A spray of pressed flowers

If you love flowers and gardens, flower pressing makes the most perfect hobby. It’s both stimulating and therapeutic and it will give you all the scope you’ll ever need to express your creativity.

And you’ll be using the loveliest materials that nature has to offer.

Pressed flowers can easily be sourced from your own garden. And you don’t need to plant anything special either. Your garden will provide you with all the material you need.

You can learn how to press flowers quickly. And once you know how, there’s no end to the variety of ways in which you can use your pressed flowers.

Artistic collages of pressed flowers and greenery make the loveliest greeting cards and wedding invitations. 

Pressed flower pictures are ideal for decorating bedrooms.  You can even use them to decorate telephone directories and photo albums.

Of course, flower pressing is not only limited to flowers.  You can also use pressed leaves, grasses, tendrils and ferns.

You can even use carrot tops and tiny seeds as well as stamens and bits of bark. Fine seed heads of ordinary lawn grasses and even little patches of lichen give added interest.

And don’t spurn the different types of weeds either. You’ll be amazed to see how well some of them press.  Many of them are quite pretty so you just need a good eye and a bit of imagination.

There’s so much scope for experimenting and that’s really half the fun.

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Photo credit: ncsu.edu

Many people feel that a natural, non-toxic insecticide simply cannot be as effective as chemical insecticides.

They regard success stories of organic sprays as old wives’ tales and are skeptical about them.

But the result is that they resort to using dangerous toxic sprays without giving the organic solutions a chance.

We all know what damage we do to the environment when we use toxic sprays and poisons.  Not only do we poison the environment as a whole, but we also ruin the ecological balance of our own gardens.

To the organic gardener, poisonous pesticides, toxic fungicides and all manner of toxic sprays are anathema.

Now it’s true that organic methods of eliminating pests are sometimes hit and miss. I cannot vouch for all of them; but there is one method that I have used that has given me a one hundred per cent success rate.

I am referring to the elimination of a bad infestation of mealy bugs on my citrus trees.

Let me give you an example of how effective a non-toxic insecticide can be.

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my young lemon trees was looking very poorly. It’s leaves were dropping and the tree looked very unhappy.

Just looking at the tree, I couldn’t work out what was wrong with it but when I looked under the leaves I saw that they were infested with little white mealy bugs.  They were literally sapping the life out of my lemon tree.

I only use organic methods in my garden so I had to find something quickly. After some research I discovered an easy non-toxic insecticide recipe that I decided to try out.

It was a simple mixture of a plain soapy dishwasher diluted with water and mixed with a dash of olive oil. My tree is still small so I was able to paint the underside of each leaf with the mixture using some cotton wool.

The interesting thing is that as I painted them the mealy bugs simply dissolved and disappeared.  That was about two months ago.

My tree did lose a few of its leaves – probably those that were the most badly infested by the mealy bug. Anyway, the mealy bugs haven’t returned and I am hoping for a resurgence of new growth.

The odds look good so far. I’ll keep you updated.

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Deep Blue irises

Those of you who have kept up with my saga of the birds versus my irises will know how long I have been battling with this problem.

Here is a reminder of what has happened year after year – and each time I have been hopelessly defeated.

The birds have beaten me hands down. And they haven’t even tried all that hard!

Each and every spring, they have bitten off all the heads of my prize irises and I have never had the luxury of enjoying them for even an hour or two.

They have simply been too clever and too quick for me.

But not this time!

Irises covered with plastic bags

Because now, as soon as the buds have formed I cover them with plastic sandwich bags.

And then after a few days I lift the bags, and Eureka! the flower unfurls in all its glory as I watch.  It’s almost like magic.

By this time the birds have lost all interest in them because the juicy calyxes have gone!

So here, on the right is what my irises look like when I have covered them with plastic bags.  Not very appealing, I know.

My blue irises in full glory

But now take a look at the reward (and my triumph) once I have removed the plastic bags!

So all you iris lovers who have been bullied by birds – you now have the means to turn the tables on those pesky birds.

If you would like to follow my recipe – be my guest. But please let me know how you fare.

Here are some of the articles that I wrote in complete frustration before I hit upon the solution:

Help My irises are being decapitated by birds

How can I protect my irises from birds?

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Figs ready for jam making
Photo:fr:Utilisateur:Céréales Killer

Yesterday I was tempted to buy a small jar of fig jam.  It brought back such memories of my mother’s fig jam on the farm that I simply couldn’t resist it.

As soon as I got home I opened the little jar with eager anticipation and an almost dreamy feeling. I plunged a teaspoon into the jam and had a taste.

What a disappointment!  It was a sweet mush with thousand of tiny pips that got in between my teeth and it was much too sweet.  Worst of all there was no taste at all of the real fig flavour that I remember so well.

So let me tell you about my mother’s fig jam so that you can understand exactly what I mean.

Firstly, we grew our own figs.  My father had a particular love of fig trees and he literally grew hundreds of fig trees of every variety on the farm.

As children we helped to pick the basins of figs that my mother needed for her jam making. They had to be ripe but firm and unbroken.

Then she popped them into a huge pot with sugar and slowly brought them to the boil. I don’t think there were any other ingredients – I must have the recipe somewhere.

The thick syrup bubbled slowly and the figs remained whole and juicy.

And when they were bottled boiling hot in large jars the whole figs in syrup shone like dark gold.

When you bit into one of those figs it popped open and the syrup oozed out.

They were a delicacy that I didn’t fully appreciate back then – until today when I had a teaspoonful of that tiny bottle of bought jam.

But it served a purpose – it brought back vivid memories of my mother in her spotless apron making her homemade fig jam.

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Photo courtesy photos-public-domain.com

I found this great chart about the best apples to use for cooking and baking. It’s a very helpful guide because it’s so easy to get unstuck when you use the wrong variety.

For example, when making an apple sauce, if you use the the type of apple that doesn’t break up, you end up with a lumpy sauce.

And speaking of sauces I find that the best apple to use is Granny Smith because it makes a fine, smooth sauce with a sharp tang.

I also use Granny Smith apples for baking.  No need to add sugar either.  Just take out the core and replace it with a  few seedless raisins.

Works every time!

And by the way when I bake an apple pie I like to use Golden Delicious apples because they keep their shape and don’t break up! Now I don’t mean the whole apple if that’s what it sounds like – I slice them up into thin wedges!

Here is the chart explaining the various types of apples and their uses:

Courtesy: http://pocketchangegourmet.com/the-definitive-guide-to-apples-and-their-uses/

How to make healthy fruit juices

Fresh apples can also be juiced. You can add apple juice to carrot juice, strawberry juice, watermelon juice and many other types of fruit for a health giving and nutritious drink for the whole family.

If you would like to know more about juicing there’s a new ebook available that will give you all the information you need to make the most delicious and healthy juices for your family.

“Power Juicing” is a valuable guide packed with the latest cutting edge information on juicing.  It took over 1 year to research.

Power Juicing

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The irises are the bearded hybrid variety and they don’t stop blooming. The colour combination is particularly striking too.

If you click the  picture you will be able to see a bigger photo which will give you a much better idea of the impact of the  contrasting colours.

I wrote in a  post some time ago that my irises were being decapitated by birds.  And that has continued for a few years in  succession.

Fortunately, this year there seems to have been no such massacre of my flowers.

I can only put it down to the good rains we had and also I have watered abundantly with an irrigation system.

There were so many flowers and roses this season that the birds didn’t need to forage for food among my irises.

Though I do have to admit that right in the beginning of the season when the irises first appeared, I  covered the large prize blooms with plastic sandwich bags.  And as I lifted the bags the huge flowers unfolded before my eyes.

It was quite an experience to watch – like those slow motion movies that show the unfurling of flowers except that this was in real time!

Striking Colour combinations in the Garden
I love using unconventional colour combinations in the garden and this one of deep blue, yellow and orange has been very successful and striking.  It creates quite a focal point in the landscape.

On the other hand I also like the gentler combinations of pink and orange.

To achieve this I have massed floribunda roses such as Deloitte and Touche together with  Amarula Profusion. Really lovely!

The post Blue Irises look stunning with Roses appeared first on Roses and Gardens.

I had heard that rose hips are very rich in Vitamin C so I checked and lo and behold there are a number of rose hip syrup recipes that are used and made by those in the know.

How to use Rose Hip Syrup

The syrup can be diluted with water to make a refreshing cold drink. You can also pour the syrup neat onto your breakfast pancakes or waffles for a delicious and health-giving treat.

Some of the rose hip syrup recipes that I’ve seen are rather lengthy and they put me off because I like quick and easy solutions.

So here is a simplified version:

Rose Hip Syrup Recipe

• Wash and trim about a kilo of rosehips. Pop them into a blender and process till they are a coarse mush. I would process half at a time so as not to overload your blender.
• Put the rosehip pulp into a covered pot and boil for about 20 minutes. Remove from stove and strain the liquid through a clean muslin cloth.
•  Add sugar and boil for another 5 minutes. Cool and bottle. Keep in the refrigerator and use as desired.

Let me know how you like it!

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You may remember that last winter I told you about my rose pruning effort and how I had engaged a professional rose pruner to help me.

The thought of pruning all my roses was a little intimidating at the time – but if truth be told I suspect that I was simply too lazy.

Well, pruning day arrived and the professional pruner brought some tools and some loppers and proceeded to lop off my roses in a most frightening manner.

All I could do was to stand by and watch helplessly – and hope that he knew more about pruning than I did.

I was wrong. I know now that I knew better. Much better.

At this point I can only refer to the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning because they explain exactly how I felt:

“High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.”

I return to my story.

I had told him how high I wanted my bushes to be and he lopped them off to the required height and quite a bit more for good measure.

He didn’t even prune to an outgoing eye as this was regarded as last century retro thinking.

Oh well.  He was the experienced expert so I left him, made myself a cup of tea and peeped through the kitchen window to view the mayhem.

He finished the job in about an hour and a half – and to give him  some small credit – it would have taken me a week and a half to get my rose garden completely pruned.

OK so what were the final results of the rose pruning?

Well there was no major damage to report except for the massacre of my lovely “Double Delight” which took a real beating.  Such a beating in fact, that she still looks sad and hasn’t recovered her earlier vigour.

I can promise you that this pruning season I will tend her myself and prune very lightly indeed and only remove the dead bits. In another year she should recover.

But I’ll tell you one thing.  Never again will I let anyone near my roses.  Even if it takes me a month to prune them myself, I will do a few roses every day and get through the task my way.

A lesson learnt. Don’t presume that all so-called rose experts know a lot more than you do. Sometimes you as the garden owner have a better and more sympathetic understanding of your own roses.

The post Rose Pruning – My Crazy Experiment appeared first on Roses and Gardens.

Garden Queen - a true queen among roses

The top five roses in my garden include 3 hybrid teas and two floribundas.

I’m sorry that this article is limited to only 5 roses but you have to stop somewhere and the list could go on and on.

If you asked me to choose another 5 favourite roses I could do so  with ease.

But let’s take a look at my top five roses for today only – because tomorrow I could change my mind as there are so many to choose from.

So here they are:

My top five roses

Mr Lincoln –  a very large deep red rose
Double Delight – red. white and pink popular rose
Garden Queen – pinkish mauve – hard to describe but it’s lovely!
My Granny – pink pom-poms all over the bush
Deloitte & Touche – pink and orange roses and buds in profusion

• I have chosen Mr Lincoln because the bush is huge and so are the roses. I like a large, healthy rose tree rather than those spindly bushes that have been pruned back to the ground. (And I will talk about my pet pruning gripe another time.)  Mr Lincoln is a dramatic red rose with a wonderful scent and is completely trouble free in my garden.  It never complains and it gives me bunch after bunch of huge, sweet-smelling red roses for the vase.

• Double Delight is a firm favourite not only with me but with rose lovers all over the world.  This beautiful red, pink and white rose is generously displayed all over a strong growing rose bush. The scent is superb and the bush is large and healthy. It always seems to be in bloom. Lovely roses for the vase too.

• Garden Queen is another huge hybrid tea rose – in fact, it’s the biggest rose in my garden. The colour is a dark pink that tends almost to mauve. The bush is large and healthy  and grows extremely well if it gets enough water. It is also disease resistant. Garden Queen is a rose with the “wow” factor. And the perfume is irresistible.  A truly “wow” rose.

• And now we have two of my favourite floribundas.  I have  many more but today I will stick to two.  My Granny is such a generous bloomer that you simply have to love her.  The rose  is covered all year  round in medium-sized, pink pom-poms.  As they fall off so new pom-poms are produced in clusters.  They are low growing, profuse and always in bloom. I have these planted all along a black wrought iron, dividing garden  fence. And the sight is truly lovely.

• Deloitte & Touche is a firm favourite world-wide – and with reason. I have a  group of five of these floribundas grouped together in the lawn on a bank and it is always a mass of colour.  Against the green lawn this is a stunning display.  I have found the bushes to be amazingly healthy. They grow at an even knee-length height and they are simply covered with trusses of pink and pale orange blooms.

Try any of these roses and you won’t be disappointed. They are all healthy, easy growing and prolific.  What more can you ask for in a rose?  And to cap it all, the hybrid teas I mentioned are in my list of top ten fragrant roses.

So there you have it.  A personal description of the top five roses in my garden.

The post The Top Five Roses in my Garden appeared first on Roses and Gardens.

Bougainvillea and petrea planted together make a great team and create a dramatic impact with their colourful display.   They are ideal shrub mates as they come into flower at exactly the same time.

Here is a lovely corner in my garden where bougainvillea and petrea are blooming together.

Both these shrubs like a position in full sun so they are perfect planting mates.  But best of all, they come into flower at exactly the same time in spring.  And they certainly give a glorious display with their mountains of red and purple flowers side by side.

Many gardeners are hesitant about planting these prolific shrubs as they think they are too overbearing for smaller gardens.  But it’s a pity to lose out on such a dramatic show of colour as these two shrubs can give you. So here are a few tips to help you keep them beautiful but under control.

Grow Large Shrubs in Containers

Luckily these strong shrubs can be heavily pruned back to the size that is most suitable for your garden. In fact they can also be grown in containers which will automatically restrict the size of the plant to something much more manageable.

Here is a red bougainvillea that has been growing in a container for about six years and as you can see it is still very manageable. Even though bougainvilleas are notoriously rampant growers, I haven’t had to prune it back because the pot is keeping it in shape.

Red bougainvillea against a white wall

You can always try these climbers in pots first to check their habit of growth.  Then if you would prefer a more dramatic show you can transfer them to the garden proper.

Submerge pots under the ground

Here’s a tip for you if you prefer a more natural look for your garden without containers but still want to control the growth of your climbers: simply plant your climbers in their respective pots and submerge these under the ground till you can’t see the rim of the pot.

Then water as usual.  In this way the rampant growth of these climbers will be restricted and they will never grow wildly out of control.

I have had success with both these shrubs at the coast and inland so I have found them to be suitable for most climates.

Do write and tell me about your own experiences with bougainvillea and petrea in your garden.

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