Looking after the gardener

I am not one for recommending 'beauty products' of any kind - each to their own - but this has to be shared.

The product I am commending to you, you probably can't get!  On the back left is a bottle with all the stuff at the top (I keep it upside down ready to use) and just says Gardeners by Upper Canada.  I assume it was a gift from family in Canada (?) and it is just fantastic.  I have used it for two summers and it is now running out.  It will clean the dirtiest of hands and nails in one go and leave them feeling and smelling  lovely.  At Christmas I spread the word I needed more but English friends couldn't find it over here.  Waiting in the wings I now have two products from Heathcote and Ivory - they are the orange barrier cream and small green hand scrub.  Then I also have a large green hand scrub (at the back).  This one is from Crabtree and Evelyn.  I have no idea if any of them work as well as the one I love but I thought I would share.

I do wear gloves for some jobs but still get dirty.  Mostly I like to work without - can't plant seeds and small plants in gloves, can't tie up things in gloves, etc etc etc so often come in with half the garden ground into skin and filling my nails.  I have always done the obvious thing - warm water in the basin and nail brush and soap and a good old scrub.  this leaves your hands like sandpaper and not always clean.  I assure you not so with my Canadian hand scrub - it is just great.  I use it too when I paint.

Greenhouse clear out

Finally got round to clearing out my greenhouse and getting started on seeds.

seeds planted

Green tray - sunflowers for some children to grow - maybe for the Burrs.  Black tray has three rows - one has tomatoes (Money Maker) another is green peppers (California wonder) and a row with cucumbers (Marketmore).  

I plant three seeds per segment and then remove two.  With luck that will leave me with five of each plant which is tons for us.  They all claim to grow outside so if I can't squeeze them in my little 6 x 4 some can go out.  That's the theory.  Leftover seeds go to a friend at the lotty.

aubergine

This is a bit precious and is doing brilliantly so far.  My daughter has her first garden to go at this year and has started off some aubergines and given me one a few weeks ago at the first true leaf stage.  It lived in the kitchen and then in the conservatory and has now gone on to 'big school'.  This is a cherished veg!

all neat and tidy

We have water lines to the greenhouse too, so it means all my plants, garden, patio pots and greenhouse can always manage without me if they have to.  If you do this it is worth saying not to just hand it on to the mechanicals.  Stuff might get under or over-watered or some other problem occurring without your overseeing it now and then.  It does stop the old song of "We can't go away for four days in this heat - everything will die" - at least that doesn't happen.  Gardener happy, gardener's non-gardening other half happy.  Win, win.

Last year's herbs

Generally with herbs I like to start fresh each year but looking at these it seems a shame.  They must be in the right place and have come through the winter just fine.

We have plugged in our watering system so really they are leading the life of Riley - sunnyish spot and against a conservatory wall, well drained pots on gravel and soon to be fed.  What's not to like.

I have grown just about every herb under the sun for years.  Last year I decided it really wasn't worth growing things like two kinds of basil and thyme etc etc etc.  On the extremely rare occasion they are needed I don't mind buying them.  The three I do use a lot - mint, flat leaf parsley and chives I am happy to keep outside the back door so they are handy.

Ready to go

Last week I bought some plants to make up my hay basket under the front window but since then the weather has been too miserable to get out to do it so here they sit waiting.  I am sharing this for two reasons - the first is that I have a neighbour a couple of streets away who is being blasted by the occasional frost even now and yet these are happily awaiting their new home.  It is a reminder that whatever any know-it-all like me (and Monty Don)  tells you to do or not do it still may not be right for your little micro climate.  gardening is all about trial and error and lots and lots of patience finding what works for you.

The second reason is, that if like me you are a crinkly and like to get the Wednesday discount at B & Q,  you don't seem to get it on these.  They are all the four for £5 groups of plants .  My husband's theory is they are already discounted?????

In the garden now

Just sharing that lovely May feeling even if the weather is atrocious. 

tiny alpine clematis

accidental mix of tiny forget-me-not and corydalis

magnolia stellata still hanging in there

the white narcissus is poeticus and has wonderful smell

love self-seeders like this viola

every garden needs a cherry

Maybe found a gardener

With a bit of luck I may have found a gardener.  In the last four years I have tried two.  The first blithely dug up swathes of favourite plants thinking they were weeds so, that relationship didn't last long.  Truly, it was not my fault and I let him have three goes which pretty much decimated the borders.  I established that he could recognise grass, dandelion, creeping buttercup and chickweed and was instructed on all three occasions to only remove those.  They are my most pernicious weeds and I reckoned I could keep the rest down myself.  By the third time he had gone through the beds like a tornado I gave up on him.  Last year I had a lady who seemed to know her plants but she ended up cutting my tiny box hedge with huge electric cutters - so it was pretty chewed up, pruned my roses in August and heartbreakingly pruned a young tree into deformity; all unbidden by me as she was employed to do the weeding - but she "got bored with that".

I have jumped in again with another chap who, so far, shows huge promise and I commend him to you.  Clean and Green 

He is smart enough to say he doesn't know everything and will ask if he is not sure.  Reassuring.  He did a great job clearing out all four beds and the front garden on his own and in under a day.  First time I have seen soil (and the chance to plant something!!!) in four years.

He is now on a promise to come back every two weeks to maintain them.  Due tomorrow. 

Help needed

Does anyone know a gardener who doesn't cost an arm and a leg and who is willing to do weeding?

I am getting beyond the two hours a week on hands and knees required to maintain a garden in good order and need someone to do an hour a week or two hours a fortnight or whatever suits just to maintain my small garden.  We have had someone cutting our lawns for twenty plus years so I can't just get rid of him but he doesn't do gardening as such.

Initially I want him/her to dig up each border in turn and shift plants around.  I have decided I want each border to only have about four different plants in it.  There would be an astilbe border for example with all my astilbes gathered up into that space plus the backdrop roses that are already in every area and any trees or major shrub that's there.  In this case that border would keep its two huge Rue and the magnolia and have just fritillaries under-planted in it for the Spring.