What Jobs Are We Doing in the Garden Today... MK3.. 2013

Started off tidying the cellar and I found my surviving Pleione were growing (one is rather advanced). So I've just been potting them up.
I also found these germinating in the compost (the previous owner seemed to toss seed heads in there).............




Not sure as to what they are, but I've potted them up anyway.

 

Pictures to gladden the spirits armandii. Thanks

 

Thank you, and Sally, for our first wander of the year through your garden Armandii,
Jenny

 

Spent a few hours applying sulphate of iron solution to two lawns to kill moss.It takes ages as I had to weigh out the powder for each 5 litre can then disolve it and then apply each canful to 5 square metres of lawn. Job's done now,phew, and moss is already turning black and I'll scarify in a couple of weeks time.

 

Well not alot done today.Had to catch up on house work However watered the pots in the garden..did not realise how dry they had got.Also my cycads in the conservatory were really dry, poss due to the temp rising this week. So had to give them a good soaking as well. Still got a large bag of bark, sand, and grit in the boot of my car which I am waiting for hubby to get out for me.Knowing him, I'll be driving to and from work for the next week with it!

 

I cleared out my greenhouse today and gave it a spring clean. Also sowed a tray of Nicotiana. I wish I could speed up the rotation in my electric propagator, I've got a lot to get through this year.

 

I always germinate them at room temperature Sheal.

 

Found my pot of young Dracunculus bulbs (or are they tubers?) poking through. Trouble is that they had three pots sat on top of 'em! Freshened the compost in a few other bulb pots too, as all the Lilium michauxii that Simbad sent me last year were poking through too.
Pricked out some Salvia (dolichantha and apiana), Kennedia nigricans and Commelina colestris Alba seedlings.
Potted up the Clerodendrum ugandense cuttings that were rooting and started a few more off.
And ordered more stuff that I don't need!

 

They're not Iris, most likely Daylily or Crocosmia. But there may have been something that was lost to the weather a year or two ago, so worth growing a potful on just in case!

 

Yeah, I thought that was too much faff, so I put mine on with the lawn fertilizer spreader (its a "chucker" rather than a "trickler")... there was a gentle greeze blowing which help spread the fine power about a bit, but not too much. I went left-right and crossways front-back, but I don't think the spreader "chucked" it evenly across the row width I left, hopefully the crossways will have given reasonable coverage.

I could do with a better, more accurately dispensed, but less faff than "dissolve in a watering can", method.

 

Sounds quite reasonable to me Shiney. If I need to buy more ferrous sulphate it would cost about £7 for 500 gm though that would cover 100 square metres at the max rate of 5gm per metre. Raking the moss out is a hellish task if you don't have a powered scarifier, though not that bad if you do have one. So £50 for scarifying and getting rid of the rakings sounds reasonable enough.

 

That sounds reasonable too. Apart from the material it has to be applied, and then come back another time to scarify, so there is "travel" in the initial application cost too.

Is this a Nationwide Company? I keep thinking about having Green Thumb give me a quote, but they won't give me even an approximate cost without coming out, which I know means wasting my time with their sales pitch which I don't want ... I just want to know, initially, if the order-of-magnitude cost is something I want to afford, or not. A while since I last tried them, I might have another go for an approximate cost.