A garden journal
I realise that my appearance on this blog has been very spotty over the past few months! Other things have been competing for my attention like seed-starting and potting up, winter garden jobs, preparing the newsletter, creating dried flower products, updating my online shop, and maintaining a presence on social media.
So I’m going to try to approach the blog in a slightly different way to attempt to get some content on it more often. (Update - when I wrote this post I originally thought I’d blog every week, but I think every other week is more realistic! I’ve edited the paragraph below to reflect this.)
From today, the blog is becoming more of a garden ‘Journal’. My plan is to share what’s happened in the garden (or greenhouse) over the past two weeks and occasionally include relevant tutorials or advice. These Journal updates will go out around mid-week so that email subscribers hopefully won’t feel bombarded with messages (remember - if you don’t want to receive blog / journal updates you can change your email preferences using the link at the bottom of the email message).
So here’s what’s been happening in my garden this week…
Bulbs are starting to emerge! Most of them will bloom from mid to late March, but I’m happy seeing them now because of the optimism represented by their green leaves and flower buds.
The Hellebores are flowering their socks off right now! My parents helped me plant these as baby plants in 2019 and I’m really pleased with how prolific they’ve become.
Fantastically flowering Hellebores
As far as wildlife goes, the frogs have been returning to the pond, and I’ve spotted a few bees here and there on the non-rainy days, particularly around the Hellebores.
The wildlife pond in February
I pruned all of the shrub roses, cut back the deciduous grasses and did a little general garden tidying. The apple mint that had survived all winter finally turned black from the freezing February temperatures so I pruned that as well - it was a lovely-smelling, minty task!
I sowed some of my annual and perennial seeds indoors. The annuals were mostly hardy varieties that I’m sowing successionally so that I have crops throughout the season (such as snapdragons and scabiosa). I’ll wait another week to sow my cosmos and zinnias.
The dahlias came out of storage so that I can try taking cuttings this year. It’s my first time doing this, but I’m feeling confident with so many helpful ‘how-to’ videos available online. I put the tubers into damp potting soil and am warming them on my heating trays. Apparently you want to leave the tubers exposed so that you can take a tiny piece of tuber when you remove the cuttings and it’s easiest if they’re not buried in compost. Now to just wait a few weeks… I’ll let you know how it goes!
Dahlia tubers ready for sprouting
