Category: May

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!