A blog dedicated to one of the loves of my life - gardening. Living in a bungalow in Derby, UK where I spend my time looking after my disabled husband, I also spend time learning what I can about gardening and applying it in our small garden. I hope that you will enjoy the photography and visit again and again and again. The other loves in my life are husband, my two sons, my four grandchildren and music.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Gardening

I need to tell you a little story about when I started my summer garden this year.

Whilst preparing my borders and digging up all the weeds and throwing lots of compost etc, into the soil, I bought seeds and seed trays, once I had prepared all these, the seed trays were carried into the bathroom everynight and taken outside again for about 10 days, this was only because I do not have a storeroom/greenhouse, how does the saying go, where there's a will there's a way. However, my husband would help carry the seedling trays out before he could have a shower and without his support I do not think I could carry on with this project and he like myself has not got a clue about gardening.

This hard work payed off - talk about talk to the trees, well I would talk to my plants and was so excited when the seedlings started coming through. I have to be honest, a lot of the flowers that did grow and were transplanted I could not remember the names of them, but the colours are truly magnificent. However, I also had a lot of disasters, some of the plants did not take, those that did were hit by black-fly, I was told to put soapy water on them to get rid of this fly, but to no avail, I ended up buying a spray and trying that, but it was too late I had to dig them up and throw them away, before this menace spread to my other plants.

Not only did I have black-fly, I discovered green-fly attacked my roses, well I was near to tears by then, but alas I once again bought sprays and managed to save the roses.

Another thing I have problems with (like all gardeners) are slugs/snails, how do you get rid of these horrible things bar using pelletts, which I use in small quantities because of domestic animals. Help... before they destroy my garden.

If there is anybody out there that can give me more advice on the black/green-fly, please e-mail me at protea (at) ntlworld.com.

This week I was treated to a day out with a friend and we went first of all to a Nursery, I have never seen such a beautiful place, the plants/shrubs and flowers were amazing, a few plants that I would like to obtain for next year are Cyclamen and Lewisias. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to speek to the experts at the Nursery, once again any information on them would be grateful.

From there we went onto a place called Bridgnorth - well Bridgnorth was truly breathtaking, as you walked in the high street there were huge hanging baskets outside every shop/pub. These baskets had a variety of flowers in them of every colour you could think of. Unfortunately we did not get to the River Gardens, too far a walk but on the way back home the coach drove over the bridge of the River Gardens, this sight was amazing with huge hanging baskets, flower beds with every colour you could imagine, a sight not to be missed and will endeavour to go back there again.

Will write again soon.

Protea

2 Comments:

Blogger Lorraine said...

I've never experienced black fly, but googling them showed a lot of sites. Snails ? I always used to sprinkle mealie meal around the plants - the snails won't go over it. It seems a bit of a waste here in the UK though !! The best thing is to go out at night, and pick them up - drop them in a bucket sprinkled with salt. Ugly but it kills them.

9:19 pm

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I find the best way to get rid of slugs and snails is by hand. Water the garden on a warm evening then go round and hour later and collect them all up. Wear gloves though as some of the slime is so tough it won't even scrub off.

I couldn't quite bring myself to kill them directly though. I usually bag them up and put them in the main wheelie bin.

The first 2 years I did this I could easily collect 100 per night (and only a small garden). This year, I have hardly any and my hostas are untouched. I would like to think my patience for the last 2 years has drastically reduced the population in my garden, and now I just do a quick mop up every now and then to catch the stragglers.

7:39 pm

 

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