We're Going To Need A Bigger Pot

Wordless Wednesday: Jurassic Park In The Dark (And Snow!)

2010-01-06T18:51:00.002Z

Twelve Months In Jurassic Park

2009-12-31T21:39:00.004Z

Since everyone else seems to be doing these end-of-the-year reviews, here's what's been going on in the garden for the past 365 days. I'm curling up with a cup of tea to welcome in the new year now.

January

The gardening year got off to a great start with my purchase of the fountain (with money and vouchers from my family for Christmas 2008). It's taken the garden from being mainly visual and tactile and added an auditory aspect.

February

SNOW!!!!!!!

March

Karma the Camellia flowered, showing me that I had managed to keep it watered enough over the summer to get buds forming.

April

The garden started to green up and come back to life, and April was really when it started to be pleasant sitting out in the garden in the evenings.

May

I briefly turned my attention to the front borders, and made a half-arsed attempt to brighten things up. I've been adding bits and pieces since, and there's a possibility that it might look quite nice by next spring!

June

José the Agave decided to indulge in a bit of asexual reproduction, and currently has three "kids", which will leave home as soon as someone lends me a set of leather gauntlets and a welder's mask.

July

I furnished myself with a small pond (a glazed pot with a cork in the bottom), some floating ferns and a Saururus cernuus, and this little pond really burst into life about a month after I filled it.

August

Starting to run out of space in Jurassic Park, I decided to make use of the third dimension and go up, up, up! The result was the Hanging Gardens of Isleworth.

September

For some reason I didn't take any photos of the garden this month. However, I did get some photos around the college where I teach now, and revelled in its great botanical and horticultural link.

October

As autumn drew in, I decided to indulge in some hard landscaping, and using some slabs from my parents, I made myself a patio.

November

Sorting out the indoor part of Jurassic Park, I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything was doing, not least because I nearly lost the Zamia furfuracea six months earlier!

December

And this was what Jurassic Park looked like earlier in December (and probably will do until early March!).

Have a good one folks, hope your Musas survive the winter, and let's do some great gardening in 2010!

Shiny And New

2009-12-27T16:35:00.002Z

I hope you've all had a very happy Christmas. I have overindulged (as usual), and let's just say I shan't be cooking pheasant for Christmas dinner again unless charcoal-lined underpants appear in both mine and Hubster's stockings. As far as gardening swag goes, I did fairly well - Hubster renewed my subscription to Gardeners' World, and scored me a free set of loppers. His little brother gave me Christopher Lloyd's "Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners", which I have been devouring, and Hubster and his older brother clubbed together to buy me a new greenhouse!

I was in desperate need of a new one - one of the zips on the old one no longer worked and I was running out of space. As you can see, I've managed to get a whole lot more in - all my pots, compost and mulches are in, along with a number of plants. Most importantly, the greenhouse has been able to accommodate José Cuervo, the Agave tequilana.

I was allowed to assemble it before Christmas to get the Agave in, but I'm a little worried that it's too late. We had a bit of snow 10 days ago, and although I shoved a bit of fleece over the top to protect José I've spotted a bit of leaf damage. The temperature hasn't been below -4°C in the Tropic of Isleworth, so I have everything crossed that I got the chap into shelter in time.

We just couldn't get the Agave indoors again this year - it's grown a fair bit, and both of us are trying to save our backs from any further injury. What say you in the blogosphere - will José be alright in the greenhouse until March or so?

All we managed to bring in for winter was Zamia furfuracea, Encephalartos princeps and Asplenium bulbiferum. Everything else has been left outside, either fleeced or ignored. Still, a dead plant is but a space ready to be filled with a new one in the spring...

The Festive Season's Forgotten Victims

2009-12-13T10:39:00.002Z

It's Christmas in less than two weeks' time, and turkeys all over the British Isles are starting to get nervous.

There is rarely any shortage of jokes acknowledging the humble turkey's ultimate sacrifice for our dinner plates. But what of the conifers?

I confess to getting a bit nervous at this time of year, as I'm sure the owners of pet turkeys and chickens do. Will my beloved Wollemia nobilis be nicked by some feckless youths and turned into a Christmas tree? It would look really rubbish - I know because I put baubles on it the year it spent the winter indoors, and the branches are just not rigid enough to take the weight. I have a friend who threatens to hold my Wollemi pine to ransom if I so much as dare decorate the Agave tequilana like I did last year.

So I empathised completely with Randall Hitchin at the University of Washington Botanical Garden, grieving for the theft of a rare tree, Keteleeria evelynia. No doubt the thieves who cut down the tree had no idea of its botanical significance, and apparently it won't even look like a "proper" Christmas tree, on account of its open, sparse branches.

This year my Wollemia is still fleeced up for the winter - not because it isn't hardy (it's been through 18 ice ages!), but to provide some disguise as our garden is overlooked by a public car park and I don't want it catching someone's eye over the next fortnight!

Magnolia Or No Magnolia?

2009-12-04T20:35:00.000Z

I have very kindly been given a plant by a friend. He has identified it as Magnolia grandiflora, but I'm not so sure. I have a M. grandiflora, and it doesn't look particularly like the new plant.

So on the left is a leaf from the definite M. grandiflora, and on the right is a leaf from the new plant.

And on the right is the M. grandiflora, and on the left and middle are the new plant.

They don't look very much like each other do they? Any thoughts?

Bedtime

2009-11-28T20:52:00.003Z

Today was a beautiful and icy cold day with not much wind. A perfect day for finally fleecing up the less hardy (or just expensive) plants. So here we are:

Poor old Bastard the Cycad has been trussed up and fleeced (he looked ghastly after last winter, so I'm trying to minimise the damage). The Phoenix canariensis is also fleeced (my least favourite job of all).

Dicksonia antarctica and Washingtonia robusta are looking cosy too.

And Brahea armata, Bastard II, Cyathea cooperi, Blechnum tabulare, Tetrapanax "Rex" and Wollemi nobilis complete the set. These are all drawstring fleece covers from Wilkinsons, and they're so much easier than getting rolls of fleece instead.

I'm probably being overprotective this year, but after last year's carnage I'm not particularly inclined to take the risk! It's looking a bit miserable now, but I console myself with the fact that the conifers really come into their own about this time of year, and it's probably the only point where they're really visible in all their glory.

And speaking of glory, here's the prize bloom in my garden, Hubsterus buttocksi, emptying the fountain.

Brightens up one's day no end, doesn't it?

Babies At Kew

2009-11-27T22:43:00.002Z

A visit to Kew Gardens beckoned last Saturday. I always love the glasshouses: the Temperate House for the unusual conifers and the Princess Of Wales Conservatory for the incredible fern sections, but it's the Palm House which was most exciting. My favourite cycad of all time, Encephalartos horridus, the ferocious blue cycad (the reasons for this should be obvious), was in fine form:

But wait, what's this I see?

It's a pup on the E. horridus!!

In fact, we counted four of them:

I would LOVE it if these were ever commercially available, but I think there is a greater chance of an asteroid destroying Earth than of me getting a CITES-protected cycad. So I had to make do with photos, and a bit of a feel:

At this stage, the pups were still really soft - even the ends didn't have sharp spikes on them. I suspect this was how dinosaurs ate similar specimens. I don't think, if I was a dinosaur, that I'd have attempted to eat them otherwise!

Indoor Gardening

2009-11-22T19:25:00.002Z

It is November, and as a result far too minging to spend too much time outside in the garden. Fortunate, then, that it has been mild enough that I haven't needed to fleece up any plants yet (I'm not looking forward to that task!).

So today I dealt with the indoor component of Jurassic Park. Firstly, disposing of the pathetic excuse for a rubber plant I had rotting in the corner of the living room...

Compare this with what it looked like eleven months ago. I thought these chaps were meant to be so tough one could, in theory, abandon them in the corner of a room and barely water them for six months and they would still thrive.

Then the Araucaria heterophylla and Nephrolepis exaltata needed bigger pots, and the fountain needed cleaning and refilling.

They've now joined the Zamia furfuracea, Dioon edule and Asplenium nidus. And over on the right hand side of the picture is Caryota mitis, absolutely thriving.

And now my nose is all bunged up from the dusting (a sign that I should never do any cleaning if I can help it). Meh.

Family Jewels

2009-11-04T13:40:00.000Z

At the Squires Garden Centre in Twickenham (home of some of the best gingerbread men outside of Market Drayton), there is a large Wollemia nobilis. And it's got its 'nads out at the moment!

This one is a male - rather appropriately, the male cones are long and thin, and the female cones are rounder. And it's not yet ripe - compare with the male cone I saw at Syon Park back in April:

I am wondering, given that I haven't seen a female cone yet, whether the vast majority of Wollemi pines in cultivation are male. If so, where are all the girlies? I would have thought it was important to have as many female plants as possible for propagation - are the female plants being kept back in the nurseries for this very purpose?

Look What I Made!

2009-11-01T14:08:00.002Z

A few weeks ago, my parents dispatched me back home with a dozen large paving slabs for Jurassic Park. On Friday I decided I would finally do something with it, by making myself a patio.

Now, living in rented accommodation and all, and with only a patch of ground in the communal garden, I couldn't really do a proper paving job, so it was down to a few bags of sharp sand and a heavy Hubster to jump up and down.

I have some wobbly slabs, but they're much more stable to put the table and chairs on than the gravel was. And weirdly enough it now seems that there's more space - I haven't removed any plants but there's more room to get around the table and chairs and even a bit of space for more plants. How on earth did that happen?

After a pretty decent summer in Jurassic Park where all I needed to do was to relax and enjoy being in the garden, the jobs have picked up a bit. The Metasequoia is starting to change colour (and my coffee tree and tulip tree are already naked and twig-like), and you can see I have a new Magnolia grandiflora to plant up!

It's difficult not to start feeling some degree of melancholy (not least because October ended with sunshine, light winds and mild temperatures, giving way to a squally November that does not inspire the act of gardening) - some of my ferns are starting to die back already, my deciduous trees will soon be nothing but twigs, and I am already fighting a losing battle against maple leaves. So I will be looking for ways to brighten up the garden over the winter, to encourage me and Hubster to sit out, perhaps lit by torches and fairy lights, with large steaming mugs of hot chocolate...

Crimes Against The Plant Kingdom

2009-10-30T17:10:00.003Z

It's autumn, which means it must be time for my least favourite horticultural product - spray-painted heather!

New for the 2009-2010 season is this puke-inducing pale blue colour. Who, apart from bureaucrats in charge of municipal planting schemes, actually thinks that turquoise is a good colour for a seasonal display?!

This example of abject hideousness served to remind me that, although my garden may be "boring" in its greenness and lack of flowers, at least it will never look as diabolical as the above.

I would also like to administer a sound beating to whichever little Einstein came up with the genius idea of spray-painting some of the heather green:

Seriously?? You couldn't find that colour anywhere in nature so you had to spray some heather to recreate a colour reminiscent of, say, chlorophyll?

Maybe I should have bought some to put outside the front door and scare away the miniature protection rackets that will no doubt be doing the rounds tomorrow night.

Two Months?!

2009-10-23T17:53:00.002+01:00

Hi. Remember me? I'm that mad one who used to talk about "leaf-babies" and plants with pet names before I ran off to the local FE college and abandoned you all for the first half term of my new career. I've managed to remain employed as a FE teacher/lecturer in biology for longer than I lasted as a gardener, so I think this is A Good Thing.

I am, however, appalled at the number of science students who think that animals need to photosynthesise. If I could photosynthesise than it wouldn't be half as awful working through lunchtime marking homeworks!

Thanks for continuing to read and comment (I'm so glad my blog has been of help to people even while I haven't been contributing). My number of subscribers has actually increased!! Plenty to write about, but I'm already halfway through margarita 1 of n, where n is yet to be defined, but is probably lower than 50.

And as Hubster said on his most recent comment to me, we do have an allotment to write about. Maybe I should set up a new blog for that and call it "We're Going To Need A Bigger Plot"...

The Chinese Curse

2009-08-29T20:15:00.002+01:00

There is a curse:

May you live in interesting times
May you come to the attention of those in authority
May you find what you are looking for

And at the moment I'm well and truly at the mercy of the first of the three clauses. So I have beaten a retreat to my parents' house in the grim and frozen north for the long weekend. My mother has assured me that her garden needs weeding, and since I have very few weed problems with my own garden, I'm happy to oblige, and brought all my gardening clothes with me.

While this is some much-needed R&R, it does mean that I'm going to miss going to Victoria's open garden. I met Victoria for the first time at the Syon Rare Plant Fair back in April, and she is truly lovely, and one day I will have a chance to really talk to her for a long time. I feel awful for not being able to go and support her, so perhaps if any of you are around in London tomorrow, you might go to see the garden and say a big hello from me?

Today I went for a walk at Newstead Abbey with the ancestors. Some posts maybe coming up on the basis of that.

You Have To Propagate To Accumulate

2009-08-24T00:20:00.003+01:00

I think I'll be buying a new greenhouse soon, as things are really taking off. Hell, before I buy a new greenhouse I need to buy new seed trays! The top shelf of the growhouse is full:

These are Hubster's cuttings - I helped him to learn how to take cuttings of rosemary, lavender, sage and marjoram, and I'm religiously spraying them each morning as Jekka McVicar says to! We ate our way through so many Tesco Value strawberry yogurts, and they've made brilliant pots for the cuttings. The cuttings are all doing really well and putting out new growth - I've never been that great at propagation from cuttings, so it's quite a kick for me to see this even though they're not my plants.

I was a bit snobbish with my own seedlings though - I have some Coffea arabica, and I used "proper" pots for them!

I have plants on two of the other shelves, and that's before I sow all the seeds I got in the JungleSeeds sale (all four Magnolia and all two Bauhinia species they sell). Maybe I'll just be storing them until the spring...

Wordless Wednesday: Garden Ornament Or Sex Toy?

2009-08-19T11:31:00.000+01:00

Chartreuse

2009-08-17T14:19:00.000+01:00

What my Wollemia nobilis lacked the first half of the summer, it is making up for in spades:

I've been using seaweed and Palmbooster on pretty much every plant, the Wollemia included.

Has anyone used Jurassic Plant Food before? I'm wondering if it might be a worthwhile investment to make sure Matildus gets his act together on time next year.

What's The Use?

2009-08-15T11:15:00.003+01:00

Because you can take a half-dead Zamia furfuracea with half a frond surviving and nurture it into rising from the grave:

And into flushing nicely:

It will stay in the "ICU" part of Jurassic Park until the fronds have all fully opened. I don't know if it will do the Cycas wibble if it gets moved while flushing, but why risk it on such a gorgeous cycad?

(That's rainwater stained by some compost in the bottle by the way. It occurred to me while posting this that a bottle of yellow liquid looks well dodgy...)

I Saw This And Thought Of Us

2009-08-14T22:13:00.002+01:00

I've been introduced to the awesome Garfield Minus Garfield cartoons recently. Many of the strips are pure genius, and this one is no exception:

How many of us have said that to one of our plants? Hell, this one even looks like Sideshow Bob!

Supersecretsquirrel Project Revealed

2009-08-13T20:51:00.002+01:00

A week ago I alluded to a "supersecretsquirrel" project. I bet you'd like to know what I was up to!

I was starting to run out of space in Jurassic Park, so decided to start on some vertical planting. Hubster did all the drilling, and I sorted the pots out. I also got some matching trellis to make a fence separating the garden from the gas meters:

I had some of my gardening forum buddies round for a barbecue last Saturday night, and it was such a confidence boost to have them admire the garden (theirs are all much bigger than mine, everything is planted out, and they've been doing it for longer than I have). Seeing a garden through another's eyes is great for the creative juices and really helped me appreciate the beauty of my own little patch.

And looking at it in this light, if there was just a nice big hedge or fence shielding those awful gas meters, to me it looks like one of those "featured gardens" they have in the magazines each month.

Wordless Wednesday: Encephalartos woodii

2009-08-12T14:23:00.000+01:00

Forty Years?!

2009-08-10T18:46:00.003+01:00

I've just watched a report on the BBC News that there is up to a 40-year wait for an allotment in one borough of London, Camden. We joined the waiting list in Hounslow a month or two ago, but even in our borough the waiting list is eight years long. In an optimistic mood I fantasise that by 2017 we'll have been able to buy a house with enough of a garden to have a full Jurassic Park and a vegetable patch.

So it's just as well in the meantime that we've got this:

It's a little vegetable patch at Hubster's Quaker Meeting House. What an opportunity! The gardener has offered us a fairly square deep patch which will be ideal for Hubster to grow some medicinal herbs (bloody James Wong), and it has some teasels and evening primrose already in residence. There are a couple of thinner plots, and I have great plans. I did like having my own potatoes. It was just so much effort doing them in containers so I gave it a break this year.

Here's a quick plan of the site:

Hubster was drinking his coffee and contemplating the "fruit" bed. Behind him is his big herb bed, and it continues right along to where the nursery that uses the faciities has a little patch.

There's another plot the size of the "fruit" bed which has loads of Jerusalem artichokes already on there. If I can figure out what to do with them, I'll add them to my veggie repertoire!

What have I let myself in for?

Lizards Tails

2009-08-08T09:02:00.003+01:00

One of my best recent purchases has been Saururus cernuus, a hardy marginal aquatic plant, colloquially known as "lizards tails" and almost unheard of over this side of the Atlantic:

It's been growing well in my little pond, but has yet to produce flowers. A few weeks ago I went back to Crews Hill to see if there were any more plants as some of my friends had expressed an interest in buying one. There weren't any for sale, but they did have a nice big one in their water plant display:

And even better - it was in flower!

Can you see why they're called lizards tails? They look a little like Buddleia inflorescences, so hopefully the bees and butterflies will take a shine to one of the few flowers in Jurassic Park when they arrive.

Off to Kew Gardens now - the group visit was postponed so the cycads should definitely be back in place by today.

A Teaser

2009-08-06T12:01:00.000+01:00

Readers who also follow me on Twitter will know I've been awaiting the arrival of a piece of vital kit for a "supersecretsquirrel" project. It all arrived earlier in the week, and after a lot of grunting, sweating and swearing (mostly on Hubster's part since I'm not allowed access to the power tools after last time) it's finished.

Here's a sneak preview of it:

The colour is "Barleywood" by Cuprinol, if you're interested.

Wordless Wednesday: Unheard-Of Landscape Shot Of Metasequoia

2009-08-05T11:16:00.000+01:00

Intensive Care Unit

2009-08-04T14:52:00.000+01:00

This is all that remains of Selaginella martensii. After posting about it last week I had lots of good advice, and went with the repotting option.

I took off the wilted, dead, grey bits (so most of the plant then). This tiny stub now knows it's on borrowed time, and it's been relegated to the greenhouse to see if it will man up.