Another quick and cheerful selection this week in pursuance of my obligations to the Six on Saturday meme, skilfully managed by the one and only Propagator. If you ride your land-train over to his blog, you will find a growing number of links to other sixes in the comments appended to his six-post of the day. If you fancy taking part in the meme, click the link on the right of this page to jump to a simple guide on how to go about it.
And while I’m plugging away, I’ll plug my other web site at GardenBlogs.Online (there’s also a link to that on the right). Each week I add ten more to the growing list of gardening blogs. This week’s ten (published on Wednesday 6th) were all Sixers. There’s already a lot of Sixers in the list, of course, and I’ll be adding more over coming weeks with maybe another exclusively SoS ten soon.
So here, in no particular order, are the nominations from Rivendell.
1 Fatsia Leaves
It’s the time of year when Fatsias produce new leaves. Mine has gone ballistic this year, increasing its height by about a foot-and-a-half of solid leaf in the process.
2 Slug Damage
I bought some hostas at my HPS group’s plant sale a couple of weeks ago. Whilst awaiting space to plant them into (you don’t expect me to only buy plants for which space already exists, do you?) I popped them into the cold frame. I forgot that, unlike the greenhouse, which is welded to paving slabs and so offers no means of entry, the cold frame, on gravel with gaps under the frame, doubles up as an overnight slug hotel. A couple of days later and my hostas were toast. Well they weren’t toast, which is made by burning bread, but they were a shadow of their former selves. Well they weren’t a shadow of their former selves as there wasn’t enough of them left to cast a shadow. Does anyone know if hostas will regrow from stumps?
3 Armeria
I thought my Armeria had come and gone. Well the more up-market ones (with names) have but my common-or-garden Armeria maritima has responded to a cut back by flowering again.
4 Papaver
I planted a few poppies last year. They rewarded me by keeling over and dying to a man (or woman, not sure what sex they were). I didn’t get round to digging them up which has turned out to be a good thing (for definition of “good thing”, please see “1066 And All That” by Sellars and Yeatman). They have returned from the grave this year, bigger and better. I just have to wait for them to flower before knowing which is which (as I did remove the labels). The first has now flowered and must be “Patty’s Plum”.
A blaze of purple in my white border. I plan my planting carefully (not)!
5 Plant Labels
In a comment on last week’s Six, Gill Heavens pleaded with me to show her my plant labels. Well she was a bit more specific in asking to see the labels of my new plants. So here they are, just before I stuck them into the ground along with the plants they are guarding.
Of course, that’s not all. I have more large labels to plant out this week.
6 Alstroemeria
I’m always happy when these start flowering. They’re late this year but I can now look forward to a mass of colour until November, or maybe later. These are two different varieties. I have several more which are just budding at the moment.
Right that’s it for this week. Must get back to the planting. Reading other blogs will have to wait until I’ve finished reading last week’s lot this evening; there are so many contributors now. Until next time, enjoy your garden.
Hostas! Might as well chuck five pound notes down the toilet. Which would be a bad thing.
Lovely blog. My alstroemerias have disappeared. Not a sign of them above or below ground. Need to buy some more at the wonderful Chenies Manor Plant Fair on July 15th. Triumph of hope over experience yet again.
That’s interesting what you say about your poppies apparently keeling over the first year but coming back the second. I have found it impossible to move a poppy once established, as it comes back from tiny pieces of root in the soil. So where I have planted one and it turned out it was the wrong colour for that part of the garden, I use it as a poppy shop where I just harvest more plants from it, but don’t let that patch flower.
Have you ever had an Oriental poppy apparently change colour? I am sure I haven’t let mine set seed, and they come up a different colour the next year…
I’m taking a different approach – making the white border deeper and multi-coloured. I have no colour-changing poppies. I never let poppies set seed if I can help it. Simply because they are such beautiful plants and I wouldn’t have the heart to dig any up to prevent their world takeover.
I’m jealous of your Fatsia. Mine froze to the ground last winter, so I dug it up. Was going to compost it, but at the last minute, I couldn’t do it. So now it’s in a big pot and I’ll call it a houseplant this winter.
Wow! At last you’re jealous of something in my garden. A role reversal! Technically, it’s not supposed to be hardy enough to survive here but it has struggled along OK for a few years now. Though it’s never put on a new leaf show like this year’s.
That Fatsia is amazing. Mine looks very insignificant by comparison. I’ve shown it the photo of yours and told it to buck up it’s ideas. Alstroemerias are the meal of choice for my slugs and so I’ve decided to deprive them this year and not grow any.
Odd that. My alstros never suffer slug damage. Don’t worry too much about your slugs, though, if they can’t get any Alstroemeria, they will soon find something else to nibble.
Ooh patties plum like it. I have some of that from seed this year. And some laurens grape.
Lovely. Just such a shame that the individual flowers are short-lived, even if borne in succession.
Well your plant labels are rather impressive… Slugs have wreaked havoc in my garden too, eating all of my carefully tended poppies, so I am envious of yours. I am working on a theory about planting times, because the seeds I sowed direct immediately after the cold patch but before the warmer weather have outwitted the slugs.
Interesting thought about the timetabling of seed sowing. As I sow almost all of my seeds indoors and then prick out into the slugproofed (!) greenhouse, I don’t provide slug brunches. By the time I get round to planting out, the plants have to be big enough to deter a certain cat from using them as a mattress and so are pretty resilient to slugs too. And they don’t seem to like my poppies anyway. I was just stupidly careless with the hostas.
I loved reading that the poppy returned from the (seemingly) dead, and she’s a beauty. Your alstroemeria jump right out of your blog. They’ve begged me to plant them. Darn flowers.
Alstroemeria are tough and long-flowering. I usually get flowers from early May through to November. The secret (on this side of the pond, anyway) is to buy plants, not try to grow from those silly little root bits that a lot of places sell.
Looks like those slugs had a real feast – it was nice of you to provide them with such succulent small leaves for their supper(!) They seem to know what the newly purchased plants are, and make a line to go to those first….
I need to be vigilant at hardening-off time. It’s surprising how often slugs will hide in the middle of trays of bedding plants, not nibbling anything but just trying to sneak a ride back into the greenhouse for an overnight feast. I’m convinced they have more intelligence than we credit them with.
Thanks for the labels, lovely plants there, looking forward to seeing them in all their glory! Alstros are lush, as is the poppy, great photo. I mourn your hosta. Little gits, they are relentless.
Thanks for the compliments. Slugs will always find a way! We all need to rethink our defences. Nematodes take care of things in the borders and things are nicely spaced out so we can see the critters hiding. In the growing areas, things are far more densely packed so there are more hiding places, And no nematodes. Perhaps organic slug pellets in the cold frame?
What a shame the poppies aren’t near the thrift they would look smashing together. Lovely photos.
Thanks. There is a lot of pink-flowering plants near the thrift but I realise I’ve managed to plonk a couple of bright yellow Solidago right beside it. I think I’ll refer to it as my accent planting tecnhique. 😉
I loved giggling over some of the chapters in 1066 and all that, as well as Now all this. My sister has inherited our father’s copies of those books – have you seen the
Stickletum fish? Anyway, that poppy is a lovely shade of pink.
Would that be your punctuation-loving younger sister? No doubt the crafty nuances of grammar in those books will keep her occupied for some time. Most people describe Patty as pink but she’s officially purple. I may have a poppy with white flowers and what I think are purple centres but, officially, that purple is black. Colours are so confusing. Like punctuation 😉
Sorry to hear about the hostas. Slugs ate my two hellebores to the ground while I was travelling. One is dead, but the other produced another leaf and is just hanging on. It looks terrible, but gives me hope for next year. So using that as evidence, my not very scientific guess is that you have a 50-50 chance – good luck!
Are you sure the one Hellebore is dead? I cut some of mine right back to ground each year and they return from the dead. As to my Hosta, I’ve moved it to a safe location (which I will not name in case any slugs are reading this) to see if …….
Darn S&S – we need to be able to buy hedgehogs! Love your Patty’s Plum. I tried throwing some poppy seeds into the garden last year, but nothing much materialised. I might have another go. She is very pretty, even of not white 🙂
I’m waiting to see if a white one flowers in my red border ……. I have plenty of hedgehogs, frogs and other slug-eating residents. Trouble is that they cannot get into the cold frame; the gap between frame and gravel is only big enough for a slug to get through.
“Patty’s plum” papaver is adorable! I also liked your alstroemerias. I’m waiting for the second I have, late this year you’re right. Fatsia is a plant that I must have and I just have to find a good place. Last point the hostas … little hope to see it survive. If it had been a large stump why not, but from this small pot…try to keep it, you never know.
I’m getting impatient with my other Alstroemerias which aren’t even throwing up decent foliage yet. I may need to get some garden calendars pinned up to the fences to show the plants what month it is. The hostas are now in a safe (and secret – there may be slugs reading this) location; I doubt they will still live but I have nothing to lose by waiting for a bit.