Author: spanishgarden

My wife has just pointed out to me that the above heading could be misconstrued as having  “adult content”; I replied “Honi soit qui mal y pense”. She then accused me of swearing at her in French. When I told her it was the motto of the Order of the Garter she told me not to be disgusting.

Anyway, now is the time to harvest seed from your various flowers and then you can have free plants next year. I will tell you about the Melon later, but I’m fuming.

10th August: Things I have been doing lately

🥝  Harvest seed. You will of course remember that I told you all a few months ago to mark the best flower blooms with a piece of tape so that when you came to deadheading you would not cut these off. You have to do this with the pick of the first blooms as they are the biggest and best; the tendency is that as you deadhead the blooms get smaller and smaller. Anyway, hands up those who did? the rest of you have just lost lots of free plants unless of course you have a time machine and can go back a few months and mark the flowers with tape. As far as I know Dr Who doesn’t read this blog. Those of you who did mark your best flowers take a house point, those of you who didn’t stop mumbling about how busy you have been.

Today I have been harvesting seeds from Marigolds, Pink Trumpet and Marguerites. Each of these have slightly different techniques. But there is something that is common to all seed gathering that you must adhere to or the seed will fail. Make sure your chosen blooms have fully completed their seed cycle: they must be brown and completely dry.

Marigolds. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I love Marigolds as they are easy to propagate, love sun and love Spain. There are four stages to harvesting Marigold seeds.

1. Cut off the blooms that you have previously marked with tape; all of you idiots who failed to mark your best blooms, just pick the best of the rest (see first photo below).

2. Clean the flower head up by removing the stem and gently peeling away what is left of the dried petals around the top (see second photo below).

3. Pick up the now cleaned seed head and gently roll it between your thumb and forefinger. As you roll press gently on the seed head and gradually the seeds will spill out to be captured in your waiting hand. (see third photo below).

4. Place the seeds in a clean new envelope and mark it “Marigolds 2017”. The year is important as you should always use your freshest seed first. (see fourth photo below).

Pink Trumpet. This is a lovely fast growing climber that is very popular in Spain. Again you follow a four stage process to harvest the seeds.

1. First identify seed pods that are ripe. Pink trumpet seeds are developed in long pod cases that hang from the plant. These can vary in length from 20cm to over 50cm and make a very pretty addition to the plant at this time of year. The first photo below shows a ripe seed pod hanging on the plant. Again, like the Marigolds, they need to be brown and completely dry.

2. Cut off the pods and carefully inspect them to ensure there are no splits in case the seed has already gone. (see second photo below).

3. Carefully split the pods open and ease out the seeds and let them fall into your other hand. Be careful if it is a windy day as each seed has a little wing to enable it to be blown along in the wind; you may end up splitting the pod and they all take off. (See third photo below).

4. Place the seeds in a clean new envelope and again mark it with the year  and the plant. (See fourth photo below).

Margeurites. A lovely daisy plant that is not only a Spring stalwart, but if cut back will have successful further flushes of flower. There are two ways to propagate Margeurites, you can leave the seed heads on the plant and it will self seed with lots of little seedlings in the late Autumn. Or, you can take the seeds and propagate them yourself. I use both methods. However, if you want to grow them yourself, again it is a four stage process:

1. First identify seed pods that are ripe. This is a bit more difficult than with the other two we have looked at so far. Marguerite seed pods are small and can look as if they have seeds, when in fact they have already gone. A tell tale sign of no seeds is if the seed head looks like a flat star. This means the pod has flung itself open and scattered its seeds. So in effect you need to do the opposite of all those television programmes with would be entertainers – “Don’t search for a star”. Having found nice dry seed heads cut them off, but be careful as the seeds are small and they can easily fall off as you move them. See first photo below.

2. Now, in a different way to the other two seeds we have looked at, you need to pinch the bunch of seeds out from the pod as a single lump. See second photo below.

3. Then in a similar way to the other seeds, roll the seeds between your thumb and forefinger and catch them as they fall into your other hand. In this case you are not separating the seeds from the seed pod as you have already taken them out, but because the seeds are so small you will get certain amounts of plant debris coming with them. The best way to separate the seeds from the rubbish is to drop the seeds from palm to palm and hopefully the wind will blow away the rubbish and leave you with the seeds; or possibly nothing if it’s too windy. See third photo below).

4. The final stage like the others is to place the seeds in a clean new envelope and mark it with the year and the plant. See fourth photo below.

🐜  The bloody ants have eaten my melons. I know they are all God’s creatures and as a Christian I should be forgiving. But they have literally spoiled all my Melons, I only have four left that have not been overrun. I wouldn’t mind if when I came out each morning to inspect the Melons all I found was a Melon core surrounded by big fat bellied ants burping and so fat they could not run away. Instead, they find the smallest possible crack in the Melon skin, then pour into about the depth of a centimetre and eat the tiniest bit of Melon but manage to spoil the rest. I have been speaking to someone in Tennessee on the internet about this. Tennessee is big on cantaloupe as they say. My new friend Hank or Tex or something like that, reckons cut the melons off just before they are fully mature and before the stem starts to separate. Then place them in a brown paper bag with a banana which will help them mature. I will try this and let you know what happens. It will probably just be a take-away lunch for ants with added banana. See photo below of the ant Melon party.

As all of you know the big cut back and garden tidy up is done in January here in Spain. However, there are some exceptions and it’s ok to tidy some things up to make them neater.

1st August, Things I have been doing lately:

🌴 Cutting back some Palms. Different Palms need different approaches. Washingtonia (the big one that is all over the place with large fans at the end of branches) can be tidied up now with no problems as can Sago, Mediterranean Fan Palm etc. However, I would not recommend cutting back Phoenix Palms (the ones with dates and long serrated leaves) at this time of the year as the dreaded Red Palm Weevil is flying about and any wounds in the Palm gives them an opening.

Sago Palms: Large specimens of Sago Palm are very expensive and even small ones under a metre can cost over €200. So you have to be careful when trimming them back. The first photo below shows my Sago needing a trim back to make it tidy and look showy (it’s a Palm thing). The Palm fronds grow out from the stem in concentric rings, cutting from the bottom ring with extendible cutters, cut all the way up till two rings of palm fronds are left. The two ring thing is important, you could cut back to one ring but then if something happened to that ring you lose the whole plant (and that would make you look stupid). The second picture below shows the Sago cut back, looking neat and very handsome.

Fan Palms: I have a number of these grouped in a bed and they self seed like crazy. With this Palm you just need to cut back again until you have at least three rings of fronds from the top. The three is important as the plant has very thin stems  and it would look stupid with just two like the Sago (Palms are very sensitive and do not like to be mocked). The photo below shows my Fan Palm duly trimmed back; I forgot to take a before photo and I am not sticking Palms back on just for you, so you can forget that.

Washingtonia: This is probably the most common Palm in Spain, especially since the Palm Weevil has been allowed to destroy the more handsome Phoenix Palm in lots of areas of Spain. Anyway, the Washingtonia can be cut back at various times depending on your preference. Some people like to cut them back in May before they flower  as it can be messy. They throw out long flowering branches which produce firstly a small white flower and then small round black seeds. These seeds are expert at getting into gravelled areas and promptly trying to grow new Palms. We let Washingtonia flower as we have lights trained up into trees and this gives a lovely firework effect and also our Labradors eat the seeds (what’s wrong with that have you seen the price of dog food – I am trying to convince them that they are vegetarians). The photo below shows one of our large 20 metre Washingtonia in flower and seed. We have these cut back by experts in January; however, I am trying to convince my wife to go up a ladder and cut the fronds whilst I hold the ladder. She won’t do it she knows I am still smouldering with vengeance for what she did to the tomatoes.

Once last but important thing on Washingtonia. You must cut the branches whilst they are still above the horizontal and before they go too brown. If you don’t then they take on the consistency of iron and will easily blunt your saw – you have been warned. The picture below shows one of our smaller Washingtonia ready for pruning.

🌰 Pick and eat Figs. By now your fig trees should be bursting with fruit. That is if you took my advice and netted them. If not by now you should have lots of fat birds in your garden and no figs. Assuming that you have figs, then you need to go around your tree every morning and gently squeeze each of the figs that you think look ready for harvesting. Ideally they should just be slightly squashy (not too soft) And they should come away in your hand with a slight tug. Place your mornings pickings in a caulander and wash under cold water, leave to dry and stick them in the fridge. The photo below shows my morning pickings (I have to confess that some don’t make it indoors as I scoff them outside). Finally, make sure you keep each days crop seperate so that you can eat them in “Date” order; a little soft fruit joke to send you away with a smile.

It has been a very busy time in the garden lately and with the sun at its hottest I have turned a rather fetching shade of burnished teak, or as my wife says old Ronseal. Anyway, let’s get right down to it and discuss the terrible things that have happened to my tomatoes and other exciting things in the Spanish garden.

30th July: Things I have been doing lately.

🍎 Disposing of my tortured tomatoes. Keen followers of this blog (and I know you are legion), will remember that I planted some tomatoes earlier this year. I am not really a fan of vegetable gardening (or is it a fruit)  but I thought, why not, have fun, live a little – I am that sort of gardener. Anyway, I planted them carefully in the right soil, right feed and a correct watering pattern. They were set fair to provide a huge number of salads throughout the summer. That was the future I had mapped out for them. Unfortunately, that was not to be, I had to go to England for three weeks and left the young “healthy” tomatoes in the charge of my friend Karl and my wife (known in this blog as Cruella – I am thinking of changing this to Kruella for alliteration purposes).

Upon my return I rushed round to see my little friends (as I had taken to calling them) only to find something that looked as if it had been left in the care of Islington Social Services. In place of the healthy little tomatoes I had left, were cruelly tortured and twisted creatures barely surviving, (see photo below). Oh, I tried my best, over the next two weeks I staked them, netted them, fed the best food tomatoes could have, I even sat out in the evening and read them stories; when I had to go in late at night I would say little tomatoes jokes like “ketchup with you tomorrow”. But all to no avail. Eventually, I had to take them one by one to the compost heap. As I took each one away, I told the others they were going to a farm. At the end as I closed the lid of the compost bin on the last little tomato I was left with nothing but silence; it was a bit like that film “silence of the lambs” only with tomatoes of course.

I want no revenge for all of this, as a Christian I have forgiven Karl and Kruella, but if they were to be trolled on the internet it would be no more than they deserved, I have tweeted Donald.

🌳 Reshape your standards. Most people have standard plants growing in their garden or in pots here in Spain. If you have then now is the time to reshape them for a last burst of flower. If you leave this too late then not only will you miss out on late summer flowering, but also you are in danger of the plant being top heavy when strong winds start in September and October. Just take your garden shears and reshape your plant into a smaller lollipop ball. Try not to cut too far into the brown wood and you will be rewarded with lovely late flowering. See the photos below of one of my standards before and after trimming.

🍃 Yellowing leaves. This time of year you can notice some of your plants are getting yellowing leaves. The normal culprit for this is that you are overwatering and you just need to cut back for the plant to return to full colour. But occasionally the yellowing is caused by Chlorosis a problem with the plant not being able to access chlorophyll because of a lack of iron. I noticed that a cutting of Solanum that I was growing on was yellowing so I dosed it with some iron and from the photo below you can see that the couple of inches of top growth are green from the point it was given iron. You can buy iron in granular form from any good Bricolage. All you need to do is mix it with water till it becomes the colour of Rose’ wine – not red wine that is too strong – and then just water the base of your plant. Once should be enough, but with mature plants once a month may be needed.

🎉 Hey la my grapevines back. To paraphrase that great hit from the US girl group the Angels. My grapevine has come back after it endured a similar fate to my tomatoes at the hands of that evil duo Karl and Kruella ( I believe they are touring in Panto together this Christmas). Anyway, you will remember that I had to cut it fully back to the stem as they had deliberately allowed it to get mildew. In the accompanying photos a few blogs ago I said that with luck it should come back this year. Well, guess what it has and with new fruit. I can’t promise that we will be inundated with grapes this year, but it just shows you sometimes you just have to be brave, see photo below.

To those of you who think that Canna is just a reluctant Scotsman saying no, or even worse an expat asking for a beer; I am happy to inform you that Canna are one of the best statement plants you can grow to add height and colour to your garden. They look especially stunning set in gravel – and here is how you do it.

18th July: Things I have been doing today.

🌿 Planting Canna in gravel. Those of you who are paying close attention to this blog will remember that after a titanic struggle involving fire, water and a mighty lever, I managed to remove two areas of Pampas Grass that I planted about five years ago. The Pampas had been planted as statement plants in gravel either side of the main pedestrian gate to my house. Having decided to take them out I needed to replace them with something just as stunning, but hopefully not as problematic as the Pampas. The solution was to plant Canna which grow into large colourful plants with good flowers and interesting leaves. The variety I chose was Russian Red which grows up to six feet tall with striking red flowers. I also wanted to to take the opportunity to introduce some coloured gravel as a feature of the planting area. The photo below shows the Canna ready to go into their planting area; the plants were kept in this spot three days before planting to ensure they were orientated to the sun.

Stage 1: The first stage involves digging a hole deep enough for the Canna. The plant should sit close to the surface and be planted about nine inches apart. Once the hole is dug then fill it with water right to the top. Canna love water and can even be grown in pond margins. Whilst the hole is draining go and have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit if you like (fatso). See photo below.

Stage 2: Plant the Canna in the ground, in this case I am putting two plants in each hole and using compost from my compost bins – those without compost bins are probably now suffering from the common gardener’s complaint “compost bin envy”. At this stage you need to add some general purpose granulated food. Mix the food in as you plant and then put a thin layer on top covered over with a light covering of soil. The photo below shows the plants almost ready to have their gravel covering.

Stage 3: Once you are happy with the position of the plants then tread the soil firmly around them. You are now ready to add the top coat of gravel. This fulfills two purposes. First, it acts as a mulch to the plant locking in water away from the heat of the sun. Second, it adds decoration and will complement the plant and draw the eye to the area. In this case I have used a reddish volcanic gravel that will match the red of the flowers when they come. Notice from the photo below that I am using a circle of irrigation tubing to help form the circle this will then have spray irrigation pieces inserted in two areas to ensure the plants are well watered every night when the irrigation comes on. The other benefit of this approach is that it keeps the gravel neat.

Stage 4: It is a good idea to add large rocks around the Canna for a number of reasons. These will act as a focal point with the gravel when the plants die back each year. They will also stop my dogs charging through and decapitating the plants. And lastly they cover the spot where I buried my wife when she called me an idiot. The photo below shows the finished product. Don’t tell the police; I will only plead insanity.

✂️ It’s time to trim your Dame de Noche. I have waxed lyrical before about the benefits of Dame de Noche (lady of the night) and I don’t want to be boring; Oh, alright if you insist. This plant is not what you would call a “looker”, a plain leaf fast growing bush it produces very small insignificant flowers. But the real reason for growing it is it’s heavenly scent which it releases at night. Planted next to an outdoor eating area it is positively intoxicating.

The secret to ensuring that scent carries on till Christmas is to reduce the plant by one third at this time of the year. The plant will recover in about a month and should reward you with a new flush of lovely scenting flowers. The photos below show my Dame de Noche prior to her trim and afterwards; I think she looks rather fetching.

Just when I thought it was safe the Sawfly have returned with a vengeance and now they have eaten poor Alan Titchmarsh. No, of course I don’t mean the beloved best ever presenter of Gardener’s World, but Rosa Alan Titchmarsh a lovely pink English Rose.

8th July: Things I have been doing today.

🐛 Investigating the murder of Alan Titchmarsh. As regular readers of this blog will know my roses were invaded by Sawfly caterpillars earlier in the year. These pests are brought into the world by the female Sawfly doing exactly what it says on the Sawfly tin, and sawing into the stem of roses and laying a series of eggs into the cuts (see photo below). A short time later the young caterpillars hatch and proceed to rapidly chew through your roses from top to bottom denuding each stem of all their leaves (see photo below). At the bottom of the rose they lightly step off into the soil, thank you for dinner and promptly bury themselves in the soil and pop up next year ready to start again. The only way to extract revenge for the murderous attack on poor Alan, and stop this cycle of devastation (my wife says I am prone to exaggeration, but she is the worst person in the whole world); is to pick off each caterpillar and see if they can swim in a bucket of water. The photo below shows my granddaughter Florence who would only hold the bucket but did not want to become an accessory; she is thinking of becoming a lawyer!

🌻 Eugenics and Marigolds. When it comes to selective breeding of plants I am a regular Dr Frankenstein. I would, if I could, grow a “Triffid” and market it as salad with an extra bite. Or ideally I would be Seymour Krelborn the florist with Audrey II (look it up, high literature, films and gardening, what’s not to like). Now I am not proposing that you selectively breed your plants by feeding them human beings – though now I come to think of it there are a few people I would feed to Audrey II.

Anyway, I digress, back to plants. This time of year everything is in full flower, and if you would like to expand and better your garden for free, then now is the time to be keeping an eye out for good looking flowers to take seed from. The simplest and easiest way is to cast your eye over all your various flowers and then note those that have the best flowers, have been the most disease resistant and are tall and pretty. (It’s a bit like Miss World, though I don’t remember contestants being asked about disease resistance – I think I better stop this analogy as it is getting dangerous). Under each of the flowers you have designated wrap a piece of coloured water proof tape. The idea is these marked flowers are the ones you will collect your seed from. The coloured tape will hopefully remind you of this and stop you deadheading them; though my compost bins seem to have a lot of red tape in them each year! (The photo below shows some Marigolds bound up in red tape, the sooner we get Brexit the sooner we will be freed from all this). We will return to seed gathering later in the year.

🍉 When to harvest Melon and Butternut Squash. By now your melons etc should be ripening (I refuse to indulge in innuendoes). But There is still plenty of time for new fruits to come on and we really won’t be harvesting till next month and even later. I mention this now for those of you who are growing Squash and melons for the first time and may be tempted to harvest too soon. Yes, I mean you Daphne! You must wait and let each fruit fully ripen and each one will ripen at a different pace.

You will know when a Melon is ready as it will gradually change colour from green taking on a more yellowish hue and the skin will become smoother. But the clincher in ripeness is when the stem attached to the fruit begins to come loose and in most cases will seperate (see photo below). I will cover this phase when we harvest both melons and Squash at a later date. In the meantime if you pull a Melon too hard and it comes off of its vine – Daphne (this is turning into Carry on gardening), don’t despair, just leave it outside in a warm but not full sun area for 3 or 4 days, then pop it into the fridge for 2 days and it should be OK for eating.

Butternut Squash are different wait until the vine dies back, in Spain this is usually in the Autumn. By then the plants should be an even beige colour (the darker the better) with no green veins. Then you can harvest and store them. We will come back to this.

If I remember correctly I think it was my wife’s idea to plant Pampas Grass; she of course denies it. Especially since she found out from the Daily Telegraph that Pampas Grass was supposed to be a sign of a house with “Swingers”. She misinterpreted this saying “I don’t want anyone to think we are fans of big band music”. Anyway it had to go.

July 1: Things I have been doing today.

🐲 Fighting to the death with Pampas Grass. Pampas grass is a lovely show statement grass which is ideal in large gardens. It requires lots of water as do most grasses. The particular problem with this grass is that it grows in rings that extend out from the centre, so you have to get water into the centre at all times otherwise the centre dries out and dies leaving you with a grass that looks a bit like Friar Tucks hair style; (I make no apology for mentioning the great Tuck). I had placed a ring of irrigation around the plant spraying into the centre, but to no avail, four years later it was Tucked. The first picture below shows the problem.

So anyway, it had to go. Short of having your own JCB getting Pampas Grass out requires hard labour involving a four stage process.

Stage 1: take cuttings as you may want to propagate the grass elsewhere. Using a sharp spade cut down around the edges and try and remove clumps of individual grasses. This can be very difficult as you need to dig down to ensure you get as much root as possible. Once you have enough cuttings plant them in 3 litre pots with a normal potting compost, in about three weeks they should start showing signs of growth. The pictures below shows my cuttings beside the main plant and in their pots.

Stage 2: using hedge trimmers and/or a chainsaw, cut the plant down as far as you can. The centre can be very tough, but just keep cutting into it.

Stage 3: set it on fire! Now its not often you get to say that phrase in gardening. Pampas grass normally gets burnt down every so often in its natural environment, so really you are just making it feel at home. But do be careful when you set it alight it turns into Dante’s 6th Circle of Hell (look it up you heretics – high literature and gardening). I forgot to mention this stage to my neighbours and I had the odd complaint about houses filling with smoke.

Stage 4: this is the worst stage – you have to dig out the roots and they don’t want to come out. Using a series of spades working from the outside work your way round the root gradually digging further underneath. After two hours I gave up and borrowed an extremely large crowbar from my neighbour. This was excellent as it allowed me to jump up and down on the end of a large crowbar and prove Archimedes right (look it up). The picture below shows the space where the Pampas Grass was and my mighty crowbar.

I know it sounds like Game of Thrones, but it’s hell out there: hot, dusty and full of things that want to bite you, sting you, scratch you or remove some of your blood. Nobody said it was going to be easy when you signed up to a garden blog, so man up (oops person up) and let’s get on with this!

26-27 June: Things I have been doing today.

💀 “The horror, the horror” Great literature and gardening (look it up). Anway, let’s get the disease and pestilence bit out the way. When I left for my much needed rest in England I was the proud possessor of a healthy, soon to bear fruit grapevine. Left in my wife’s charge for a week I have been left with a wizened, mildewed raisin vine. The picture below shows the state of the vine upon my return. Now with mildew this bad there is nothing you can do; the leaves are already dead and spraying will only give you wet dead leaves. You need to chop everything back to the stem so just the main vine stem is left, everything will be all right next year and you will probably even get some growth this year. Make sure you dispose of the leaves separately, do not compost them and also sterilise your secateurs in bleach. See second photo for my poor butchered vine – I am sure she did it intentionally, every time I mention it she just gives one of those Cruella Deville smiles.

🦋 I have had it with geraniums. And this time I mean it. Every year hope springs eternal and I think why not give geraniums a go again. Avid followers of this blog (and I know who you both are), will remember that a couple of months ago I bought some geraniums with the intention of taking cuttings and starting a whole new geranium dynasty in my garden. But the bloody geranium moth got them again. Known as the geranium bronze, this small moth from Africa is gradually destroying the geraniums of Southern Spain. If you have geraniums you will see them fluttering around all the time; I even had a friend who in her ignorance thought they were lovely. The moth lays eggs on the stem of the plant, the caterpillars hatch and burrow into the stem and suck all the life out of the plant, they are a bit like mini Nosferatu (more horror and literary allusions). Anyway the upshot is that geraniums and I are finished; and I don’t care what anyone says I am not taking them back – it’s over. The first picture below show us at the start of our relationship when we were happy and had the whole world in front of us. The second picture is our final meeting by the compost bin. Before pushing her in I explained “it’s not me, it’s you, you’ve changed”.

🗡 To end on a happy note – Beheading. Not really, just deadheading, but I had to stick to the theme. You will remember, my seed trays of Marigold that I planted in January, grew on and then planted out. Well, eh whallah, look at the first picture below we are ending on a high today. They look lovely and I have bred them bigger, bushier and taller each year by careful seed collection; (but more about that later). But by now you need to be deadheading Marigolds on a daily basis. But don’t just chop their heads off willy nilly (I am not sure if that phrase is sexist). If you just chop them off under the flower you will end up with an ugly hollow stem that gradually turns brown and ruins the look of the flowers. Instead, as shown in the second picture below, go down the stem from the flower as close as you can to the leaves below and then cut there. The leaves will eventually close over the ends of the stem and leave it looking much prettier – unlike those bloody geraniums, they say time is a great healer, butI still hurt and it’s been a week now.

Well I am back in Spain and I have barely seen the inside of the house. I spend my days slaving in the garden, or as my wife calls it hiding from my responsibilities. The late spring rain together with the current extreme heat means that everything has grown like Topsy. The hidden clue in the previous sentences is Harriet Beecher Stowe. See I told you gardening and high literature.

19-20 June: Things I have been doing today.

🚿 Water till you can water no more. Everything is crying out for water in this extreme heat – including me. You should be watering all potted plants (apart from succulents) every day. Only water in the evening or early morning this ensures that the water will have time to penetrate the soil before evaporating. If you have to water in the sunshine make sure you water only the base of the plant never the foliage or the water will act as a magnifier on the leaves and burn them. Plants in the ground and lawns will need to be watered every second or third day. If you have Melons, Pumpkins or Butternut Squash then you need to flood them with water to ensure the fruit swells – I mean nobody wants puny pumpkins.

🍰 Feed your plants weekly. Just as you enjoy nice food, so do your plants. If you don’t feed them they will be stunted and weedy and nobody wants that! But, don’t just feed them any old rubbish, plants like people prefer certain types of food. The photo below shows the range of feed that I use on the different types of plants in my garden. They range from general purpose, tomato, citrus, fruiting, rose and erricaceous.

🥅 Net your fruits. You need to net all your fruits now as they are about to mature. If you don’t then you won’t have a garden, you will have a bird feeding station. I have been netting like a Roman Retiarius (look it up). I have covered fig trees and tomatoes as these are specially relished by all sorts of birds, see photo below, but ignore the state of the tomatoes as my wife was left to look after them for a week. You can use netting or fleece. I prefer netting as it is more robust. However, if you do use netting make sure it is small gauge otherwise there is a danger or birds getting caught. Birds will come and have a look but with bigger gauge nets they can get their head caught. Check your nets every day. See the photos below; as a Christian I have become a fisher of figs, I think this is mentioned somewhere in the Bible.

⚔️ Cut back overgrowing hedges. Normally I only cut back my hedges once a year in January. However, because of the excellent growing conditions this year is an exception. I have a large mixed hedges of Plumbago, Hibiscus, Bignonia, Roses, Pink Trumpet, Bougainville and a self seeded Pomegranate. I let all of them happily fight for space and they reward us with a beautiful show of flower all the summer. However, as the hedge borders a lawn there was the danger of overshadowing and killing some grass areas. Using my trusty hedge trimmer I just took off the leading edge of each plant this saves the grass and also ensures that the plants will continue to flower all summer. When cutting back this time of year make such you do not go into brown wood as you will lose flowering for this summer and may irreparably damage the plant. See the before and after photos below. From the after photo you can see damaged areas of lawn which may grow back, but more likely will require re-seeding in the Autumn.

🌵 Strim your lawn edges. It’s too hot to cut your lawn short as you will just end up with a scorched desert effect,  so leave the grass a little bit longer. If you want your lawn to look neat just strim the edges. The photo below shows an edge of my lawn before I strimmed it back. You should see it now, I have been approached by Wimbledon about hosting the men’s finals!

I am off back to Spain tomorrow to start knocking our garden back into shape. My friend Karl has kindly looked after it for two weeks and my wife has been looking after it for the last week. Who knows what I will find, my wife’s only hint of what is to come was to ask me whether the Beef tomatoes that I had planted were Cherry tomatoes.

Anyway, just time for a little bit of English gardening. Our daughter Sarah has a small town style walled garden which has artificial lawn some trellis for climbers and a stone filled small border under an Acer. The garden has been developed in this way to cope with the predations of her two dogs Harley and Alfie, who have been known to eat the odd plant or two.

17 June: Things I have been doing today

👀 Reviewing how Sarah’s garden works. From the first photo below you can see that the garden has two clematis on trellis that are both overgrown and are collapsing the wooden trellis structure beneath them. Also, the pots on the wall at the back do not do enough to draw your eye down this narrow part of the garden. The second photo shows the stoned bed under the Acer which has been left unplanted since the last time the dogs ate all the plants.

🔨 Refitting the trellis. When you have heavy fast growing plants growing up trellis it is a fair bet that at some time they are going to pull it down; unless you keep them tightly trimmed (which means losing flowers). To overcome this in Sarah’s garden we trimmed the plants so heavily they looked like Elvis joining the army in GI Blues. Then instead of trellis we used strong wire attached to hooks and vine ties that are tightened to hold the wire taut. The wires were spaced at 30cm apart running across the wall for 2.5 metres. As the plants recover from their scalping they can then be encouraged up and along the wires to spread out over a growing space of roughly 2.5 metres wide by 2 metres high, thereby giving them more space to display themselves and producing a more even weight distribution.

🌺 Drawing your eye down the garden. My original thought was to put Virginia Creeper or Boston Ivy at the back which would have given lovely greenery turning to deep red in the Autumn. The downside of this is that both plants are poisonous to dogs. The upside would have been no more plant chewing. After discussion and Sarah threatening to report me to the RSPCA we decided against this. Instead we removed the pots, replanted them with fuchsias and re-sited them down the patio stairs. In their place we put a Cobaea Scandens which may sound like a scandal involving Jeremy Corbyn in a Norwegian newspaper, but is in fact a fast growing climber which has lots of flowers. Again we placed this on wire with vine ties.

The first photo below shows the newly trimmed climbers and the Cobea on the back wall. This looks nothing at the moment, but before the end of summer it will all start to fill out and lead your eye down this part of the garden. The re-sited pots can be seen in the second photograph, notice that they follow the fall of the stairs; if they did not do this your eye would constantly be drawn to them for all the wrong reasons.

🌿 Planting the small stone bed. The stone bed had to fulfill two functions. Firstly, it had to be interesting all year. Secondly, it had to be not too interesting that the dogs would fancy it for salad. Here we planted Euonymous golden, a small slow growing variegated evergreen shrub that will provide interest all year and in a few years can be cut into topiary shapes (a bone perhaps).

The photograph below shows the finished garden with Harley the dog checking out which plants are potentially the tastiest.

We are currently at our English home in Kent for a few weeks, where our garden is very small compared to Spain. So in an attempt to shoehorn this garden into a Spanish context I am going to explain how this garden works and how you could use the lessons from here to develop a Spanish courtyard garden in Spain.

June 1: Things I have been doing today.

🌳 Taking stock.  The back garden here is a walled garden that backs directly on to the river Medway. It is roughly 18 metres wide by 6 long at its widest point. The garden is focused on the walls and climbers with some under planting that includes Hydrangeas. The main planting scheme is Clematis, Honeysuckle, Tree Peonia and some roses on the main wall and incidental flowering shrubs on the facing walls. You will note that whilst in Spain we have lawns and all sorts of stuff that needs tending. Here the garden is meant to be low maintenance with just one large cut back in the winter with a smaller one in early summer. The photo below shows the garden in its overgrown state when we arrived. The first picture appears to have been taken by Drone! The second appears to have a lamb peeking out of the undergrowth (ask my wife about this) and the third is reminiscent of a Tarzan film.

⚔️ The shaping cut back. This time of year is too soon for the big chop back which is normally done in November or January. So all I can really do is what is called the “Chelsea Chop”; a light trim back that takes place each year after the Chelsea Show. The basic idea is to shape the plants so that they do not overgrow the under planting and thereby kill it off. Using your shears or better still a hedge trimmer lightly take off the ends of all overhanging branches and fronds; the aim is to reshape the plant and give it symmetry. Don’t worry if you take off a few buds and flower heads this trim will reinvigorate the whole plant and it will come back stronger.

The garden can be seen after its “Chelsea Chop” in the photos below. The first photo shows a clearer pathway, but not fully cut back, the second appears to be another Drone photograph showing a lady buried in the corner of our garden and the third if you look carefully shows a duck with ducklings (ask my wife about that). Note that I have not taken too much away, just enough to reshape and ensure no underplanting will die back. The walled garden look of this garden can be replicated in Spain (or you could just buy this one and ship it out). All the plants in this gardens are climbers that only need sun on their faces and not on their feet. This means they are happy with their roots in shade. So if you have a small enclosed courtyard; which many houses in Spain have why not plant your very own secret garden.

🌺 Cutting back Hydrangeas. Part of the process of bringing the back garden into shape involved trimming back the old flowers on the Hydrangeas. Hydrangea flowers need to be left to die right back on the plant and then left to over winter before cutting back in the late Spring. This provides a certain amount of frost protection for the young buds beneath, I know this is not something we normally suffer from in Spain but you can just leave the mop head flowers on as it provides something interesting in the winter months even in Spain.

When you begin to dead head in the Spring you need to be careful that you don’t trim too far or you will lose this year’s flowers (they flower on old wood). Go behind the old flower and work your way down the stem until you come to the first pair of buds. Cut the old flower head off just above these two buds and your new flowers will come forward soon. If you have a Hydrangea that has grown too big and floppy then you can cut it right back almost to the ground in the winter. You will get no flowers that year, but the following year will be very floriferous. The photo below shows the dead head where I am about to cut and the new growth coming on strongly behind.

Today was our open garden day when six gardens opened for local people to come along and enjoy the delights of the lovely and varied gardens of Campoverde. If you missed it then you missed a lovely day when people came from far and wide and we all talked about plants and gardens and then afterwards stuffed our self with  scones and cream and jam – which I call a cream tea, but, my wife insists is only its constituent parts!

Anyway no plants or plant talk in this post just a few photos of the day; including below this fetching photo of me ready to sell plants to unsuspecting passers by.

The photo above shows a handsome, but I notice slightly balding chap showing people round his garden and impressing them with his encyclopaedic knowledge of his garden. Notice the cross in the photo on the left this serves to remind me there are always two gardeners in any garden; God is the gardener and I am only the assistant; though I must point out he never takes his turn digging out the compost heap. The photo on the right shows me expounding on a self seeded pomegranate which a lady pointed out to me I had a moment before called a  pumpkin – an easy mistake to make on your 23rd tour of the garden. You may also notice that the lady in the foreground is performing a clog dance, which we all joined in later.

The photo below shows my wife Maggie performing her role of belligerent catering assistant- still denying that scones, cream and jam make a cream tea.

Right that’s your lot I am off to England for three weeks to top up my damp. I will post some stuff from our English garden, which is very small – but perfectly formed.

I think I may have been in the sun too long today as I have started imagining a type of Miss World competition; but, for compost. I mean I know I’m biased but don’t you think the compost in the photo below is good looking?

24 May. Things I have been doing today.

🗑 Emptying one of my compost bins and mulching plants. If you have a compost bin, and if not why not? Then it is time to take the last lot of compost out to make room for the summer green stuff you will be cutting down. When you take the compost out be sure to leave a 4cm layer of the old compost. This will ensure that the micro fungal elements in the old compost will help to kick start the new compost heap.

Now for those of you don’t have a compost heap the photo below shows you why you should have. This is one of over 20 barrow loads of compost that I have taken out this summer from just one bin. Each barrow load is the equivalent to an 80k bag of compost from a garden centre. But more importantly you are not just saving money, you are recycling all your garden waste and any vegetables fruits etc from the house.    What you get out the other end is a nutrient rich compost full of micro organisms that are an ideal planting medium. You do of course get a few giant blood oozing maggots, but we have already discussed this.

🌯 Cutting a Californian False Pepper tree. The Californian (or sometimes Peruvian) False Pepper is a common tree here in Spain. Its drooping trailing leaves make it look like a poor man’s weeping willow. This tree can be cut back really hard in the winter when the sap has stopped rising. When I say really hard I mean really hard, you can chop off big mature branches and leave more or less a single trunk. The benefit of this approach which I favour, is that the tree very quickly starts growing again in the Spring and has a lovely weeping willow look. In a year or so large thick branches will form again and you need to start the whole process over. The only drawback of this approach is that the trunk will sprout suckers like crazy and you will need to trim these with a hedge trimmer, but it is worth it. See the photo below of the fruits of my labour. An added benefit of this tree is that it produces garlands of small red berries which are the size of pepper corns and which when dried can be used in a similar way to pepper – hence false pepper.

This blog is now becoming officially X rated and my garden is gradually turning into something from the Island of Dr Moreau (look it up, this is both a blog and a literary tour de force).

22 May: Things I have been working on today.

🐛 Begin mulching under your plants but beware giant maggots. I have been emptying one of my compost bins ready to provide mulch for placing around plants. At this time of the year the sun starts to become very intense and plants need help to retain moisture. Start by weeding round the stems of the plants you are going to mulch. Once the area is weed free, water profusely and really soak around the plant. Then apply a heavy mulch around the stem and area close to each plant, you don’t have to do the whole flower bed just around each plant. You can mulch with compost as I do or you can buy shredded tree bark from a garden centre.

Now the scary bit. Every year when I begin to empty compost bins I find giant maggots lurking in the compost. Now when I say giant, I mean giant. Not only that if you touch them they ooze dark blood. I can get around a hundred or so from a compost bin. In the past I have tried leaving them out for the birds, but so far no bird will touch them, they are too scared. I don’t blame them see picture below.

👿 Still weeding under my roses. As you know I have been weeding under my roses for the past week or so; and this is a job I detest as it means massive loss of blood as the ungrateful plants punish me for helping them. Anyway, I forgot to mention that what ever you do, do not place the weeds on your compost heap. Especially if they are the ones that I dramatically name the Devil’s pearl seeds. These have a bulb at the end of the stem which contains a number of pearl like seeds and each seed can form a new weed bulb. If you place these on your compost heap they will happily wait until you spread mulch next year and off they go again. See the photo below you have been warned.

🌼 Pinch out the lead flowers of Marigolds. If you grow Marigolds then it is time to pinch out the lead flowers on each plant; and if you don’t grow Marigolds! What’s the matter with you they are so lovely. By pinching out the lead flower you will encourage a bushy multi flowered plant; if you don’t you will get one flower only. Look down into the top of the plant and you will see a small flower bud just appearing (see photo below). Using your thumb nail (which I told you to grow this time of year) and your forefinger just pinch the bud out. It will try and grow again within the next week or so and just do it again. After this leave it, twice is enough or the League Against Cruelty to Marigolds will come round your house.

🛏 Time to put your bulbs to bed. If you have followed instructions (and I hope you have) you should have chopped the seed head off your bulbs and then tied the stem up with string or elastic bands (see photo) This process allows all the goodness to go back down into the bulb ready for next year. Now it is time to cut the whole stem off. Taking your secateurs cut the stem off as close to the soil as you can. Once you have done this carefully weed around the area where the bulbs are planted and then water profusely. Finish this process by then putting a layer of well rotted compost about 4cm thick over the area. This serves three functions, it locks in the moisture, it suppresses weeds and it also provides a source of nutrients for the bulbs for next year. Don’t forget to say goodnight to the bulbs and tell them you will see them next year – God willing.

One last thing don’t forget to compost the stems, but also remember to remove the elastic bands as they won’t compost. Mind you I am thinking of telling my granddaughter Florence that I am growing her a bouncy castle.

I have been putting this job off for weeks but it is time for me to weed under the roses and give them their summer feed. Unfortunately this involves massive loss of blood on my part.

17th May: Things I have been doing today.

🌹 Feed and weed your roses. Now is the time to get under your roses and pull out all the grass and weeds that are taking goodness from the soil. There is no easy way to do this get on your hands and knees and manually ease out all the bad guys with your trowel. Because I take aspirin every day this means my blood is thin. Consequently,  no matter that I am wearing my best gardening gloves I still end up bleeding everywhere. (See photo below)

But working through the pain, make sure you get all the weed and grass roots out. Once the area is clear under each rose apply a granular rose feed then cover over with well rotted compost (or some from a bag if necessary). Water this in well with a big watering can for each rose. This should be your second rose feed of the year, and is the most important one as it will ensure your next flush of flowers in late August/September. (See photo below of a nicely dressed rose).

I managed six roses today, only another twenty to go; I may end up looking like the famous Thomas Chatterton portrait ( look it up).

🌿 Finish pruning all Marguerites. I have been pruning Marguerite daisies over the past month or so depending on the type. The colourful ones are now coming to the end of their first flush and you now have to make a crucial decision. When I explained the importance of this to my wife she called me the Donald Trump of gardening; which I think might be a compliment. Anyway the decision is this; if the plant has gone dry and brown right down the lower stem then dig it up and consign it to your compost heap. But don’t worry because just below the plant you have wrenched from its home in the soil will be lots of little seedlings waiting for you to transplant them. If however the plant is not brown and dry all the way down, but instead has new leaves sprouting on the dry stem then all you have to do is cut back to leave five to ten of these little sproutlings on each stem and you will grow a new plant. The photo below shows a plant that can just be cut back as it has sprouting stems.

🍋 Take suckers off your citrus trees. By now all the fruit should be off your citrus trees apart from a few lemons that will be lingering to add flavour to summer gin and tonics and cocktails (at which my son James excels). However, you need to look carefully at the trunk and leading branches of all your trees to make sure they are not suckering. Suckers will appear (especially on older trees) as bright green little shoots of a few leaves. Wearing your gardening gloves you need to gently pull downwards on each sucker and break it off; they will come away quite easily. This will ensure that all the goodness goes into next year’s fruit. As we say never give.a sucker and even break.

Early summer is a lovely time of year when things really get going and before high summer sun comes along to make me have the highest water bill in Spain.

11th May: Things I have been doing today.

🦇 Harvesting Autumn planted garlic. Garlic is so simple to grow and good fun. All you have to do is in late Autumn take some cloves of garlic – the stuff from the supermarket is fine – then push an individual clove into the soil, about 4 inches, then leave it. I plant mine under my citrus trees because they will get watered with the tree. It also helps to plant them in a pattern to stop you hoeing them out as weeds in there early stages.

You harvest garlic when the upper leaves start to yellow and bend over. Lift the whole plant out of the soil using a spade or trowel, it is best not to use a fork as you may damage the bulbs see (photo below). Once you have it out of the ground then you need to dry it for a couple of weeks still with the top growth on; I try and steal my wife’s baking cooling racks but she has started hiding them. I now dry them on a mesh tray see (photo below). We will come back to them in a few weeks, but in the meantime we are safe from Vampires in my house – I don’t know about you though, I think I just saw a bat fly past!

🛁 Getting bulbs ready for bed. If you were paying attention you may remember that I lifted some flag Iris bulbs the other week to make way for new roses. I have carefully dried these over a few weeks so that I can get them ready for autumn planting. Now it is time to clean them up and get them ready for bed. However, unlike mucky kids you cannot wash the dirt off them. If you do all you will be left with in the autumn is a mess of mildew mush. Instead you have to carefully peel off all the soil and muck and take them back to the bulb hiding underneath ( see photo below).

Once you have all the muck off, just like children after a bath they are lovely, clean and shining ready for bed (see photo below). Store them safely in a trug or similar till late autumn in a cool dry space; your shed is ideal but watch out for mice – say goodnight and tell them you will see them in the autumn.

🌿 Take cuttings from strongly growing plants. Now is the ideal time for taking cuttings from your plants. They should all be growing strongly now and this is the ideal time. Remember, when you take cuttings you get a free plant and possibly bankrupt your local garden centre. Cuttings are very easy to do if you follow the following three steps:

1. Select a strongly growing non flowering stem. Cut off about 20cm using a sharp knife.

2. Take off all the lower leaves so that only the top 2/4 remain.

3. If you have hormone rooting powder dip the stem in, if not, just make a hole in well watered compost in 4 in pot and then plant up to four cuttings around the edge

Resist the temptation to over water, or to try and pot them on too soon. Patience is a virtue in gardening, leave it about 4 weeks before you even think about it.

The picture below shows a wide range of cuttings I have taken over the last month or so. These are now hardy enough to sit out on my potting bench. The more delicate younger ones are still in my little mini greenhouse. Some of these will be planted in my garden, but most will be sold at our Open Garden Day on 27th May to support our Church – see you there!

When I finish cutting the lawn I always stroll around the garden with a self satisfied smile on my face as I proprietorialy inspect the plants. And there they were again Sawfly caterpillars, but it gets worse, there was also greenfly and Rust. My garden is the equivalent of North Korea a potential war zone.

9th April: Things I have been doing today.

🌾 Cut the lawn. The grass is now into its growing stride and you need to cut it at least weekly. Keep the blades quite high otherwise you may get scorching. It is also good to feed once a month with a high Nitrogen feed. This not only feeds the grass, but the weeds hate it.

🐛 Check your Plants we are under attack. I am about to set up the equivalent of Neighbourhood Watch only for plants; if anyone would like to join I will develop a coat of arms and a motto; we may even get t-shirts. Anyway, despite my constant patrolling – and wearing my glasses. The Sawfly caterpillars are back despite me picking all of the last lot off by hand and humanely disposing of them!!! Not only that they have brought their smaller but just as unwelcome cousins the Aphids and the farmer ants.

🐜 I not only have greenfly on some of my roses but I have discovered them on my Dame de Noche as well – to misquote Lady Bracknell “to have one set of Aphids is unfortunate, but to have two is carelessness” It was only whilst looking closely at the Dame de Noche stems that I noticed some very small ants and instantly I knew we had a problem. Ants would not normally be found this high up a plant unless they were up to no good. And sure enough there were the Aphids being happily milked by the ants. This is a symbiotic relationship whereby the ants protect the Aphids who in turn, when stroked by the ants antennae release a sticky honeydew like substance. Unfortunately the Aphids paid the wrong gang protection money – their days of being milked are over.

🔴 Just to add to the insect war, my roses have developed Rust. If you have roses then you will be familiar with rust. It is a form of mildew that leaves a “rust” like coating over leaves, stems and flowers. It is very damaging to plants and extremely difficult to get rid of. Spray with a proprietary brand and follow this up twice a week for about three weeks. Do not under any circumstances compost leaves or cuttings that have rust. Instead pick them all up from underneath the plant and dispose of separately.

It has been a busy time on many fronts in the past week; not only in the garden but in our Church and life generally. Anyway here is a litany of the triumphs and disasters I have been dealing with all of which are I believe of significant importance to humanity. My wife still thinks I am a deluded idiot with compost for brains.

1st – 7th May, or thereabouts: Things I Have been doing.

🌺 How not to treat Orchids. About a year ago some very nice friends were moving house and gave me an Orchid that they could not take with them. When the flower went I decided to completely renovate the plant rather than just opting to cut off the flower and hope that it would renew. The basic idea with Orchids is if you want to reshape and renew the plant, then after flowering cut the flower stem right back to the base. With care and attention, about a year later you should be rewarded with new flowering stems. I have duly spent almost the last year carefully watering the Orchid from the base weekly and lately feeding only the finest foods that only a royal Orchid would deserve.

The outcome is that I have been rewarded with two strong budding stems. What normally happens is that these stems will come outside sideways from under the leaves, and if you want upright traditional Japanese Orchids you need to train them up sticks. If you are patient what you should do is tie soft gardening twine to the stems and gradually over a few weeks pull them towards the sticks before securing them with ties. If you are an idiot with compost for brains and deludedly believe you can bend them in one go then what happens is they snap and you have wasted a year.

The photos (below) show that I fall into the latter category. From this you will see that I successfully bent one stem and then like an idiot managed to break the other. Learn lessons from idiocy, gardening takes time and we need patience, otherwise we end up with wasting a year.

🌲 Making paths in the wild places in your garden. Many of us in Spain have quite large wild areas in our garden. You have two choices with these. You can either try and reshape these into part of your formal garden, or, you can leave them as they are with minimal changes. I prefer the latter approach as I like to see wild flowers growing in informal areas. However, you do need paths through the wild area to allow you to move around, and rather than paving these with slabs or gravel, I prefer a more natural approach of shredding tree and branch cuttings. Once shredded this makes an ideal and naturalistic setting for your wild garden. See photos below of some my shredded labour and then forming a pathway.

🌴 Pull up Palm seedlings. If you have palm trees, and most of us do in Spain, then the likelihood is that they are growing on soil areas or more likely stone gravel. This is not a problem with Phoenix Palms (the ones with the long serrated branches) as the fruit from these palms are dates. However, if you have Washingtonian Palms (the ones with the fan type leaves at the end of the branch), then the fruit from these is a small dark round and sweet kernel type seed; which my Labradors look forward to as they supplement their diet by hoovering them up like currants.

From a gardening point of views theses seeds are tenacious at setting seed in your gravel, and once underway, unless you catch them quickly, will become as difficult to remove as Lonnie Donnegan’s dustman old mans boots. To detect them before they get underway, lookout for what looks like an innocuous, but well shaped blade of grass happily growing in your gravel. Beneath this innocuous exterior lurks an undercover operation that makes the Mafia look like sissies. The small kernel seed will quickly throw out pathway roots that will drive down into your soil to form a tap root, this supported by peripheral roots will take a Velociraptor type grip on your soil that will give you a hernia trying to remove it unless you get it quickly. See the photo below. You have been warned get out there and inspect under your palm trees.

🌹 Reshaping roses. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have developed a love for roses and I am now growing quite a few of them. However, all roses need reshaping and sometimes you cannot leave it until the annual prune. One of my roses in particular “Blythe Spirit” is so prolific that at this time of year I have to deadhead it twice a day, and the branches are so heavy with flowers they bend to the ground. To bring the branches back up and reshape you need to make a cut to an upward facing leaf area, (see photo below). If you don’t do this it will continually head South and all you will see is the underside of your roses.

Since our Labradors appeared in this blog they have started attempting to appear in any photos I take and there is talk of their own Facebook page and possibly an Agent!

1st May: Things I have been doing today.

😥 Dealing with sad Jasmine. Early flowering Jasmine has a habit of looking sad at this time of year (see photo). There is lots of die back and brown leaves and stems. Now normally all is well, you just have to get in there cut it back a little bit, thin it out, and with your hand pull out all the brown dead areas. However, sometimes and hopefully not now with this particular plant, you need to cut back to inspire new growth. If you do have to do this, then make sure you never cut more than two thirds; and if you do cut back you will have very sparse flowers that year.

One last word of warning, here in Spain there is a nice big spider that loves to hang around in Jasmine. Whilst cutting this one back I ended up with two falling into my t-shirt. My neighbours must have wondered why I was leaping round the garden throwing off my clothes.

🌴 Trimming Palms. In Spain trimming Palms is more or less an ongoing job. However, the important thing is to do it at the correct time. In our garden we have a number of very large Palms which are done professionally in January to ensure the Palm Weevil does not get in. But the smaller Palms I will tend to trim myself. Always cut the Palm just as the frond bends towards the ground and it is still green (see photo) If you leave it until the frond is hanging all the way down and has gone brown then the frond turns into a substance similar to iron and it is very difficult to cut unless you have a diamond tipped saw.

🍅 Planting tomatoes. I have never bothered to plant tomatoes in Spain because they are so cheap and plentiful. However, I was passing our local market the other day and I saw that a stall holder had some tomatoes seedlings. Upon enquiry it turned out they were only 10 cents each, it would have been rude not to buy some. I watered them well and left them to stand for an hour, then I planted them up in a large pot and again left them to stand in the shade for a whole day. This allows the small roots to draw up sufficient  moisture into the leaves  before putting them in the sun. If you don’t do this the sun will just desiccate them. I finished by mulching them with some pebbles I happened to have (see photo). This variety are large Beef type so I look forward to having them sliced on top of local Burgers – before you ask, no you can’t come round!

🌳 Trimming things up. I have been generally tidying things up as we have our annual Open Garden Day here in our village. Anyway, I thought you might like to see a nice photo of the trimmed up Mulberry tree and one of my new arches for climbing Roses. More information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks. However, keep Saturday 27th May free if you would like to visit the gardens – you can meet me, see the garden and my wife is doing cream teas – hooray!

It’s raining which is unusual in Spain hence the heading above reflects my activity in the garden today – it’s a bit like the Twilight Zone but without the spooky music.

28th April: Things I have been doing in the garden today.

🐕 Labradors grazing on Mulberries: OK let’s get it out the way; I knew if I introduced those dogs to my gardening blog they would just upstage me and the plants. The picture below shows Nero (black) and Tango (golden) grazing on Mulberries under our large Mulberry tree. Both dogs look forward to Mulberry time and assiduously harvest all the berries that the birds knock down. All that I get out of it is the pleasure of picking up red dog pooh!

👍 Why gardeners should grow their thumbnails long: I am an exponent of gardeners growing their thumbnails long between between the months of March and September. When people notice this my wife tells them I am part of an Eastern religion a bit like the Hari Krishnas only with more hair and without the dancing bit. The real answer is you should grow your thumbnails long at this time of the year because they provide you with the perfect set of secateurs without having to go to the shed every time you see something that needs trimming or deadheading. Just trim things up by catching them between your thumb and fore finger.

🕷 Take cuttings from Spiderwort: Spiderwort is a lovely colourful Naya or veranda plant that I would never be without. It’s trailing stems and leaves hang over the edge of pots and give character to any sitting area. And the fact they are happy in semi shade makes them ideal for this situation. (See picture below).

To take cuttings from Spiderwort, just take one of the stems trailing over the pot, cut it with a sharp knife just below a leaf node (remember never secateurs or you will crush the stem) using your thumbnail (I had to get this in) pinch out all the leaves on the stem to just leave the top two. Dip the stem in hormone rooting liquid – don’t worry if you don’t have this it will still be OK. Then use your dibber to make a small hole in the compost of a 4 inch pot and stick it in. It is as easy as that.

🌿 Tying in Jasmine: I know this sound like something from Fifty Shades of Grey but I promise you it is more innocent. If you have Jasmine, and we all love the smell, then it will by now be growing in tendrils longer than the snakes on Medusa’s head. Now is the ideal time to train them to where you want them to go rather than letting them boss you around. The picture below shows some Jasmine that I am just about to train over a gate arch. Ideally you should leave the tendrils till they’re long and whippy (I have invented a new gardening term – oh no! It’s Fifty Shades again). This is the ideal state for bending and weaving them. If you leave it much longer they become woody and snap when you try to bend them. Once you have finished bending and shaping them, cut off any growth that is growing straight up or down from the stems and this will give you a nice clean line and shape.

I have to confess that I’ve been practising hair dressing on Marguerites and they are not impressed. I’ve also neglected some grape vines to the extent that if the Spanish Society for the Protection of Grape Vines found out, they would be taken into care.

25th April: Things I have been doing today.

💐 Cutting back Marguerite Daisies: Marguerites are the harbinger of Spanish Spring and the first welcome sign that the warm weather is on its way. However, all good things come to an end, and it is time to cut them back. Now there are two schools of thoughts on Marguerite trimming. One favours cutting back each of the individual flowers on the plant as they die, and as you know there are hundreds. The benefit of this approach is that the plant always looks tidy and you exercise your lower back muscles bending over with your scissors every day. The other school of thought, of which I am an arch exponent involves leaving the plant to flower right the way through so you end up with a plant that has both dead and new flowers at the same time. Eventually when you have a ratio of roughly 75% dead flowers to 25% live, then is the time to cut back (see photo). The benefit of this approach is that you are not interfering with the plant all the time. You give it a nice haircut all at once (but make sure you cut only the green do not cut into brown wood). The added bonus is that come late summer if you look underneath the plant you will see lots of young Marguerite seedlings happily growing away ready for you to transplant. Now, if you had followed the silly way of cutting back the flowers everyday, you would have had a nice tidy plant and a bad back, but you would probably be buying new Marguerites next year rather than getting them free.

💐 Taking care of neglected grapes: About three years ago my neighbour gave me some twig cuttings from his grapevine. Which I duly planted straight into the ground beside our swimming pool. The idea was that when we play table tennis in the pool area, we are so bad at the game that the ball constantly flies through the balustrades and someone then has to walk out and get the ball usually in bare feet over stones, which is painful.

I confess to neglecting these vines, mainly for the respectable horticultural reason that I have not played table tennis lately. But those days are gone, I intend to have a renewed interest in the game this summer, and to this end those grapevines have been spoiled. Grape vines can be planted in poor soil and really do not need much water apart from in a drought. They can be fed occasionally but never manured, and they will respond with good leaf and you can have grapes from year three. It is also important to tie them in otherwise they will flop. The photo below shows the vines in their new found vigour after my renewed self interest. I have taken a wire along the balustrades between the two plants with the intention of creating a cordon between them. This is a win win all round, the plants get fed and supported whilst my feet get saved from being lacerated by stones. By the way it is mainly my wife who knocks the ball out – I’m really quite good!