Ivy,thorny,waggy...

Check the label on plants before you buy to see if they are suitable for your garden.

Didn’t see it coming

“You’ll need to take that off before it collapses the roof” I am getting a bit of friendly advice from a visiting relative about the ivy that is quickly engulfing the garage. I cleared some of it last year but in no time what so ever it has re grown and not only covered one outside wall, it’s crept into the garage through the cracks around the window.  The funny thing about the ivy is that I just didn’t see it coming and never even noticed the shoots creeping into the cupboards in the garage. 

The day after being given the advice I have taken down the main bulk of growth but I’ll need to dig the roots out at some stage before it comes back. My mother’s reasons for not growing ivy and any form of climber on the house walls were confirmed as I found loads of slugs, snails and earwigs living in the ivy. My mother was convinced that climbers harboured rats and mice too and she also thought rats come up the toilet bowl when you go on holiday; maybe I’ll check that later.

Mower Moan

I’m still unsure about the mower but I have reinstated an old pair of edge cutters to get where the flymo can’t get which will save me having to get the strimmer out.  It didn’t take much sharpening and a bit of oil got it cutting as good as new, slicing through the long grass with a satisfying whooshing noise like the doors of the Starship Enterprise (That noise is actually made by pulling a letter out of an envelope). I might even have a go at fixing up an old scythe I have, it might be easier to use then the mower.

Giving it all away

I’ve got an abundance of salad crops at the moment and have been giving bags full of them to visitors - whether they like it or not. “Ah go on, just a few more” I tell them as I put more and more lettuce into a bag.  I am also giving away spinach by the bagfull to and tell people that you need at least four carrier bags full for a meal “as it boils down to nothing”. Things are expanding at a phenomenal rate the all of the rain and sunshine. So much so I am taking out last years broccoli to make a bit of space.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff and even though it’s in the ground for a long time I wouldn’t be without it. The issue is that it’s still cropping when everything else the following year needs to be planted out into their growing places.  I think we have about got everything off of the plants that we can, the remaining shoots are so small that it would take about a day to harvest enough for a meal.  “They go well in a salad “I tell visitors as I throw some into the carrier bag. It’s time to allow the rest to go to flowers for the bees  as I need the space for the summer squashes and tomatoes. I never have much luck with outdoor toms, but this year might be different.

Thorny Issues

I got a few bargains at the garden centre this week. I needed a centre piece for a container and wanted something a bit different to the usual Cordyline and found a Dwarf Fan Palm (Chamaerops humilis) reduced from €18 to €4 for some reason. I didn’t question why as it looked fine to me and felt as though I had bought a bargain. These plants are quite hardy although might need a bit of protection against hard frost. They can grow to 3.5 metres too but I doubt that’ll ever happen. I put the plant into the boot of the car and maybe found the reason for the price reduction. The spikes on the stems are like razors. They make rose bush thorns look like soft feathers. It was only after the spikes took the skin off my hand that I read the warning on the label. It even told me to keep the plant away from clothing. Maybe not so much of a bargain after all.

Tail Wagging

Chips the dog came back to us after her overnight stay at the vets this week - minus the eye. It’s all stitched up and thankfully she didn’t come back with the lampshade of shame on her head.  The vet said she is so well behaved and doesn’t scratch that it wasn’t needed. She is at the door as usual with a ball in her mouth ready to go for her walk.  Her tail is still wagging and her enthusiasm for life is still unquestioning as she delves into the brambles and undergrowth with the tail wagging. Inspirational stuff.

Lampshade of Shame

The novelty is still there with my mower vac.

Taking her eye off the ball

One of our dogs has been an in-patient week. A short time ago her left eye started to get a bit crusty and as salt water wasn’t clearing it up we decided to pay the local vets a visit.  We found out that she had gone blind in the eye and it was under considerable pressure which would give her a constant headache, and maybe even explode if she scratched it! We were left with no alternative but to have her eye removed.  Apparently the damage was caused some time ago, years maybe, probably by her running into an immovable object.  As she has spent most of her active life running into things it could have been a tree, dustbin, road sign, car, bike, bollard and she has often been on the receiving end of a hurly as she has a go at catching the ball before it makes contact with the wood.  Who would have guessed that running after a ball could be so dangerous?

 She’ll be coming back from the vets in the morning with a “lampshade of shame” on her head, which she is supposed to leave on for ten days to stop her from scratching at the eye socket. I’ll give it ten minutes before it’s off and she’s in the hedgerows with the tail wagging. I’m missing her in the garden already.

From bust to boom

This last week has seen us move from a time of very little available food in the garden to an abundance. Just a few days of sunshine and a warm breeze have made all the difference. We are now enjoying spinach, which I am convinced you can see growing, lettuce, mustard and all sorts of herbs. Julie’s mum is even enjoying courgettes. I haven’t had to do a lot of work this week either as the soil is so dry that I can just skim the surface with the hoe and the weeds are gone, leaving the veggies to grow without competition.  The sunny dry weather does mean that I have to water the pots and baskets but that’s a pleasure on a sunny evening. Most things are thriving, the peas and beans have taken entwined themselves around their structures and the broad beans are in flower. The slowest thing to make an appearance is beetroot. I think I must have planted it a bit too early and it’s gone into a dormant state. I planted hundreds of seeds but as yet only three have come up and I am not entirely sure they are beetroot seedlings, they have red stalks so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think I will be putting the surplus into jars for pickling this year to tide us over the winter.

Still a novelty

I’ve cut the grass three times this week with my vacuum lawnmower. Not that it needed it mind you; it’s just so easy to use and quick to set up. I’ll keep doing it until the novelty wears off.  The only thing I am finding is that the machine doesn’t get into the edges and corners where the walls are, so like it or not, every few weeks I am going to have to get the strimmer out. They don’t look too bad for a while but eventually the lawns beginning to look a bit like my head, lush growth at the sides then baldy patches in the middle. (“Patches? don’t you mean totally bald?!”) You know what I mean.

Oil tank Cover

There is one thing in the garden that I haven’t done anything with yet and that’s putting some sort of screen around the oil tank. It’s green in colour (unlike our orange and red one in the other house) so it doesn’t stick out too much, but it’d be good to get something to disguise it a bit. I could go down the HidBin route and cover it with synthetic leaves or I could get some wooden trellis for a climber to grow up. The aforementioned red tank had a leylandii growing around it which was a bit much, especially when the poor oil man had to cut his way through it to get to the filler cap. I’ll leave you this week with a question.  What have you got around your oil tank to cover it up? I can plant steep slopes with ground cover and mask unsightly concrete blocks but for some reason oil tanks have me flummoxed.

A Lawnmower review - sort of

The dog likes the seaweed juice the best.

New Lawnmower Review, sort of

I bought a mower this week. I have umm’d and aah’d over buying one for weeks and did my usual extensive research before I made a decision, then went out and bought something on impulse that was on special offer!  I have been hanging my nose over a Flymo for a while as we only have a tiny lawn at the front of the house and very little grass on the back lawns due to the dogs. I fancied the hover so I could glide over the dog poo. 

I’ve ended up with a Flymo called a ‘Mow and Vac’ and alarm bells should have rung when their advertising spiel consisted of them saying that “It’s just like vacuuming the lawn”.  It’s electric and not powerful at just 900 watts, it has a single handle and not a bar to control it, just like a vacuum cleaner - and has a grass collector that when half full stops the flymo from floating , which makes it impossible to budge. I could suck more grass up through a straw than the mower does.

What do you expect?

Before I condemn the mower totally I have to point out that it’s the first cheap mower I have bought and as Julie says, what do I expect for €50? I am accused of living in the 1970’s when it comes to money but I still expect something that says it cuts grass to do just that.  The last mower I used cost nearly 1000 euro so my standards are high.  I battled with the Flymo for a while, mumbling about taking it back to the shops and then all of a sudden I adapted to its ways; I relaxed and let it do its thing. Firstly I took off the silly collector which lifted the mower higher and then put it back on again to “sweep up”  OK it’s got plastic brackets to hold the handles in place, the blades are plastic too. But it’s quiet, and actually does do the job. Before I was using my large strimmer and because I find it a pain to fill it with petrol, put on the safety gear then spend 2 hours washing the walls of mud and grass splatters, I didn’t do it very often.  This mower is set up in a minute and clean and tidy, with no safety equipment needed. In fact it’s just like a vacuum cleaner for the garden. They ought to use that as a slogan.

Plant Tonic

The place where we get our well rotted manure has disappeared, well not disappeared exactly but the supply has been buried under a new cycle path and the horses have moved on to pastures new. I don’t know where but hopeful when I see them again it won’t be in a sandwich. Because of the loss of supply I am being inventive and playing with different solutions. I have three buckets, one with seaweed in, one with comfrey and the last one with nettles. They have been steeping in stagnant water for about three weeks now and are getting to the stage where the neighbours are asking if our drains are blocked so something’s working.  I’m going to put the liquid into plastic milk cartons then feeding the watered down solution to different plants and see which perform the best...science! I think the best solution will be the three mixed together and that’s probably what’s going to happen.  The dog likes licking the seaweed one the best for some reason, he must be deficient in salt.

Latest Creation

My latest hanging basket has been created on a budget. After the shock of spending money on the mower I couldn’t stretch to a basket liner so made one up myself.  I have a lot of ferns in the garden and seeing as they grow quickly I thought their leaves would make a good substitute for sphagnum moss. The basket looked great when I had made it up. I got a great deal at the DIY place last week when the weather was bad, they decided to sell the geraniums off really cheaply, so I crammed in three of those along with nasturtiums, sweet peas and creeping Jenny’s. Three days later and the basket looks like I haven’t watered it all summer. The ferns have gone brown and crispy and the plants haven’t had time to establish. Maybe I should have used an old dustbin liner bag. I’m sure it’ll look great when the plants grow over the top of the basket, until then it can be a constant reminder that it’s sometimes a good thing to part with a bit of money occasionally.