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Lyn and Malcolms Garden Blog
January 2012

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2012    Jan         Feb

January 28th
Another busy day in the garden.
We split up some more plants, and planted a few new ones. This enabled me to top dress all of Lyn's front garden while she was at a Hardy Plant Society meeting this afternoon.
We will still have a few new plants to put in later, plus more Lilies when they arrive around early March.
The Clematis have been fed with Sulphate of Potash to help them produce flowers.
This week we received two private bookings for July. Lyn thought this year may be a little quieter for the number of visitors to our garden, due to the financial climate. I guess we probably will get less visitors this year, last year was an all time record for us. We will have to wait and see.

Lyn's garden looking quite bare after the plants are cut down and the top dressing applied, the dark top dressing shows up the labels, but given another month and you won't see them.


January 22nd
Most of the day was spent in the garden again today. Saw two ladybirds, a Red Admiral and a first of the year Lily Beetle.
We cut the neighbors hedge, well our side, then we continued to move a few plants and split some more which were out growng their allotted space.
A late afternoon trip to the garden centre, to get six bags of 'farmyard manure' finished off the day.
We are building up to applying a top dressing of 50% farmyard manure, mixed with 50% of any cheap potting compost, hopefully in the next two weeks.
Lyn still has a few plants to move and some more to put in before the top dressing.

The neighbors hedge which we grow Clematis up.


Just some of the plants we split and potted up over the weekend


January 21st
This last week has been a busy one for us. We had our cavity walls insulated on Thursday, which needed a lot of preparation on our part.
I had to take two roof panels out of our conservatory, and four panels out of the passage roof. The passage had to have all the over wintering plants taken out, and the plants in the conservatory had to be moved to one end, so the insulation installers could gain access on ladders to drill the holes in the walls of the house.
I must say that the two installers worked hard, and were very pleasant.
We spent the next day refitting the roof panels and moving the plants back to their original positions.

Today we repotted all the dahlias we have, and where able to divide a few up for sale later in the year.
We also split up several plants in the garden, and have quite a few more to do, also we need to move a few plants around in the garden that are in the wrong place, and plant a few new ones.

A few of the plants we split up today, for the plant stall on our open days.


Plants in flower in the garden today
Iris unguicularis                                                                           Iris reticulata 'Pauline'
  

Snowdrops


And the plants and roof of the passage we had to remove for the cavity wall insulation to be carried out.


January 10th
Proof of how much earlier plants are starting to flower this year, due to the mild winter.

                                                          Crocus tommasinianus 'Roseus' 
Picture taken today 10th January 2012                                        Picture taken 7th February 2011
   


January 7th
A new year has started in the garden.
Today I sowed the first seeds in pots in the propagator, we don't want huge quantities of plants from seed, just a good selection, that is why we only sow them in pots.
We also don't have much room here for too much propagation of seed. As soon as they come up we have to transfer them to our kitchen, under a grow light, on top of one of the worktops.

I spent the rest of the day in Lyn's front garden, cutting down the group 3 clematis, hard prune ones. And made a start on the group 2, lightly prune ones.


Group 2 and 3 (light and hard prune) clematis before pruning


Group 2 and 3 (light and hard prune) clematis after pruning


Pots of seeds in our homemade propagator. Just a plastic box with sharp sand and a soil warming cable on a thermostat in the bottom.
Then we have a clear plastic top with a growlamp above it.