrossed in other things and maybe the vine is not top of my list of concerns. Due to errors and omissions in my record keeping process, I don't know what variety it is. The grapes are white, and I'm sure I meant to choose one that was capable of setting edible fruit out of doors, since I never had any ambitions to make my own wine. A couple of years ago I tried hard to do things by the book, and pruned it at the correct times, and thinned the bunches of grapes ruthlessly, and the fruits were still small and extremely pippy, though the chickens liked them. The main job of the vine is really to clothe the wire rabbit fence that runs round the veg patch, and provide the odd leaf for cooking. I quite like stuffed vine leaves, and it gives a smug feeling to be able to use home grown fresh leaves, instead of tinned.
I cut a couple of branches experimentally, and sap didn't gush forth, so I got on with it, since it was one of those jobs where the situation was only going to get worse the longer I left it. It still didn't seem to be bleeding by the time I'd more or less finished, so with luck the sap is not rising that much yet, and it won't. Maybe it will start later. I'm not an expert on the cultivation of vines. It makes a vast amount of growth each year, throwing out new shoots that are 3-4m long and longer. Normally I keep trimming these through the summer to try and keep the whole thing in check, but the veg patch was mostly fallow last season, as I tried to catch up with everything else.
Another job that should have been done last autumn, ideally in September, was to scrantle* the meadow. We did the back garden in the middle of that month, but never got on to the meadow. I'm not sure why. I think the Systems Administrator, who basically dislikes trudging up and down for hours pushing a power scythe and then having to collect large amounts of grass, hoped that it could get by without a cut every year. I'm not crazy on the task either, and dislike repeatedly asking anyone to do anything, in case it could be construed as nagging, so we ended up with a communications failure, and it didn't get done. We ended up scrantling the meadow this afternoon, as it has daffodils planted in it and I was beginning to worry that if we didn't do it soon their leaves would be through. My part of the job is to rake the fallen grass aside, to clear the way for the next passage of the scythe. I didn't check the exact time we started, but it must have taken us about an hour and a half, during which I raked continuously. That should have burned off a couple of mince pies. We'll leave it for a day or two in the hopes that it might dry out in the wind, and the SA will put the lawn tractor over it, and I'll have to rake it again. We now have two trailer loads of weedy and rank grass to dispose of. I'm hoping that they'll burn, chucked on a lively bonfire a forkful at a time.
*We borrowed this useful agricultural term from Stella Gibbons to describe the act of cutting long grass with a power scythe, since there isn't a verb specifically for that. The exact nature of the original operation remains a mystery.
Addendum I have done my bit to sabotage an on-line poll in the Guardian, while telling the exact truth. It goes to show how misleading statistics can be. The question was, will you be spending less in the sales this January than last, to which my response was No. However, that doesn't have any positive implications for my confidence or spending power this year. It's simply that since I spent nothing in the sales in 2011, I certainly wasn't going to spend less in 2012. When I took part, with an hour to go until the poll closed, 80% of respondents had answered Yes. I'm sure you shouldn't tell people how other people have voted on the same question if you want an accurate result, in case it influences what at least some of them say.
I hurried along and pruned the vines around the veg patch. This is a task I meant to do before Christmas, or at least between Christmas and the New Year, as vines bleed badly once the sap is rising, and you are advised to finish pruning early. I don't know why I didn't do it then, except that I was engrossed in other things and maybe the vine is not top of my list of concerns. Due to errors and omissions in my record keeping process, I don't know what variety it is. The grapes are white, and I'm sure I meant to choose one that was capable of setting edible fruit out of doors, since I never had any ambitions to make my own wine. A couple of years ago I tried hard to do things by the book, and pruned it at the correct times, and thinned the bunches of grapes ruthlessly, and the fruits were still small and extremely pippy, though the chickens liked them. The main job of the vine is really to clothe the wire rabbit fence that runs round the veg patch, and provide the odd leaf for cooking. I quite like stuffed vine leaves, and it gives a smug feeling to be able to use home grown fresh leaves, instead of tinned.
I cut a couple of branches experimentally, and sap didn't gush forth, so I got on with it, since it was one of those jobs where the situation was only going to get worse the longer I left it. It still didn't seem to be bleeding by the time I'd more or less finished, so with luck the sap is not rising that much yet, and it won't. Maybe it will start later. I'm not an expert on the cultivation of vines. It makes a vast amount of growth each year, throwing out new shoots that are 3-4m long and longer. Normally I keep trimming these through the summer to try and keep the whole thing in check, but the veg patch was mostly fallow last season, as I tried to catch up with everything else.
Another job that should have been done last autumn, ideally in September, was to scrantle* the meadow. We did the back garden in the middle of that month, but never got on to the meadow. I'm not sure why. I think the Systems Administrator, who basically dislikes trudging up and down for hours pushing a power scythe and then having to collect large amounts of grass, hoped that it could get by without a cut every year. I'm not crazy on the task either, and dislike repeatedly asking anyone to do anything, in case it could be construed as nagging, so we ended up with a communications failure, and it didn't get done. We ended up scrantling the meadow this afternoon, as it has daffodils planted in it and I was beginning to worry that if we didn't do it soon their leaves would be through. My part of the job is to rake the fallen grass aside, to clear the way for the next passage of the scythe. I didn't check the exact time we started, but it must have taken us about an hour and a half, during which I raked continuously. That should have burned off a couple of mince pies. We'll leave it for a day or two in the hopes that it might dry out in the wind, and the SA will put the lawn tractor over it, and I'll have to rake it again. We now have two trailer loads of weedy and rank grass to dispose of. I'm hoping that they'll burn, chucked on a lively bonfire a forkful at a time.
*We borrowed this useful agricultural term from Stella Gibbons to describe the act of cutting long grass with a power scythe, since there isn't a verb specifically for that. The exact nature of the original operation remains a mystery.
Addendum I have done my bit to sabotage an on-line poll in the Guardian, while telling the exact truth. It goes to show how misleading statistics can be. The question was, will you be spending less in the sales this January than last, to which my response was No. However, that doesn't have any positive implications for my confidence or spending power this year. It's simply that since I spent nothing in the sales in 2011, I certainly wasn't going to spend less in 2012. When I took part, with an hour to go until the poll closed, 80% of respondents had answered Yes. I'm sure you shouldn't tell people how other people have voted on the same question if you want an accurate result, in case it influences what at least some of them say.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
a (whole) day in the garden
Today I had a whole uninterrupted day to spend gardening. It wasn't a working day. I didn't have to get ready for a talk, or give a talk. No dentist's appointment, no optician, no Pilates lesson, no haircut. No calling around for coffee, or lunch, or tea. No art galleries or garden visits. No trip into Colchester to pick something up, or put up posters. I didn't even go out on garden related errands, like a trip to the dump or to collect more mushroom compost. It stayed dry so I could stay outside until it got dark. It was wonderful. It's not that I want to spend seven days a week gardening, hermit-like, and never see anybody or do anything else. I should get bored, depressed and knackered. But once in a while it is extremely nice to be able to get stuck in and put in a full day's work on the garden, at the end of which I feel I have made some progress.
I finished planting the new box cushion by the deck outside the conservatory. I started last week after picking up some nice little box plants at work, but hadn't done the QS beforehand, and didn't buy enough. Obviously it isn't a cushion yet, but it will be. I think in landscape speak it might be foundation planting, a depressing term that conjures up visions of beige coloured support hose. I am hoping the box will look good, in a sort of modernist garden goes romantic way. That was a job ticked off the list in good faith. I couldn't see anything needing doing to complete the initial phase of that project.
I picked up lots of leaves for the leaf bin. It seems almost like a waste of effort when there are plenty more left to fall, but they rake up and pick out of other plants much better when they are still crisp and solid than when they have gone soft and slimy. The 'Taihaku' has almost finished dropping its leaves, whereas the wild gean hasn't gone any redder than the last time I mentioned it, which was days ago. The hazels at the edge of the wood are starting to shed. Each big bucket of leaves tipped on to the leaf pile gives me a good feeling. With any luck the Systems Administrator will have another go with the leaf vac later in the week. Apparently if the leaves are wet the machine sprays water over the operator's legs and is not so fun to use. Given how heavy the dew is at this time of the year, not to mention the risk of showers, a leaf vac that only works comfortably on dry leaves seems to me to incorporate a fundamental design error.
I started cutting back the brambles at the end of the wood, which have grown up since we cut the Rhododendron ponticum down last winter, admitting light, which favours brambles. This is preparatory to starting to pickaxe out the rhododendron roots. Fired up by my success removing the hebes, I thought I could tackle them one at a time between other jobs, and so keep a balance between the big renovation projects that need doing, and the more genteel tidying up tasks. One of the Writtle tutors said that garden restoration was a sign of failed maintenance in the past, which is true, but only up to a point. Shrubs do succumb to old age or adverse weather conditions, and areas of planting that worked well for years cease to do so. We never actually planted the rhododendrons. We inherited some from the previous owners, and some of those must have reverted to the ponticum rootstock and then seeded themselves. It is true that we should not have allowed them to do that, but we did have many other things to worry about as well at the time. We will be left with one large one with deep red flowers, which I like very much, not sharing the current prejudice among chic designers against rhododendrons. I wish I knew its name.
The other reason for wanting to clear out at least some of the rhododendron stumps is to make space to plant my Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' into the ground. It is still in its pot, and has been much happier since being moved out of the conservatory, but I don't want it in a pot outdoors over the winter. It may not prove winter hardy, which will be a shame, but it could be fine. The boss says they are hardier than people give them credit. It was going to die of red spider mite under glass, so it and I have nothing to lose by trying. If I manage to clear out several stumps I would have room for one of the lovely Oemleria cerasiformis we have at work at the moment.
I finished trimming the lawn around the slabs set in the grass. That was a relatively lightweight tidying up job, but makes things look much sharper. While I was at it I had another go at 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', which was once again trying to grow out across the steps to the lower garden, and trimmed some low branches from the birches and zelkova in the lower part of the garden, so that tall people can walk around it without ducking. I'm short myself, so they didn't bother me, but I thought it would be nice for the SA, and any full size visitors, and actually having your entire garden designed for the convenience of people who are only 1.6m tall does give it a slightly hobbit-like air.
I finished planting the new box cushion by the deck outside the conservatory. I started last week after picking up some nice little box plants at work, but hadn't done the QS beforehand, and didn't buy enough. Obviously it isn't a cushion yet, but it will be. I think in landscape speak it might be foundation planting, a depressing term that conjures up visions of beige coloured support hose. I am hoping the box will look good, in a sort of modernist garden goes romantic way. That was a job ticked off the list in good faith. I couldn't see anything needing doing to complete the initial phase of that project.
I picked up lots of leaves for the leaf bin. It seems almost like a waste of effort when there are plenty more left to fall, but they rake up and pick out of other plants much better when they are still crisp and solid than when they have gone soft and slimy. The 'Taihaku' has almost finished dropping its leaves, whereas the wild gean hasn't gone any redder than the last time I mentioned it, which was days ago. The hazels at the edge of the wood are starting to shed. Each big bucket of leaves tipped on to the leaf pile gives me a good feeling. With any luck the Systems Administrator will have another go with the leaf vac later in the week. Apparently if the leaves are wet the machine sprays water over the operator's legs and is not so fun to use. Given how heavy the dew is at this time of the year, not to mention the risk of showers, a leaf vac that only works comfortably on dry leaves seems to me to incorporate a fundamental design error.
I started cutting back the brambles at the end of the wood, which have grown up since we cut the Rhododendron ponticum down last winter, admitting light, which favours brambles. This is preparatory to starting to pickaxe out the rhododendron roots. Fired up by my success removing the hebes, I thought I could tackle them one at a time between other jobs, and so keep a balance between the big renovation projects that need doing, and the more genteel tidying up tasks. One of the Writtle tutors said that garden restoration was a sign of failed maintenance in the past, which is true, but only up to a point. Shrubs do succumb to old age or adverse weather conditions, and areas of planting that worked well for years cease to do so. We never actually planted the rhododendrons. We inherited some from the previous owners, and some of those must have reverted to the ponticum rootstock and then seeded themselves. It is true that we should not have allowed them to do that, but we did have many other things to worry about as well at the time. We will be left with one large one with deep red flowers, which I like very much, not sharing the current prejudice among chic designers against rhododendrons. I wish I knew its name.
The other reason for wanting to clear out at least some of the rhododendron stumps is to make space to plant my Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' into the ground. It is still in its pot, and has been much happier since being moved out of the conservatory, but I don't want it in a pot outdoors over the winter. It may not prove winter hardy, which will be a shame, but it could be fine. The boss says they are hardier than people give them credit. It was going to die of red spider mite under glass, so it and I have nothing to lose by trying. If I manage to clear out several stumps I would have room for one of the lovely Oemleria cerasiformis we have at work at the moment.
I finished trimming the lawn around the slabs set in the grass. That was a relatively lightweight tidying up job, but makes things look much sharper. While I was at it I had another go at 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', which was once again trying to grow out across the steps to the lower garden, and trimmed some low branches from the birches and zelkova in the lower part of the garden, so that tall people can walk around it without ducking. I'm short myself, so they didn't bother me, but I thought it would be nice for the SA, and any full size visitors, and actually having your entire garden designed for the convenience of people who are only 1.6m tall does give it a slightly hobbit-like air.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
back in the garden
Today was the first time I've done any work in the garden for nine days, apart from watering the pots. I kicked off by deadheading the dahlias. The ones in containers are not blooming so well as they should be, and the leaves look rather pallid, so I had better dose them more regularly with tomato food. Then I did a run to the dump, and weeded around the compost bins. Never let it be said that I don't know how to enjoy my days off.
The weeds have grown prodigously in the last week, shooting up like, well, like weeds, really. Some have managed to set seed, which shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but there you go. The rambling rose 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' has made a tremendous flush of late summer growth, and has once again managed to block the steps down to the bottom of the garden, as I discovered on Sunday when we took our friends to see the holey stone, and had to go the other way round the block. Fortunately the wind was in the right direction recently for the Systems Administrator to have a bonfire, blowing the smoke back into our wood rather than on to our neighbour's lettuces, so there is space for me to dump a new pile of prunings. The S.A. has embarked on cutting the eleagnus hedge, which has shot out over the drive again, to the point where it would be a squeeze for a transit van to make it to the front door, let alone an oil tanker or any other delivery involving a lorry.
The stooled Paulownia tomentosa have responded to the damper weather by throwing up stout shoots fully 3-4m high, with truly enormous leaves. I raised the plants from seed, which I recall was fairly easy, and they also spread by suckers. The stems are hollow, and the books tell you to cut the trunks down in the spring, if you are going to coppice them. These ended up being cut down in the autumn, because I'd not got round to stooling them the previous spring, and they had got far too big for their position so close to the house. They survived the experience, despite the severity of last winter. Christopher Lloyd warns that repeated stooling can weaken them to the point of death, but these are still very much alive (so far).
Taking our visitors to see the garden statuary (at their request. I never inflict a garden tour on people unless they ask) I discovered that since I last made it down to the lowest part, the Dicentra scandens had scrambled over the Magnolia stellata so enthusiastically that the latter was practically invisible. The little yellow bleeding heart flowers of the Dicentra are quite sweet, and the leaves look so delicate that you could scarcely believe it would hurt anything, but I must keep an eye on the magnolia and check that it doesn't seem to mind being engulfed in late summer. There is a wild bryony in there as well, and that is going to have to go, as its large, vaguely vine shaped leaves are too smothering. It seeds like crazy, so there are plenty of others around the place.
The Kirengeshoma palmata was just opening its yellow bells too. This is a tall, handsome woodlander which rather unusually flowers at this time of the year rather than spring. I have tried and utterly failed to germinate it from seed, but the plant I bought and planted in a fairly leafy, shady, sheltered spot has grown happily with little further attention. Grown in black plastic 2 litre pots and exposed to sunshine as when for sale in the plant centre, it is one of the most wretched, scorched, miserable looking plants you have ever seen, and sells correspondingly badly (thus compounding the problem) whereas in the garden it is a fine-looking plant.
The weeds have grown prodigously in the last week, shooting up like, well, like weeds, really. Some have managed to set seed, which shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but there you go. The rambling rose 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' has made a tremendous flush of late summer growth, and has once again managed to block the steps down to the bottom of the garden, as I discovered on Sunday when we took our friends to see the holey stone, and had to go the other way round the block. Fortunately the wind was in the right direction recently for the Systems Administrator to have a bonfire, blowing the smoke back into our wood rather than on to our neighbour's lettuces, so there is space for me to dump a new pile of prunings. The S.A. has embarked on cutting the eleagnus hedge, which has shot out over the drive again, to the point where it would be a squeeze for a transit van to make it to the front door, let alone an oil tanker or any other delivery involving a lorry.
The stooled Paulownia tomentosa have responded to the damper weather by throwing up stout shoots fully 3-4m high, with truly enormous leaves. I raised the plants from seed, which I recall was fairly easy, and they also spread by suckers. The stems are hollow, and the books tell you to cut the trunks down in the spring, if you are going to coppice them. These ended up being cut down in the autumn, because I'd not got round to stooling them the previous spring, and they had got far too big for their position so close to the house. They survived the experience, despite the severity of last winter. Christopher Lloyd warns that repeated stooling can weaken them to the point of death, but these are still very much alive (so far).
Taking our visitors to see the garden statuary (at their request. I never inflict a garden tour on people unless they ask) I discovered that since I last made it down to the lowest part, the Dicentra scandens had scrambled over the Magnolia stellata so enthusiastically that the latter was practically invisible. The little yellow bleeding heart flowers of the Dicentra are quite sweet, and the leaves look so delicate that you could scarcely believe it would hurt anything, but I must keep an eye on the magnolia and check that it doesn't seem to mind being engulfed in late summer. There is a wild bryony in there as well, and that is going to have to go, as its large, vaguely vine shaped leaves are too smothering. It seeds like crazy, so there are plenty of others around the place.
The Kirengeshoma palmata was just opening its yellow bells too. This is a tall, handsome woodlander which rather unusually flowers at this time of the year rather than spring. I have tried and utterly failed to germinate it from seed, but the plant I bought and planted in a fairly leafy, shady, sheltered spot has grown happily with little further attention. Grown in black plastic 2 litre pots and exposed to sunshine as when for sale in the plant centre, it is one of the most wretched, scorched, miserable looking plants you have ever seen, and sells correspondingly badly (thus compounding the problem) whereas in the garden it is a fine-looking plant.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
two jobs done
Today I finished two of the garden jobs on my 'to do' list. The first was to rig up an elaborate cat's cradle of string along the dahlia bed, to deter the chickens from scratching in there when they are let out for their evening constitutional. Since the dahlia bed has been liberally dosed with organic mushroom compost, given a thick coating of Strulch, and watered, it presumably contains an above average quantity of worms and insects, and the chickens love it. I was so surprised (in a good way) that any of the dahlias had survived the winter left in the ground, that I made an effort to get the bed into good heart earlier in the summer, and even managed to pick up a couple of young plants of the orange double variety 'David Howard', which together with a stray dark leaved plant that had overwintered in the greenhouse, will help plug the gaps. Having got this far I should like to see some flowers, and not for the whole thing to be raked over and destroyed by chickens.
I leave the stakes in all year, as well as the dahlias. They are square cross section tree stakes, as bamboo canes are utterly inadequate for the job. In the past couple of seasons I've been upgrading to heavier gauge ones from the Clacton Garden Centre, as I found the slim Gardman brand ones stocked by B&Q rotted too quickly in the ground. To make the array of stakes look more cheerful I paint them in red, yellow, and all shades in between, using acrylic paint. While not marketed for outdoor use, it lasts remarkably well. The string is at multiple levels from 8cm to over 30cm above the ground, weaving back and forth and diagonally across, to try and make the area look uninviting to a chicken's eyes, like a trap. I'll see how it goes.
The other job was to finish cutting the elder bush that grows up the back of the veranda, and had reached the eaves. I used to try and eliminate it entirely, as it had seeded itself there and wasn't part of the plan, but nowadays I look on it as a useful support for the climbing roses and honeysuckle, and only remove the branches that are blocking the view, or sticking out too far into the border at the back of the house. I could reach some branches from the veranda with the long armed loppers, but the others had to be cut using the Wolf loppers on a pole. I got these at the Hampton Court Flower Show years ago. They consist of a heavy pair of sharp jaws on a two part metal extendable pole, which are pulled shut using a cord. When I first saw the contraption I assumed it was a gimmick and could not possibly work, but the salesman on the stand used one to cut a stout twig, and I realised that I was wrong. I bought one, and then began to wonder how I was going to get it back from Hampton Court to Colchester on the train. It turned out that if collapsed to the shortest possible length of handle it would just fit upright in the train as long as I stayed in the middle of the carriage. I didn't dare try and take it on the tube, and walked from Waterloo back to Liverpool Street. It is a well-made piece of kit. The jaws are rigged with a four to one mechanical advantage as regards the pull cord, and are very solidly constructed, so don't twist sideways instead of cutting like some cheap or badly adjusted loppers do. I don't enjoy using it, though. The pole extends to about 4m, and feels awfully heavy when held fully extended above my head for any length of time. It is generally a struggle to see what I'm doing up there, and I always seem to get the cord wrapped around things. However, it does the job, cutting up to 2.5cm in diameter if the wood is young and not too hard, and reaching to places I couldn't reach otherwise.
The boss at work has a chainsaw with the cutting blade on a long pole. I've eyed this up covetously, but they are expensive, and he does have an arboretum to justify the investment.
I leave the stakes in all year, as well as the dahlias. They are square cross section tree stakes, as bamboo canes are utterly inadequate for the job. In the past couple of seasons I've been upgrading to heavier gauge ones from the Clacton Garden Centre, as I found the slim Gardman brand ones stocked by B&Q rotted too quickly in the ground. To make the array of stakes look more cheerful I paint them in red, yellow, and all shades in between, using acrylic paint. While not marketed for outdoor use, it lasts remarkably well. The string is at multiple levels from 8cm to over 30cm above the ground, weaving back and forth and diagonally across, to try and make the area look uninviting to a chicken's eyes, like a trap. I'll see how it goes.
The other job was to finish cutting the elder bush that grows up the back of the veranda, and had reached the eaves. I used to try and eliminate it entirely, as it had seeded itself there and wasn't part of the plan, but nowadays I look on it as a useful support for the climbing roses and honeysuckle, and only remove the branches that are blocking the view, or sticking out too far into the border at the back of the house. I could reach some branches from the veranda with the long armed loppers, but the others had to be cut using the Wolf loppers on a pole. I got these at the Hampton Court Flower Show years ago. They consist of a heavy pair of sharp jaws on a two part metal extendable pole, which are pulled shut using a cord. When I first saw the contraption I assumed it was a gimmick and could not possibly work, but the salesman on the stand used one to cut a stout twig, and I realised that I was wrong. I bought one, and then began to wonder how I was going to get it back from Hampton Court to Colchester on the train. It turned out that if collapsed to the shortest possible length of handle it would just fit upright in the train as long as I stayed in the middle of the carriage. I didn't dare try and take it on the tube, and walked from Waterloo back to Liverpool Street. It is a well-made piece of kit. The jaws are rigged with a four to one mechanical advantage as regards the pull cord, and are very solidly constructed, so don't twist sideways instead of cutting like some cheap or badly adjusted loppers do. I don't enjoy using it, though. The pole extends to about 4m, and feels awfully heavy when held fully extended above my head for any length of time. It is generally a struggle to see what I'm doing up there, and I always seem to get the cord wrapped around things. However, it does the job, cutting up to 2.5cm in diameter if the wood is young and not too hard, and reaching to places I couldn't reach otherwise.
The boss at work has a chainsaw with the cutting blade on a long pole. I've eyed this up covetously, but they are expensive, and he does have an arboretum to justify the investment.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
time to get on with the winter pruning
The outstanding winter pruning has begun to feel more urgent. I've been working my way round the garden, but suddenly buds are swelling and breaking and I want to get it finished. I'm quite a lot of the way round the roses. Many of them are shrub or species roses, because I like them, they look right in a fairly wild country garden, and they seem to cope well with light soil or a degree of shade so are versatile plants. With them all I do is remove dead wood and the old, much flowered and branching oldest branches. The plants pretty much tell you what needs to come out. I've learnt to treat the modern shrub roses with a degree of respect. I took 'Sally Holmes' down by a half a few years back, as she'd got much larger than I was expecting, and rather straggly. She hated it, responding with weak regrowth and some dieback, and recovery was slow.
I've taken a badly placed internally crossing branch out of the Zelkova carpinifolia which grows in the lowest part of the garden. I was smitten by the beauty of the bark on a wet day at Wisley years ago, and got one out of a packet of seeds to germinate (which was enough as I only wanted one tree). It was planted out as a youngster in late summer 2001 (not the most obvious time of the year to plant a tree but that must have been when I was doing that part of the garden) and is now about 4m high and wide. From when it was a few cm high it has never wanted to grow vertically, or limit itself to a single trunk, and the books do say that in cultivation they tend to have a very bushy habit. Mine has two main trunks, which are sinuous and a nice shade of amber, plus a third smaller trunk which I think needs to come off, but want to be absolutely sure before making the cut. As they say, you can't put it back afterwards. The badly placed branch snaked around between the two principle ones, and I could see it exerting pressure in all the wrong places and making the crown mechanically unstable as it grew, so it has already come off. The tree should be long lived (unless it succumbs to Dutch elm disease. They are in the elm family and can catch it) but its bushy shape can make it vulnerable to windthrow. I hope ours is sheltered enough to survive. The leaves are toothed and turn a pleasant yellow in the autumn. The gardener at work tells me that our employer doesn't rate zelkovas, dismissively calling them 'bio plants' because they just have green leaves and no exciting features. I can't decide whether on this occasion my tastes are more rarified than those of my boss, or if I'm a sad person to be happy with a dull plant!
I started on the Buddleia davidii today, but didn't finish them. Their leaves are growing by the day, so I don't want them wasting any more energy breaking buds on bits I'm about to prune off. Buddleia davidii are such useful plants. They are fast growing and while not evergreen are in leaf for much of the year, so are good for fast screening, though that's not why I grow them. The butterflies love them, of course. Every now and then customers come into work who have read some magazine or newspaper article about which cultivars are especially attractive to insects, but the butterflies here don't seem that fussy. We have 'Black Knight' below the veranda, which one customer told me was not a good one, but ours were covered in Painted Ladies last year. Buddleia davidii does not seem the most root-firm plant, and I have known them blow out of the ground in very severe gales, but they do also have an amazing capacity to regenerate from the roots.
I had to tackle a row of Hebe topiaria earlier than I would have chosen to. These run in front of one of the decks, and we needed access to the front of the deck to replace it. The reason for having shrubs by the deck was to use foundation planting to anchor the house to the garden, and to cover an awkward sloping bit of lawn that was a pig to mow, and that I was too idle to level. The hebe looked good for about seven years, but had begun to get open and spreading with age, while snow landing on them two winters running hastened their decline. I'm fairly confident that if I feed them up they will reclothe themselves completely from the base. I've done this in the past with Hebe 'Mrs Winder' and it worked OK, though if it hadn't been for the decking I'd have left it another month in case of frosts. I haven't bothered taking cuttings. I went through a period of being very keen on hebes, but am not so enthusiastic as I was seven years ago. I think it's the long slow decline in the shape of the bush from a perfect dome to something less perfect. Nowadays I'd rather have clipped box if I wanted a dome. Some hebes are good bee plants, but H. topiaria is not very floriferous. Given I sound so unenthusiastic about it maybe I ought to take them out! But the roots of a healthy hebe are extremely hard work to shift, and I'm saving my energies for the Rhododendron ponticum in the end of the wood. When those are gone I can have a nice Eucryphia in their place.
I've taken a badly placed internally crossing branch out of the Zelkova carpinifolia which grows in the lowest part of the garden. I was smitten by the beauty of the bark on a wet day at Wisley years ago, and got one out of a packet of seeds to germinate (which was enough as I only wanted one tree). It was planted out as a youngster in late summer 2001 (not the most obvious time of the year to plant a tree but that must have been when I was doing that part of the garden) and is now about 4m high and wide. From when it was a few cm high it has never wanted to grow vertically, or limit itself to a single trunk, and the books do say that in cultivation they tend to have a very bushy habit. Mine has two main trunks, which are sinuous and a nice shade of amber, plus a third smaller trunk which I think needs to come off, but want to be absolutely sure before making the cut. As they say, you can't put it back afterwards. The badly placed branch snaked around between the two principle ones, and I could see it exerting pressure in all the wrong places and making the crown mechanically unstable as it grew, so it has already come off. The tree should be long lived (unless it succumbs to Dutch elm disease. They are in the elm family and can catch it) but its bushy shape can make it vulnerable to windthrow. I hope ours is sheltered enough to survive. The leaves are toothed and turn a pleasant yellow in the autumn. The gardener at work tells me that our employer doesn't rate zelkovas, dismissively calling them 'bio plants' because they just have green leaves and no exciting features. I can't decide whether on this occasion my tastes are more rarified than those of my boss, or if I'm a sad person to be happy with a dull plant!
I started on the Buddleia davidii today, but didn't finish them. Their leaves are growing by the day, so I don't want them wasting any more energy breaking buds on bits I'm about to prune off. Buddleia davidii are such useful plants. They are fast growing and while not evergreen are in leaf for much of the year, so are good for fast screening, though that's not why I grow them. The butterflies love them, of course. Every now and then customers come into work who have read some magazine or newspaper article about which cultivars are especially attractive to insects, but the butterflies here don't seem that fussy. We have 'Black Knight' below the veranda, which one customer told me was not a good one, but ours were covered in Painted Ladies last year. Buddleia davidii does not seem the most root-firm plant, and I have known them blow out of the ground in very severe gales, but they do also have an amazing capacity to regenerate from the roots.
I had to tackle a row of Hebe topiaria earlier than I would have chosen to. These run in front of one of the decks, and we needed access to the front of the deck to replace it. The reason for having shrubs by the deck was to use foundation planting to anchor the house to the garden, and to cover an awkward sloping bit of lawn that was a pig to mow, and that I was too idle to level. The hebe looked good for about seven years, but had begun to get open and spreading with age, while snow landing on them two winters running hastened their decline. I'm fairly confident that if I feed them up they will reclothe themselves completely from the base. I've done this in the past with Hebe 'Mrs Winder' and it worked OK, though if it hadn't been for the decking I'd have left it another month in case of frosts. I haven't bothered taking cuttings. I went through a period of being very keen on hebes, but am not so enthusiastic as I was seven years ago. I think it's the long slow decline in the shape of the bush from a perfect dome to something less perfect. Nowadays I'd rather have clipped box if I wanted a dome. Some hebes are good bee plants, but H. topiaria is not very floriferous. Given I sound so unenthusiastic about it maybe I ought to take them out! But the roots of a healthy hebe are extremely hard work to shift, and I'm saving my energies for the Rhododendron ponticum in the end of the wood. When those are gone I can have a nice Eucryphia in their place.
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