October 28th Welcome to The Plant Nursery. I hope you have enjoyed browsing through my site and have bookmarked it already. Anyway, onto the gardener's chat. For the last year I have been filling my two compost bins with all sorts of vegetable matter and even some rabbit poo that I manged to acquire. This week I decided to see what my odd mixture had made. To my amazement it looked just like you see them tip out of those fancy compost bins on the telly. It smelled sweet, just like they say it's supposed to. So in answer to the question "is it worth making your own compost?" - Yes it is. Just keep layering, water it when it gets too dry and mix it from time too time and after about eight months you'll have the best soil conditioner that you could ever hope for.
November 3rd If you love garlic why not try growing it yourself? It grows really well in Scotland, I've been growing it for successfully for 20 years in wet and windy Ayrshire. Buy bulbs mail order or from good garden centres and plant the individual cloves outside anytime from now till the end of December. Mine will be planted sometime in November when I get a spare 10 mins. Give it a go, it's so easy and remember garlic's good for you.
November 8th What a fabulous Autumn day for planting garlic; so that's what my husband and I did today. We planted a softneck and a hardneck variety. Both types do well in Ayrshire so no need to worry about which to pick. It's now just a matter of patiently waiting till about January till the 1st shoots start to appear.
November 21st If you don't have any parsley in you garden you're missing out on probably the most useful garden herb, especially at this time of year. I have the flat leaf variety available now which is an evergreen perennial with a fabulous flavour, if you've only ever tried the curly variety you don't know what you're missing. It will grow in almost any garden soil or even in pots, so you don't even need a garden. Now is the season for simple home made soups and stiring in a bit of fresh parsley will make them extra special.
December 7th Ever seen those ads in seed catalogues for Christmas potatoes? I have, and this year I remembered to order them and I planted them around the beginning of September in big tubs in the greenhouse. At one stage I thought they would take over the greenhouse completely and I swear I could almost watch them growing right in front of my eyes. They've died back now, so I had a wee dig about in the tubs and found to my delight, lovely, clean, blemish free new potatoes. I know it's too late for you to plant them now, so I promise I'll remind you when to order your's next year and when to plant them. Incidentally, have you ordered your summer potatoes yet? Even if you've no space in your garden, do like me and plant tubers in pots and earth them up just as you would in the ground. Although the crop is smaller, the quality is always outstanding.
January 12th A belated Happy New Year to you. The weather has been awful just about everywhere, but Spring is really just around the corner. In another few weeks I'll be sowing seeds again; so please feel free to look at my plants list and see if there is anything that you might like to order for your garden. I'll obviously list and price any new available plants as the season goes on.
March 12t Hi there all. I can't believe it's two months since I did anything in the garden; but today I spring cleaned the greenhouse and started to sow the first vegetables of the season. It felt good to be able to get started and look forward to the warmer months to come. I lost many plants in the greenhouse this year as it's un-heated but I suppose I just need to get organised with growing more. Please put orders in if you see anything on my plant list that you would like; I'll generally just sell the plants I have as extra of what I've grown for myself, but I'll gladly grow anything to order. I also planted my salad potatoes today in trugs. They'll stay in the greenhouse for a few weeks until the chance of frost has passed and they can go outside. I noticed that the garlic has also started to grow. Again the weather's held their growth back as they're usually breaking through about 3 weeks earlier.
March 27th All my hardy annuals are sown now so if you'd like to place an wish list order please feel free to contact me. Spring really has sprung and although it's still cold outside, it was nice to be able to get some of my plants for sale out onto my benches outside. And everywhere there are new shoots emerging. Tonight the clocks change as well which is great news as it'll mean I can get out into the garden after work. Does anyone have any frog spawn in their ponds yet? Last year was the first time I had any in mine. Not frog spawn but toad spawn. I was very excited which is quite sad as I'm 40+. I've been checking the pond every day to see if there any signs of life.
April 17th Still no frogspawn. I suppose that's it for this year. Maybe it's just that no frogs live in Hurlford?! I need a bigger greenhouse!! How come whatever size of greenhouse you have, it's never big enough? Anyway, there's lots of things bursting into life which is great to see. Lots of bedding plants and new perennials will be ready soon. All the garlic is now through, the onion sets that were started in the greenhouse have been planted outside. Also the 1st cabbages have been put out into the raised bed and the broadbeans sown last month have been put outside in large pots. Just to make sure that the broadbeans are protected though, they've been wrapped in fleece to keep any frosts off. The 2 pots look like white ghosts at the bottom of the garden when you look out at night. Spooky.
May 6th The fleece has come off the broadbeans and everything looks fine. Something's been munching on the leaves though and I don't see any slug trails. The plants are growing well and don't seem to be affected anyway. The peas are outside now but covered in fleece as these are slightly more tender. The 1st of the cabbages are almost big enough for a meal for one. If you have cabbages, just pick when they're small and plant up new ones that you're bringing on in the space. Who can eat a huge cabbage in one sitting anyway? Don't be tempted to try and grow the biggest veg if you're growing to eat. The youner the plant the more tender it is. This helps to avoid gluts as well. Plolong the harvest season by picking. No sign of gooseberry sawfly yet. Last year I took my eye off the ball and ended up with two totally stripped bushes in a matter of a couple of days. Squash the larvae and eggs if you see them daily. Although I notice on The Beechgrove that you can now get a biological thingy. I'll look out for it I think.
May 8th What a fab day for gardening. And for Kilmarnock. I'm not a football fan - far from it. But, even I was so pleased to hear that my local team was not going down to the 1st division (sorry Falkirk, they're my home town team!) Anyway back to gardening, today I've planted out my french beans and runner beans - fleece will be kept to hand though for the next couple of weeks. I also sowed seed of the runner, broad and french beans outside beside my newly planted seedlings. I made a new flat leaf parsley bed today(I've got lovely plants for sale, ready now). Herbs are great in pots, but if you have space, plant them in the ground - they'll do so much better. That is, except for mint. This is always best grown in a big pot plunged in the ground.
May 31st Many of my annuals are now sold. I do have a few later varieties still to come though and plenty of perennials and biennials still for sale. Check out my site or give me a call to see what I might have available soon. The veg plot is cropping well of cabbages and salad leaves; not much else at the moment but it's looking promising. My Roma VF (plum tomato) are looking good outside. This is the 1st time I've ever grown tomatoes outside, so I'm eager to see how they go.
June 13th The broadbeans are starting to form on the plants. I've nipped off the soft tips now to try and deter the black aphids. My gooseberry that was stripped last year by gooseberry sawfly has escaped almost un-scathed this year, but has not a single gooesberry on it. I suppose this is as a result of the trauma from last year. There were a couple of sawfly larvae on the bush this year but these were picked off and fed to the fish. On the subject of fish, does anyone have a sure fire way of keeping herons away from the pond? I lost 7 fish in the severe winter we had and the remaining 4, I'm assuming were taken by a heron as there's now no sign of them now. The pond's re-stocked with fish, but I think our pond might just be on the menu as soon as the fish are big enough to be more than an appetizer to Mr Heron.
June 20th I spoke too soon, the other gooseberry bush has been stripped by the sawfly. So gooseberry bush number 1 has leaves and no gooseberries; and gooseberry bush number 2 has gooseberries and not a single leaf. I think next year I'll have to try those new nematodes that are available for sawfly. I'll give it 1 last year before I dig both bushes up and shred them. The pot grown potatoes have started to flower so I've tipped out the first pot and as alway when growing in pots, there were beautiful, clean, pest free new potatoes. The variety from this tub was Orla, one of my favourites. I grow it every year. Isn't that too early? I hear you say. Aren't you supposed to let the flowers die before you pick the potatoes? Yes and no. If you have several pots and prefer to be eating new potatoes over a longer period, you can start to pick as soon as the flowers form. Yes, the yield won't be as much as when you leave them, but the other potatoes will continue to bulk up over the next few weeks. I also picked the 1st of the sugar snap peas this week - fabulous - so sweet. And the broadbeans will start to crop this week as well. It's not all veg in my garden, there are lots of flowers too. I've been picking fresh flowers for the house for a few weeks now. Annuals actually perorm better if you keep picking them, so bring your garden indoors and pick a few blooms for a vase. Even a tiny posy made up of flowers from your own garden brings, in my opinion more pleasure than any shop bought bouquet.
July 27th I've been harvesting all summer. The broadbeans, gooseberries, blackcurrants, onions, new potatoes, garlic are all finished and I'm still picking cabbages, sprouting broccoli, peas, sugar snap peas, french beans. It's been a great summer for the veg and fruit. The recent wet weather has meant that the flowering plants in the garden have been a bit neglected and it's difficult to get motivated to get out and get it tidied up. A lot of my plants are sold but there's still some perennials and biennials still available for sale. I can't believe it's now almost a year since my site has been up and running and it's time to order my garlic ready for planting. I think that was my first posting on the gardener's chat.