The Cannock Gardener Diary

The compost heap will be building up by now; vegetable foliage and early perennials dieing back to add to trimmings from hedges and clippings from the lawn. A spot of warm weather and the occasional splash of rain and it really should be firing. But beware perennial weeds.

When I moved house I inherited a couple of compost bins full of decomposed material. I licked my lips at my good fortune and gleefully dug the decomposed matter over the winter dug into the vegetable garden. But there was a problem. A massive problem: I hadn’t asked the previous owners what they had added to their bins. Not only, it seems, had they added normal compostable waste but also every kind of perennial weed too - as I have been discovering all season. Huge thistles, nettles, dandelions - you name it, I’ve got them showered all over the place and as I look forward to the holidays I know that I’ll return to a weed-scene I can hardly bear to think about.

As gardening teaches us lessons every day, it’s always worth asking questions, however foolish they may seem at the time, to learn and on occasions save yourself serious disappointment.

James

Yes, we live in Britain, so I understand that it will rain all the time, but does it really have to do it so often?

I bought a so called lucky dip of bulbs from my local green grocer. It has a mixture of all type of flowering colours (can you tell I am the one at Cannock Gardens who doesn’t know much about flowers?). Anyway, I planted these all as instructed on the card and waited.

And waited.

Drizzled some miracle grow I got from our shop at Cannock Gardens.

And waited.

Life appeared in my containers finally! They looked like a nice flurry of pink. Made me happy as I need some pink in the garden. Well any colour for that matter!

Last week they started to bloom, lovely big carnation style flowers, and mini rose looking ones I was so pleased. Then it rained. A LOT. The rain and the high winds managed to blow off my petals on the lilies that I had spent all year looking forward to being just right for my annual BBQ and then the horror. The pinkness had gone. I came in from cycling and noticed the flowers had been brutally strangled by the horrible rain and winds. I am devastated.

At least my sunflowers are still going strong!

In our house we are having a sunflower competition. None are in bloom as of yet, but they are growing strong and sprouting tall. We currently have four on the go that look like they are going to last the summer. However, there seems to be a larger problem with the winning sunflower… it’s the squirrels.

The local squirrel has been raiding the bird feed and clearly not keen on any of the sunflower pieces so he has been throwing them out and into my plant pots. Subsequently, one has grown too three times the height and strength of mine!

Even with me applying miracle grow, and re-potting them yesterday (after I took the photo), I still think the squirrel’s sunflower is going to win.

My sunflower is on the left, the squirrel’s is on the right.

I have a ritual of taking the dog out late at night to catch the stillness, look at the stars and smell the night air. The dog sniffs around and occasionally barks at nothing. With this recent burst of warm weather, I popped out barefoot and almost immediately trod on a vast fat slug waiting outside my back door. If you have never experienced such a thing, try hard not to. It was a sickening experience (literally) and I spent the next half an hour removing the sticky glue-like slime from between my toes with no end of shocking language. But the goo simply refused to come off  and I ended up having to scrape it off with a knife. Then, I couldn’t get the goo off the knife, so I threw it away.

So tired and on a revenge mission to rid my patio of slugs and snails I furiously went on a mass killing spree armed with a torch and a pair of wellies. And my goodness  there were a lot of them. The following morning  (still picking bits of goo out of my toes) the patio was a scene of withered little bodies.  I went to work. On returning the dead shriveled slugs had stuck to the patio. So more shocking language as I had to prise their sticky dead bodies off the floor with another knife, which also had to be thrown away.

My wife pops her head out.

‘What’s on earth’s going on? First you keep me up all night cursing and stomping around outside and now this. And what are those?’ she says pointing at the corpses.

I explained.

‘But you’ve got slug traps at cannockgardens - I’ve seen them on your website? And you like beer. So buy one, add beer as bait and stop behaving like a five year old.’

It hurt, but she’s right. Now a beer bellied frog sits a little buried beneath some gravel in the corner and no more armies of slugs invade my patio after dark. They go straight to the bar instead.  But I always, always wear shoes late at night.

I was wondering if it was me. But with our peculiar spring weather, hot one minute cold the next, I’ve noticed many of my plants are out of kilter with their usual flowering patterns. My daffodils were rueful (they bloomed but almost ashamedly, then the hot weather came along, so they wilted). The blossom on some of my fruit trees has been amazing but on others almost non-existent. The May-blossom arrived right in the middle of the month, but I’m sure these lovely white petals should have appeared way before my Ceanothus bursts into its neon-blue show. And the Nepeta mussini six hills giant is off before my alliums. Surely that’s not right? I suppose it’s good to remember that plants understand the seasons as much (or as little) as we do - and after all, it is still spring - and thank goodness for that.

It was that time again. Clean out the weeds, fork up the compost and plant a few pot and tub seeds I got from our site, Cannock Gardens. Then a nice quick sprinkle of some fresh homemade compost for top soil and done. Just need the weather to get better to take it out of the greenhouse and hang it on my ornate basket hook out front. I guess I will go grumble at the window again with Marty (my outdoor cat, currently sulking on a window sill because of the rain).

Ten am this morning and it was beaming with light outside. Come four pm it was raining again. This has been the pattern for the weather in the last week or so. Even me, a keen gardener, can’t do much with our April showers at the moment.

I am officially fed up with this winter – it really does seem to be going on a bit. I was preparing to do battle with the patio border and walked round for all of five minutes when the heavens opened and down came the torrents of rain. So I put the kettle on and searched the web for inspiration before realising that the day wasn’t going to get any better. Fred (my brother-in-law), bless him, even sharpened my secateurs for the event. In fact he claims to have sterilised and sharpened all the equipment. Well he has spent rather a long time in that shed after the pergola incident (a story for another day). I do hope he’s not planning to build another one.

Anyway, I’m terrifically excited as I discovered some trailing busy lizzies from Cannock Gardens. I also think I’ve found the perfect combination of cascading geraniums for my black metal hanging baskets. I derived huge satisfaction when I saw my next door neighbour, Colin, eyeing them up like teenager in a disco. They are rather special. Have a look for yourself. The work well in any hanging basket, or window box.

Now there’s a rare sight, sunlight filtering through the windows. I must dash while I can to finish the border inspection!