The cold has continued so there has been no real gardening done which is quite frustrating. I have my fingers crossed that by next weekend, the first weekend in March and my birthday weekend that things will be warming up.
Despite the cold the weekend hasn’t been without its horticultural flavour. Yesterday, I spent the majority of the day at my local Hardy Plant Society meeting. This is the first time I have attended this group’s meetings mainly because they have a day long meeting which isn’t great when you work all week and your weekends are precious. However, this group’s meeting kept being mentioned to me and I discovered last weekend at the Galanthus event that people travel from Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire to attend the Western Counties meetings. I was advised not to miss the discussion in the morning so ever one to follow advice, well at least once, I got there for 10:30 and left around 3:30 and I have a fab day. I learnt lots including just how little I actually knew, bought plants, acquired free seeds and will tell you more later in the week.
Today I wrapped up warm and spent an hour in the garden. The main task was to sort out the step-over apple trees. I started them off this time last year and had been tying in the branches during the spring and early summer. The ties looked awful, like a row of damp and frozen washing hanging forlornly on a washing line. So today I removed all the ties, which was good as some of them were rubbing the branches. I tied the branches in again with just one tie, or two at the most, this time done better and I also cut the upright canes down to the horizontals – something which had been irritating me for weeks when I looked out the living room window.
My second job was to sow some alpine seeds which arrived this week from Alplains in the USA. I have sown Fritillaria pudica and Allium obtusum v. obtusum and placed them on the patio so they at least benefit from the continuing cold weather.
My eldest son meanwhile was taking out one of the branches of the inherited Prunus tree. We inherited three trees with the garden and two of these are in the top left corner of the garden – a willow and a prunus. Both far too large for their location and the willow has swamped the prunus over the years. I probably should have the tree surgeons in to tackle the willow but access is awful and I suspect the cost would just be extortionate due to this. Over the last year my son has started to tidy the trees up but taking out the branches he can reach and cutting back stumps from where our predecessors and neighbours have chopped branches off. Of course, as a hobby wood turner, he has an alternative motive but he also cares about trees a lot and the state of ours irritates him hugely. The branch that came out today was removed as it was out of balance with the rest of the tree and also grew over where I planted a new Sorbus last year.
So all in all some annoying task were achieved this weekend and ticked off the list and I have a lot of food for thought from the talk on Saturday, Another good weekend.
