2016-03-30

Some spring things

I started going to the gym and it's great, because my joints have improved to the point that I can even dig in the garden :D it's very satisfying. There are so many signs of spring! green buds and little growing leaves everywhere.

Hyacints
I dug a little around the roses and hyacints. I saw that the hop vine is alive and well, yay! Also signs of life on lilac, broom and elder in this area. I should fill in a bit with more soil, perhaps add mulch.

I started digging the stubborn, old grass tufts off around the fruit tree area as well. Some kinds of grass do not let go of the ground at all until they dry out completely, luckily we just have two mountains of soil from where we are excavating close to the house, so I just filled it up and piled the grass tufts nearby.


That's one mountain of soil

This weekend we had a look in Aldi and I brought back a cherry tree, six strawberry plants, a packet of peruvian daffodil bulbs and some seed packets (they're like 40 cents there) and a box with mixed bulbs.

The box is entitled 30X COLOUR COLLECTION, but I got it because all the flowers are white, haha. There's 1x Dahlia, 3x Lilies, 5X Freesia, 10x Gladiolus and 11x Anemones "the bride".  That's all the information in the box, apart from planting depth etc, Aldi as usual is a bit of a bet. I hope some of these come out, especially the anemones which I love, I planted some before but they didn't turn out. In the peruvian daffodil (Hymenocallis festalis) packet there were just three bulbs.

The cherry tree is "Rheinische Schattenmorelle" and it's supposed to be sour. We removed last year's dead cherry tree and planted this one, it just one thin stem of about a metre, but it had green buds and it was cheap so I got it. It is in the first picture on the far left.

The daffodils went in in between the other ones which are already up, but not blooming yet. I planted the rest of the bulbs and the poured the contents of three seed packets around the fruit tree area, these are white alyssum (Lobularia maritima), a mix of cornflower and Lobelia "Kristallpalast". I didn't cover or anything and it rained right afterwards.

Also planted the strawberries in between the others, (I've done some weeding but there's still some), and Pim planted the tree.

Strawberry mess

Today I also weeded what has other years been used as a vegetable bed, around the perimeter we transplanted the herbs that were evicted from what is going to be a terrace some time ago. So today there I sowed some peas: sugar snaps "Delikett" and mangetout "Norli" (Aveve), two rows of each. The sugar snaps are closer to the pallets. I also poured the content of a white California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) seed packet from Aveve around the fruit tree area.

I also "Speedy" beans. So I still have enough space to weed and plant a few of these beans...

Don't have pictures of this area yet. It's behind the soil mountain on the second photo.