mulching – Spanish Garden

What about the above for the headline of a blog post. It has everything alliteration, drama and a hint of menace. However, now that we are swinging into summer there are a number of things you should be doing, and a number of things you should stop doing. So this is what I will be covering in this post.

What you should be doing with your citrus trees and other fruits
Dealing with seedlings
Time to give roses a feed and mulch
Check your irrigation system and timers
The final days of the big Agave Attenuata
I am getting bees

6th April 2024 Things I have been doing lately.

What you should be doing with your citrus trees and other fruits. By now all of your citrus trees should be in full bloom. So it is time to stop messing around with them and just let them get on with it. Don’t cut, don’t prod, don’t replant, just leave them alone. There are however, three exceptions.

Firstly, make sure that you remove any suckers that are growing on the trunk of your trees. Suckers are bright green, pliable small shoots that have a habit of popping out on your tree trunks this time of year (especially on older trees). Suckers take away the goodness from your tree before it gets to the leaves and fruit. Especially deleterious are suckers growing from below the earth at the foot of the trunk as these will often be growing from below the graft and will probably be root stock. The photos below show examples of suckers on my trees. Click on each photo for a larger view.

The simplest way to deal with suckers is to don your gardening gloves and go around pulling sharply down on each sucker. If you catch suckers early they will come away very easily. However, if they have been left for a while they will have hardened to wood, in this case you will need your secateurs, and need to cut as close to the trunk as possible. If you leave a spur it will grow back.

Secondly, go around each of your trees and look for branches that are absolutely dead – no leaves and definitely no blossom. By now these are definitely dead so you can cut them right back. This process lets air and light into the tree; but remember no other cutting. The photo below shows me actively hunting dead branches.

Thirdly, you should have been actively feeding your citrus from January; so if you haven’t been, get on with it. There are a variety of feeds you can use whether pelleted or liquid, but you must always use a citrus feed rather than a general purpose feed. I also find it helps if you can give them a glug of iron. The photo below shows some of the feeds that I use.

In addition to feeding citrus trees you can start feeding other fruiting trees and vines. In this case do not use citrus feed, but another specialist feed for fruiting plants. The feed second from the left in the photo above is the one I use.

Dealing with seedlings. Normally by this time of year I have a potting bench full of seedlings ready for pricking out and potting on. However, this year has been a disaster. Apart from the chicken vandalism; which I mentioned in my last post, whereby the chickens threw over my mini greenhouse and killed all my first seeds. I resowed them all and then inflicted another disaster on myself. Because of the changeable weather I left all my seedling trays in my mini greenhouse for the day whilst I was out, but unfortunately the sun came blazing back and by the time I got home all my seeds had been baked..

The photos below show the various stages of disaster with my mini greenhouse. I have tried to rescue what I can but as you can see very few seeds have germinated. Don’t let this put you off planting seeds, they are normally a fantastic way to stock your garden and improve your gardening skills. You can still plant seeds now, but make sure you do not put them in a mini greenhouse, but instead make sure they are out of the sun for the fiercest part of the day. The one consolation I have is that my cuttings and bare root plants are coming on fine. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Time to give roses a feed and mulch. Roses grow surprisingly well in Spain, but it is time now to mulch them and feed them to get the best blooms this summer. Before feeding I highly recommend that you mulch. This is a simple process involving 3 stages.

Hoe all around your roses to remove all weeds, you can do this by hand but it can be a bit prickly.
Water your roses profusely.
Apply a thick mulch of about two inches using either bark or compost.

Once you have mulched then you can start to apply feed. Roses are hungry feeders so I feed once every month. The photos below show the mulching process followed by a photo of the feed that I use (others are available). Click on each photo for a larger view.

Check your irrigation system and timers. Irrigation and timers are essential in the Spanish garden. I know you think you will remember to water your plants, but you will forget and they will start to die. However, irrigation timers are no good to you if they have run out of battery or your irrigation pipes are leaking all over the place.

I have 6 separate irrigation timers in the various parts of my garden and a couple of hundred yards of irrigation pipe. Now is the time to go around and change all the batteries in your timers. Once you have changed your batteries, turn your irrigation on (one at a time) and wander round checking for leaks. The photos below show some of my irrigation issues, including all the various instructions for my many and varied timers and a few leak issues. Click on each photo for a larger view.

The final days of the big Agave Attenuata. Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my large Agave Attenuata has flowered spectacularly and is now dying. As a mark of respect for the dying plant I spend days in quiet contemplation and discussion with the plant as the end comes near. We talk about all the good times when she was a mere pup and laugh about how she kept bending the wrong way when I wanted her to grow in another direction. She is obviously concerned for her pups but I have reassured her and promised I will always look after them.

Sadly the end is here. We always spend the last few hours singing her favourite arias. We have been singing Madame Butterfly with her taking the part of Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), whilst I reluctantly play the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton. We end with the tragedy of Cio-Cio San’s suicide whilst singing “Con onor muore”. I asked Cruella (my wife) to take some photographs during the aria so that I could keep her memory alive for her pups.

The photos below show us singing. Her final words were “Io muoio con onore”; if you look carefully you can see that I am crying. Cruella just laughed and said she couldn’t hear the plant singing and all the neighbours think I am mad. I told her she can’t hear the plant singing as it requires a soul. Click on each photo for a larger view.

I am getting bees. I must confess I was a little bit down for a few days after the Agave death. Even Cruella was worried about me and decided to ask me what I wanted for my birthday, I said no it’s ok. But she insisted, saying go on I will get you anything you want. And that’s how I am getting bees. Watch this space. The photo below shows my hive ready assembled for their arrival at the end of the month. I have even planted them a little flower bed to welcome them.

Hooray it’s Spring, Cruella (my wife) has flown off to our English house and I am free to merrily prepare the garden for summer unhindered. I started going about my tasks with joy in my heart a spring in my step and a glint in my eye, but unfortunately things soon took a dark turn and I have become a victim of serious garden chicken crime. Anyway more of that later, on with the gardening.

11th March 2024. Things I have been doing lately:

There are a number of jobs we need to be getting on with in Spring.

Lift and separate Cannas
Guarding against Palm Weevils
Applying mulch to flower beds
Fighting and losing the mulch wars

Lift and separate Cannas. I call this the Wonderbra treatment – I recognise this is both accurate and sexist. If you grow cannas then you will know that they are delightful plants that provide wonderful flower spikes that add height and drama to any garden. Unfortunately here in Spain drought is taking a toll on canna rhizomes (ugly bulbs) as they are drying up and failing to thrive. Normally you can happily leave cannas in the soil and the rhizomes will gradually multiply and provide you with more plants.

However, by this time of year I should have been seeing the first shoots of my cannas poking through, but when they failed to reveal themselves I have had to dig them up, separate them and give them a good drink before replanting them. Luckily my friend Pip has regifted back to me some cannas I had previously given to her, so I was able to replenish my stock. The first photo shows my cannas ready for some work followed by them having a drink by soaking for 24 hours in a trug before replanting. Click on each photo for a larger view.

When replanting canna, they need to be planted shallowly in rich but free draining compost. Where there are shoots from the rhizomes these need to be left poking from the soil. The photos below show the planting process. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Guarding against Palm Weevils. The problem of Palm weevils won’t really mean that much to those of you who don’t live in Spain. But, if you live in Spain and you have Phoenix palms, then you dread the advent of palm weevil season. For those of you who are mere disinterested bystanders the photo below shows the culprit together with its malignant grub.

The modus operandi of this weevil is to lay its eggs at the base of Phoenix palm fronds. When hatched into grubs, they merrily chomp their way up inside the fronds and in most cases destroying the tree. The weevil can be treated by spraying the crown of the palm with a proprietary chemical, but there are two main problems with this. Firstly, unless you know what you are looking for, the weevil grubs can remain undetected until it is too late. Secondly, many palm trees are much to tall for the normal gardener to reach the crown and therefore require specialist contractors.

You can guard against Palm weevils. The easiest way is not to cut your palms between the end of March and October. The adult weevil flys only in the hot months, and I am assured by experts that it can smell a cut palm frond from a very long distance.

In addition to not cutting my palms at certain times, I have drilled holes into the centre of my very large palms into which I drip a chemical during the summer months which allows the sap to take the chemical to the palm crown making it a poisonous environment for Palm weevils. If you want to find out more about this method then just use the search bar on this blog to search for Palm weevils as I have covered this in detail in past posts. The photos below show my poisoning technique in action, followed by some photos of some of my newly cut palms. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Applying mulch to flower beds. I have waxed lyrical in the past about the importance of compost to the soil of all Gardens. A good friable soil rich in nutrients and natural enzymes is the perfect medium in which all plants will thrive. Compost bought from garden centres will have been violently heat treated to kill off weed seeds, which in turn can damage or destroy the micro nutrients. So if you possibly can set yourself up a compost bin or two. The photo below shows my compost bins in action.

Applying a deep mulch to your flower beds at this time of the year will remarkably improve even the most depleted of soils. There are three basic stages to mulching:

Hoe the flower beds to remove all weeds
Water profusely
Apply a thick mulch of compost at least 2 inches thick

If you haven’t got your own compost then buy a good one from a garden centre, or if you prefer use shredded bark (though this will not instantly improve the soil). The photos below show my flower beds in the process of being mulched. Notice in the last photo some of the big fat worms from my compost making their way into the soil, you only get this benefit by making your own compost. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Fighting and losing the mulch wars. Who would have thought that an innocent activity such as mulching could be the cause of so much grief. I mentioned earlier that Cruella (my wife) had flown off to our English house to continue her nurturing of our idiot son. I had been left in charge of Tango the lonely blind Labrador and the bloody chickens.

As you can imagine this caused immense resentment by the chickens who refused to accept my authority, wouldn’t go to bed at night, ate junk food and continually swore at me in Chickenese (or at least I think they were). Cruella also insisted that I left my IPad in their coop on FaceTime so that she could could converse with them at all times.

At first this didn’t bother me I happily got on with mulching around all my fruit trees accompanied by Tango the lonely blind Labrador. The photo below shows all my trees lovingly mulched.

However, no sooner had I completed the mulching and retired indoors for a nice cup of tea, when I heard loud chicken squawking. I emerged to the terrible sight of the chickens frolicking under the trees and kicking my newly completed mulch all over the place. The photos below show the extent of the venal criminality. Click on each photo for a larger view.

I managed to scare them off with my water pistol (which is in breach of the restraining order Cruella took out against me) I was assisted by Tango the lonely blind Labrador who did his best running around barking and banging into trees. I could see the seething resentment in the chickens little eyes and I knew this wouldn’t be the end of it.

What happened next is like something from a horror film. The next morning I emerged to find that my mini greenhouse had been knocked over and all my lovingly planted seedlings had been destroyed. The photo below fails to convey the anguish and sense of loss; it was so bad that I even mentioned it in Church at the end of a sermon. Anyway I knew it was them as there were feathers everywhere.

I phoned Cruella (my wife) straight away to confront her but she completely refuted any suggestion that her girls were involved. She then asked for privacy so that she could have a FaceTime conversation with her girls. They all trooped off to the coop and emerged smirking 10 minutes later (I’ve told you before chickens really can smirk). A few minutes later the phone rang and it was Cruella (my wife) she told me that her girls had denied any involvement, but they had said that if I would supply them with maggots from the compost bins then they would keep an eye on my mini greenhouse to ensure nothing happens in the future. I complained that this was blackmail but she merely replied that this was “mulch ado about nothing” which she thought was hilarious.

The upshot of all this is that I have been paying a ransom of maggots every day since. If ever I forget to give them some, then one of them goes up and makes a big show of just bumping into the mini greenhouse ‘by accident’. The photos below show me paying the daily ransom. Click on each photo for a larger view.