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rosaprimula

where's Ken when you need him - nowhere!

Campanula UK Z8
10 years ago

C'mon Ken, hop to it - I need advice, encouragement, solace....and fast. You have 5 acres...and now I do too. However, I also have no money and limited labour resources. Working at an average 5 plants per square metre, 5 acres requires 100,000 plants! Obviously, trees and rides will count for half of this and I will leave a large area 'au naturel' but even so, I need to raise a few thousand seedlings every year while trying to be in 3 places at once. Horribly, my allotment, home garden and woodlands are all looking as though we are trying to do too much at once and failing miserably. Not helped by the fact that my home garden is essentially a pot garden and needs daily watering (which I am fed up and bored with by now), the allotment is always iffy because I grow fruit and vegetables and it is as far from a decorative potager as is possible to be (looks more like a gigantic, flattened composting area). So, how should I go about trying to raise all these plants? How would you do it? We have limited access to water and live in a converted horsebox. So far, have ordered a few thousand bulbs (the easy bit) and have around 800 hardy geraniums, foxgloves, campanulas, umbellifers, forget-me-nots, astrantia in modules - some of which can be planted this autumn but most will have to overwinter....somewhere although I do have a decent cold greenhouse (takes up a entire third of my garden). Am having one of my weekly (daily) panic sessions and need some advice quickly.

Comments (29)

  • dg
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    First of all, congrats on your new property! Take a breath, it will all work out fine. You'll find a way to handle your new property and the challenges that come along with new ways of gardening. These things take time and fund$ so go slow and easy and do it to your satisfaction the first time ;-)

    Try to tackle and complete one chore/challenge at a time. As you complete each task you will feel more and more accomplished and settled. It will take years to build your home garden of your dreams but, given time, it will become your personal work of art.

    So, first off it sounds like you may need a temporary bed/garden for your potted plants. Getting them in the ground in a "holding pattern" will relieve some stress of watering and where to plant decisions for now. Later on when you have a plan, or a permanent bed ready, you can re-plant at that time and the once potted plants will take right off!

    Good luck and I hth,
    Deb

  • dg
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oh, forgot to mention...
    I imagine that Ken's been mowing and tending his garden all day. Now the kids are home from school and need food and help with homework :-)

    I'm sure that he'll check in when he can with great advice.

    Deb
    edited for spelling error

    This post was edited by Dgregory on Wed, Aug 28, 13 at 16:46

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    ken is having an august drought panic attack ...

    chuck it all.. invest in a pub ...

    ken

    ps: gotta go make dinner.. will mull it over ... get back with you tomorrow ....

  • molie
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow! Five acres is a lot of gardening! It sounds to me as if your hands are "filled" with the need to overwinter what you have as well as the desire to propagate more. Boy, do you need for help from Ken!

    Well, I'm not Ken, but until he appears, I do have a few suggestion ---

    Have you checked the Winter Sowing Forum? The folks on that forum get an enormous amount of plants from winter sowing seeds. Of course, I'm not sure how much "winter" you do get. I'm guessing yours is a temperate climate with little snow, just ice? Still, it was an amazing revelation to me to see rows and rows of milk jugs and empty soda bottles sprouting healthy perennials come spring.

    You might also want to check out propagation via cuttings. I'm attaching a link to the work done by Carol Yee from Carol Collectibles in Swanville, Maine. Carol does amazing work and has some sensible, low-cost techniques. This is the same link I provided earlier in another thread about propagating rhodies. There's also a video online of Carol's gardens and techniques. She's an amazing resource for those wanting to propagate what they have, or even propagate cuttings from friends and neighbors.

    Do you have plant swaps as those of us in The New England Forum enjoy here in Connecticut? Maybe--- via garden clubs--- you could find places to swap plants nearby.

    And, as a last-ditch effort, here's a tip from my former days as an employee of a large garden center in southern Connecticut. There was no way they could winter over all of the unsold plants and so many of them ended up in a huge mulch pile in the back of the property. I was able to take many of these home. There might be some sympathetic growers near you who would sell cheaply, or even give you, plants they'll no longer can care for. I grouped pots close together, banked it all in with mulch and clippings and asked them --- please, please! --- to survive over the winter. Surprisingly, many of them did.

    Molie

    Here is a link that might be useful: Try to bring some green indoors

  • aachenelf z5 Mpls
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Didn't you post some pics earlier in the season showing how much vegetation there was to clear before the planting could be done? How did that all work out?

    Kevin

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Obvs, I am still hauling the brushcutter and crappy lawnmower around the place - although I did buy a whopping austrian scythe for getting vengeful with the brambles. Even so, local farmer took pity on me (after falling about laughing) and gave me a hefty slug of some lethal broadleaf herbicide which I have liberally applied to the very worst of the brambles (convincing myself that removing an invasive monoculture BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE was an OK thing to do - Assad could learn a thing or two from me about chemical warfare!) Anyhow, getting seriously bored with the 3days on, 3 days off (and one day of torpor to recover in time for next fray),trudging between Cambridge and Norfolk, labouring like a madwoman to catch up routine....and just wanted to put something pretty in the earth. Of course, as soon as I did, my little handful of seedlings looked pitiful, like a lentil on a dinner plate. It is the scale that is getting to me, having gardened intensively in tiny spaces, I feel in need of a firmer strategy than my usual method of falling in lust with a plant and elbowing it in somewhere. That, and the unfamiliar shadiness (lethal for a rose fanatic).
    Appreciative of the calm and sensible replies.

  • molie
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Deb is right about taking it slow and with starting with one chore. How can you do otherwise with so much land? Plus, you do have quite a commute between spots! How long will that last?

    Maybe when some of the brambles are cleared, you could post a shot of some areas you'd like to tackle first.

    Molie

  • terrene
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Congrats on your land Camp! Don't have much to add but it's sounds terribly exciting!

  • kimka
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Come on you know deep down how all of this is supposed to be done.

    First, draw a plot of your property with the nonremoveables (trees, buildings, rocks etc) (and scan it into your computer). Add the sun/shade hours in each type of area.

    Then sketch in the types of garden ares you want. Dream a little. Some day I want a pond and a waterfall over there, the berry patch over there, a hosta garden there, that spot needs a retaining wall about there. Get an idea of where you want paths to get you from area to area.

    Doing this planning first will minimize the "do overs."

    Then see which spot attacts your eye and heart the most. Start there. The heck with the rest of the property right now. The brambles will be there next year. In fact, the brambles will be back anywhere you don't get planted anyway.

    Without a big crew and lots of money, you are not going to get it all done in one year.

    Settle for getting a very good start on a "room" you can enjoy as you spread out instead of being appalled at the scuffy look of a few plant in many different spots and spreading yourself so thin.

    And Deb nailed it. You definitely need a holding bed for stuff you aren't ready to put in permanent homes yet.

    Wintersowing is great way to get thousands of plants for very little investment, especially when you trade for the seeds.

    I envy you 5 acres.

  • katob Z6ish, NE Pa
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Keep clearing, this will be your only chance to do it without worrying about harming any if your new treasures..... And then go back and re-clear all the volunteers that pop up in your cleared zones.
    Plant some of the rampant roses you could never let lose in the allotment. If the brambles do return the roses should still dominate!
    Clear and then shrubs and trees go in first. They can better tolerate neglect if you give them a bit of early on attention. For as much as you want masses of the delicates, clear clear clear first or you'll get bogged down in all the fiddely care they'll require.
    But I bet deep down inside you already know all this. Good luck, keep at it and realize it may be three seasons before you have something that makes you sigh with delight :)

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    hey

    where is the link to that old post.. i thought i gave you some ideas back then.. which you promptly ignored .. lol ..

    first .... in my MI ... weather wise .... we are heading.. very fast into fall ... frost in 6 weeks ....

    august.. with its attendant heat.. ALWAYS breaks a gardeners back ... really messes up your head ....

    we switch from all the potential of summer.. to the slow down and clean up of fall ...

    and that is good.. because i am usually so fed up.. irritated.. pissed off... that it is real good that i can see the end of the light in this tunnel ....

    soooo... from a psyche standpoint alone.. i understand where you are ... now if only you can come to grips with this ....

    lets just step back.. focus on... WHAT YOU ACCOMPLISHED ... and lets start thinking about what you can accomplish ... THIS FALL .. for next spring..

    I THINK... i suggested to you.. way back when.. that you delineate.. and create.. a nursery bed .... did you ever do that ????

    if you had.. you could .. right now.. be thinking about DIRECT SOWING of seed this fall .. so you would have your little plants.. already on sight.. come next spring .... instead of thinking about how to grow them one place..and transport them another ... etc ....

    second.. if you havent already... you need to think and plan around drought tolerant plants .... the opposite of what i call FOO FOO ...

    the greatest difference between suburbia.. and my 5 acres... was there simply was not going to be that level of TLC ... to grow ALL the exotics.. when i moved here.. whatever i brought.. either lived or died... and over the years.. i have collected plants.. which grow.. thrive.. on benign neglect ... [this would include.. trees.. conifers.. daylily .... basic flowering shrubs .. the naturalizing spring ephemerals .. etc...]

    and this will be hard.. because you want to do it all the way you used to ... and that simply isnt going to work .. as you are learning ....

    so .... its your mind set that is failing you ...

    chin up.. hup hup .... and bobs your uncle... NEVER FORGET.. you are having the time of your life [[AND I KNOW ITS REALLY HARD TO SEE THAT RIGHT NOW.. !!!!]]]]..

    lets get a little more zen on where you are.. and where you are going.. and give yourself a pat on the back.. for what YOU DID ACCOMPLISH .... throw out the old list of what you THOUGHT you would accomplish .... and simply take a few weeks to simply enjoy your property ...

    and in that vein.. how about you start thinking about a before and after post ... so you can focus yourself on what you did accomplish .... i am always telling the kids. the trick to any long term project.. is to finish something.. anything.. so you can achieve a sense of accomplishment.. so that will drive you forward.. to doing more ..... so if you did this post.. to entertain us.. you will get a lot of back slapping.. congrats.. etc.... you will understand what good you did do .... and perhaps we can focus you on what the next steps should be [crikey .... i swear i sad that all to you before.. verbatim....]

    just get a tent.. and some hot dogs [i dont know your GB equivalents..probably hagus on a stick or some such thing... lol...] .. and just go camp out there.. and do NOT WORK ... and just relish what you have.. and what you did ... and try to figure out the next step ... NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK.. I WOULD BET MY SHINY NICKLE.. THAT YOU DID GREAT THINGS THIS SUMMER ... but that right now.. you are having a hard time seeing that ... you need to go visit your eden.. simply to ENJOY IT ... rather than a continuing drudge .. dont you think????

    LETS JUST GET YOUR HEAD SCREWED ON STRAIGHT ....

    and figure out.. what reasonable amount of work can be done.. in the next few weeks... that will facilitate.. next years crunch time ....

    seriously.. can you clear.. and prep a 10 by 10 foot [ok.. 3.33 meter square] spot.. that you can plant seed in????

    now find me that link.. because i am curious.. if this isnt somewhat repetitive ...

    good luck

    ken

    ps: i do understand... you dont live in snow country like i do.. where the ground freezes solid for 3 or 4 months.. but that doesnt mean.. you cant declare a garden free period of a few months.. to rejuvenate your soul... and make you want to get back out there.. on some level.. you are dreading such.. and that is what we need to fix ...

    Here is a link that might be useful: its all about thought control .... is hagus meat?? .. and would you have to eat that.. before you could have your pudding.. and whats this about putting meat or meat drippings in pudding.. its all so confusing.. to us on this side of the pond ...i am wildly digressing .... because i cant bring myslef to go outside.. and do anything in the garden ... .....

  • dg
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oh... my... gosh... "hagus on a stick"...
    :-D :-D :-D
    Deb

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    yeah i know.. i cracked myself up on that one...

    and yes.. i know its technically scottish ...

    ken

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Grief, Ken, I would eat my own knee scabs before eating haggis (on a stick or otherwise). But yep, I did/do have a nursery bed marked out but have not really done much in the way of direct sowing - I usually use modules or seed trays but will be having a foray into winter sowing using milk jugs this winter - I like the enclosed lid thing).
    I am 'living' in the wood for half the week in a converted horsebox so we do have some time to do stuff but how right you are, there has been a lot of idle loafing and vague entertaining this summer besides the bramble murder. Oh Kimka, how right you are - of course I know what I should be doing in a perfect world but mine is so dysfunctional that planning is practically a foreign language....and very true, Ken, I am having to completely relearn how to do this because I definitely cannot do what I normally do (mess around, leaping from one idea to the other, attention span of a deranged gnat) and, I fear, this is not ever going to be a manicured and wonderful woodland garden....just a better and more interesting version of what it already is (so no little delicate rarities- just rampaging thugs to get into it with the existing thugs....which is why I have sowed campanula rapunculoides (I know, bad, bad gardener!)
    Mostly, Kato, clearing is underway because it costs nothing except time and delays having to make meaningful decisions (have no problem with being zen-like although I refer to it as prevaricating and pondering). It even looks quite civilised (if you screw your eyes tight and squint a bit) Maybe one day, there will be jeffersonia, arisaemas aplenty, special epimediums and geum rivale....but right now, it is foxgloves and whatever seed I have saved (so I can be profligate and attempt direct sowing). It helps that I am an avid seed saver and there are many, many little brown envelopes in boxes in the fridge.
    Right after my first snivelling post, I got onto the bulb wholesalers and spent a couple of hundred pounds of my teapot money on 2,000 narcissi, 300 bluebells, 500 wood anemones and 25 crown imperials.....so there will be something to look forward to after the gloomy days of winter (and I can plant them in the 'rides' - very wide paths which run from east to west and north to south, planted with shady grass seed).

    This is how I hope it pans out in my ideal scenario. Firstly, the tiny bulbs and perennials, right at the start of the year, showing their faces before the leaves are on the trees. Then, around April, the bluebells and primulas, snowflakes and cardamines, all around a foot tall. Later on, the height increases to 2feet with the June show of aquilegias, silene, meconops, lunaria, hardy geraniums, geums....then the campanulas, topping out at 3feet, along with foxgloves, hemp agrimony, eupatorium, epilobium, various tall umbels until the climax with tall woodland grasses (molinia, luzula, millium) asters and aconitum. A kind of ascending scale as the plants reach higher and higher for light. Sounds logical, practical, feasible? Of course, that's the theory - the reality might be quite different but it certainly is a leap into the void for me.
    Quite right, before and after photos, notes and records are very useful, especially in moments of despair (and, of course, I can whinge and moan on this forum until you are all numb with boredom and needing to get off the keyboard and rush outside to your own garden adventures.
    Ken, I never ignore your advice - I just need lots of repetition (like a toddler) and reinforcement. I especially enjoy your very english caustic wit. Debs and Molie, holding areas are absolutely the way forward since I am beginning to crack up caring for the hundeds of little modules - am already considering getting stuff safely in the ground where it doesn't mean a disaster if I am a day late with watering........but where best to keep everything - the wood or the allotment. At the moment, I have nursery beds at the allotment but as this is in full sun and the wood is shady, I feel I need 2 nursery beds (goodness, just writing all this down is helpful). Typing feverishly, excuse spelling, typos and so on and apols again for boring on endlessly at (tedious) length.

  • linaria_gw
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi campanula,
    some good points said before.
    don`t want to be a wet blanket, just some input to ponder.

    I definitely would stick to clearing it. Perhaps you could talk the farmer into clearing some areas with his machinery, a tractor and some serious mulching/ mowing thingies?

    Make a plan, yes, define every area

    put gettin/buying plants on hold, give them to some kind of foster parents. If you have no place to put them yet and no water and stuff, that sounds like a sure way of creating LOTS of stress (and I mean mainly for yourself).
    Plant your new bulbs in a holding bed in rows.

    If you want roses, give them full sun: fell trees, otherwise they are always on the mangy side.

    Always prepare your soil 100% before planting perennials (and I mean ZERO perennial weeds left over), because otherwise you start your next time bomb or stress factor.

    I work part time, mom of two small kids, run my allotment of 200 square meters and try not to die of ulcers or heart attack, kind of, while juggling this all.

    ---------------------

    Have done several garden consulting jobs and could watch garden owners make big mistakes and learn for myself.

    Still, enjoy your great new garden-to-be, and hopefully in about 5 years we will die with envy when you show your pics.
    Good luck, bye, Lin

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I definitely cannot do what I normally do (mess around, leaping from one idea to the other, attention span of a deranged gnat) and, I fear, this is not ever going to be a manicured and wonderful woodland garden....

    ==>>> not without hiring a garden staff....

    can we see pix of a converted horse box????

    I got onto the bulb wholesalers and spent a couple of hundred pounds of my teapot money on 2,000 narcissi, 300 bluebells, 500 wood anemones and 25 crown imperials.....

    ==>>> i would like ot see this teapot too ... lol...

    I especially enjoy your very english caustic wit.

    ==>> well .. i am not English.. but will take this as a very high compliment ...

    ken

    ps: one thing i found.. across a 500 foot yard.... is that the definition of 'well manicured' varies.. lol ... a darn weed patch.. at 450 feet.. can look like a prim and proper english cottage garden.. lol.. its all about perspective.. which is what i guess this whole post is all about ...

  • flowergirl70ks
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oh Ken Ken-you know as well as i do that a garden is only finished when the gardener is planted.

  • dg
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yes campanula, like Ken, I am curious about the "converted horsebox" dwelling. My home with my DH is a 1000 sq ft "self built" living quarters inside a 50' x 96' pole building (some folks call these machine sheds). So your horsebox home intrigues me very much and a photo of it would be terrific!

    flowergirl, great quote :-)

    Deb

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am giving myself 10 years, Lin.

    Coming back to earth (after a couple of days down the allotments) and thinking a bit more clearly.
    Clearing - After a decade on public allotments, I have a much better understanding of how weeds fit into the general scheme of things....and I have become much more benign about many of them, regarding them as useful groundcover. What I do know is that there is no point in clearing anything until ready to plant something else. Nature abhors a vacuum and any nicely cleared soil immediately becomes a seed bed - not to mention the hundreds of seeds which have been revealed by digging and clearing. Which brings me to my next point, the soil.
    Digging, turning etc.- The farmer did indeed offer to plough the earth....but we politely refused since it will destroy the soil structure and bring a seed resevoir of decades to the surface. I have become a no-dig enthusiast, lifting weeds using daisy grubbers and disturbing the soil as little as possible. As it happens, the years of bramble have acted as a handy ground cover and once a bramble is sprayed and removed, there is nothing underneath - unlike my allotment where every single inch is colonised by weeds - there are large spaces between weeds in the woods.
    Bulbs- Lin, this is the bit of my plan I feel quite comfortable with because I will be planting the bulbs in the grassy rides and paths, mowing when the foliage dies down and keeping it mowed over summer while the bulbs are dormant. I fgure I will have something cheerful to look at while doing boring things like building composting toilets.
    Tree felling - next stage...and we intend to take out around 40 to create clearings and widen the edges. I guess that will see us through winter then back to worrying and stressing again.
    I was heartened to see how well the allotment was doing with neglectful non-care - true, there wasn't much of a second flush on roses but otoh, nothing had actually died - I guess plants are often tougher than we think (or at least ones which survive my (ahem) care regime are).

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Here's the horsebox - we are putting in windows and fixing the outer cladding here. Will find one in the woods.
    Ken - the teapot is a horrid little ceramic model of an english black taxi-cab - I would die rather than drinking a cup of tea brewed in it.....so I save 2pound coins (it holds about 400 pounds) in it.

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    and here we are - looking like aging hippies (which, I guess, we are) in the wood. Mr Camps is NOT the one with ridiculous socks (one of our disreputable friends).

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    man ... lol.. all you need is the giant rainbow peace sign ... and you would transport yourself back to the 60's .. lol ...

    what fun ....

    now i will be awaiting.. the before and after pix.. of this season out there ... when you have time....

    ken

  • dg
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ah, a home on wheels :-)
    Nice border collie!

    Deb

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    yes, well we have it (although it is shaped like a dragonfly) fluttering on a very long branch of hazel at the 'entrance' to the woods. We don't have cloaks though. There was a huge cannabis bust behind a wall of nettles in the meadows next to the woods last Friday (we just missed it) and the entire village of Postwick has been atwitter. Obviously not us (because we would not have planted them in view of the angler's footpath which is mowed down by the environment agency at this time every year).
    Um, yep, it is on wheels but we mangled the clutch getting it in the woods and can now only go backwards.
    This might be the last year for our collie (Lila) as she is a wobbly 16 year old (after we set off for around the 4th (short) walk of the day, she will accompany us to the edge of the wood then creep back to her comfy bed (this NEVER happened for the previous 15 years - she would have followed us into icestorms, scampering ahead).

  • linaria_gw
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Amazing, now I know what a horsebox is.
    About clearing: I meant mowing, like 1-2 times per year, after taking out the black berries.
    And the plowing: funny, right now I am working on a project recultivating a motorway tunnel. We try to establish nativ meadows annd are having a hard time getting rid of the not so dormant weeds.

    For the holding beds it could be interesting to have strips plowed and cultivated with cover crops like Sinapsis alba or Raphanus sativus oleiformis for the next season.

    Well, keep going, bye, Lin

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oooh yes, I use green manures at the allotment and never thought of doing so in the woods. Absolutely though, cover crops are so handy, especially on sandy soil which just gets battered and leached.
    Recultivating a motorway tunnel sounds interesting - these liminal spaces have such intense value for wildlife (and bored travelling humans). There is one we pass on the way to the woods which has been taken over with biennial evening primroses, buddleja and cirsium palustre - a million small torties and peacock butterflies literally covered the entire area while the tall purples and yellows looked quite spectacular in the evening sun. Earlier in the year, many of our motorway verges are white with ox-eye daisies and anthemis and even the ragwort looks good to me (as well as providing a haven for the cinnabar moth caterpillars). Wishing you well with it.
    Yep, I am going down the mowing route - it is amazing how slow grass grows in woodland (compared to open meadow) - I had imagined I would be mowing for days on end, every week, but, in fact, it is working out pretty well.
    Here is what the cleared areas are beginning to look like.

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    knee scabs????

    how about an update... ??

    anything popping in the nursery bed you were sowing last fall ..

    really.. hagus on a stick ?????

    ken

    ps: your teapot ... it really amuses me.. and i am not sure you understand why ... pounds means something different to me ... and when you say you have a tea pot.. that you put 2 pound [weight not value] coins in ... and it holds 400 pounds of weight .. i picture a teapot about as big as your horse truck ... and that amuses me ... i really need a life ...

  • Campanula UK Z8
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ho, well, I am replying in a good mood (I have intense mood swings with this project). Couple of weeks ago, during the rat invasion, I was quite a bit less sanguine and to say I am on a steep learning curve is the understatement of the century. But yes, as it happens, all well on the seed front.....although inevitably, I have (again) been forced to admit that all the rest of my family were right and I was wrong. The preppers and clearers (all of them) have been smirking - particularly when a felled tree landed in the centre of a massive newly planted bulb colony........ Nevertheless, there are many foxgloves, hesperis, campanulas, myosotis, welsh poppies.....and other common, but tough and prolific plants, in various parts of the woods....and 25 Crown Imperials. The soil is amazing - it really is. True, it is a bit stony and tree-rooty, but it has also been fallow for over 50 years with a lush cover of weeds and leaves. The narcissi were the stoutest plants I have ever seen.....and the foxgloves are going to be head-high
    Hugely limited by having crap machinery (used to gardening in tiny spaces, we spent all our money on beautiful German knives, Japanese secateurs, Swedish axes - yah know, gorgeous stuff but hopeless for the task ahead).......but hey, adaptability is surely a gardening byword.....I have spent my entire gardening life in a fever of insane ambition which inevitably means crashing and burning on a regular basis.

    Yeah, we are enjoying ourselves....and I have tree seed germination too.

    The teapot is sadly depleted.

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I have spent my entire gardening life in a fever of insane ambition which inevitably means crashing and burning on a regular basis.

    ==>> life would be boring otherwise ... lol ...

    thank God you channel that stuff in the garden .... instead of thru rampaging thru town with a machete.. lol...

    i mean really.. if you are going to snap ... go green.. lol ...

    speaking of falling huge limbs... i once had a 16 inch oak branch drove a hosta about 12 inches into the ground... it lived.. go figure.... sometimes i dont understand how if i trod on it.. it will die.. but mother 'witch' nature drops a ton of dead weight on it... and it comes back.. whats that all about ...

    ken