Pottering about in the garden .

                                                     Crinum powellii "rosea"

So what do I mean when I say that I,ve been "pottering about in the garden " ? .......
 In the ornamental garden we have two huge clumps of Crinum powellii that give us a beautiful display later on in the summer . It really is a lovely thing in full bloom with the bees buzzing happily around it . I want to move some of it to a couple of other places in our garden .
 Also I had promised a friend a bulb from it .

 So I thought  , today's the day !  I shoved my fork in ..but would it budge ..no !

 I tried again and managed to get this piece off , but the main good strong roots snapped off ... grrrr...cross with myself !  It has got a few tiny roots..if you click to look more closely  ...sigh ! Stupid me !

I have potted it up and hopefully it will grow stronger new roots ....think I'll leave this job till later on in the year ,when we've had more rain . We haven't had any rain for about a month here the ground is so dry now and the water but is empty .

          So then I decide to tackle that very slowly withering Agave potatorum . (  Look , I just had the urge to dig ! )

 It very satisfyingly ....came up and rolled into my wheelbarrow , which I had ready laid on it's side . All I had to do was shove the wheelbarrow together with the Agave , up with my foot.

 I couldn't get a photo though whilst doing this, but here it is in my wheelbarrow . No idea what I,m going to do with it now ! I,ll think about that later .

                                              I rescued the last few pups .

We are slowly re-working the gravel bed . Now to take out the smaller Agave Americana behind . It isn't happy there .

                     The Acer "Bloodgood" is over shadowing it too much .

 So up it came , with very poor roots too and I have replanted it here in a much better place . It looks a little lost at the moment , but should grow much bigger than the Agave pottertorum did eventually .

           Ooh ! At this point ,I stood up and stretched out my poor aching back !

 Stretching out my back and my hands aching , I look around and admire the Tree Ferns unfurling and the Gunnera manicata leaves pushing up .

I give my hands a good wash , go sit in the Summer house with a glass of lemonade and do a bit of stitching ...and have a think about which Agave baby ,up in the greenhouse is going to replace the old one . I have a nice Agave ferox ..or a Dasylirion wheeleri ..or a wicked Aloe ferox ?

Gravel Garden + Agave update

I made the gravel area of my garden about 15 years ago ..and landscape weed membrane has lasted very well.  It makes a pleasant interlude for the eye as you look around the garden . It is a nice place to sit  and we have a seat here . A gravel bed/garden needs to be raked often to stop weeds germinating ...I like to rake patterns in the gravel and keep it looking nice everyday .
However I wasn't able to keep up with it while poorly the last two years , the leaves fell from the trees, people walked on it with mud on their boots , the wildflowers crept in and  well nothing  lasts  forever . The big Agave potatorum which flowered three years ago , I had cut down it's flower mast after it had gone to seed and I had expected it to die....hasn't died ...and I thought I,d wait and see what it might do after cutting off the flower spire .
Would it die ? Would it carry on growing ?  Well , it has pretty much remained in a static state , doesn't look to be fading away , but not growing either .
 

                                The weeds crept in around it ....sigh....brambles too .
                                       Time to do something about it .

 After four days of heavy drifting fog ,the sun has at last returned  . I found a comfortable flat slab of rock to sit on and with the sun warm on my back and bucket at my side , I must have spent a good hour taking away all the rocks and pulling out weeds .

            There were even snails in there hibernating underneath those spiky leaves  .

I pulled off the very lowest leaves that came away easily and left the one you can see here. There is beauty in them too . They actually go hard and crispy and shelter the ground underneath and around the plant . The rocks that I put around the Agave soak up the heat from the sun all day and pulse it out again during the night and help shed the rain away from the roots . I also put a big cloche cover over it , on cold ,wet days and especially during the winter months . See the first picture  of the cloche cover . It is more the wet that kills them than the cold .

                     Then look what I found ! A baby Agave ! So it is still growing !

 Usually I take these off from the mother plant , leave to dry off for a couple of days and pot up in gritty compost .

 I decide to leave this one on for a bit longer and remove it when it is a little bigger and has better roots . I put some earth around it , a hand full of sharp gravel and returned some rocks to protect it .

 
I put back the large rocks ....my hands aching and sore... it is going to be very cold tonight after such a lovely day of sunshine and clear blue sky . I put on the cloche cover and weight it down with more rocks .

 Such a lovely day..... I get cleaned up and we take the dog for her walk along the cliffs.

                                            We sit and watch the waves .
I have a few other young Agave plants waiting up in my greenhouse to replace this one when it finally goes .
               Hope you had a lovely Sunday ....I will dream of Agaves tonight .

Agave Potatorum update

 For those who don't know I grew this Agave from seed  from the British Cactus Society , on my bedroom windowsill 15 years ago .
  Well it began to put up its inflorescence or flower spire  about a year and a half ago .

 Agaves often throw out runners with babies (or pups ) to some distance away from the mother plant , but the strange thing here was that , this one began to flower too !

The bees just loved the flowers and I had hoped they would then produce more babies up in those branches .....but it seems that they don't  ...instead they become seedpods .

So I saved a few , hoping to let them dry out and get the seeds ...but  it was around this time that I got seriously ill with cancer and everything became a blur .
 I cant remember what I did with those seed pods !     Sigh ....

Anyway  , now it had finished flowering and the green seed pods were beginning to drop off ....and  then usually  , they die  :(         I began to wonder if I could save the mother plant , by chopping down the inflorescence /flowering spire , also known as a "mast " ...so it wouldn't put all it's energy into it .
 Winter was fast approaching , we'd already had one terrific storm , which brought down some of my favourite pittasporums.
 I put a large cloche over the Agave and threw the branches over the top to hold it down .   Every night I would cover it and every morning I uncovered it . Also keeping it totally covered if and when we had really bad weather .

 The garden was such a mess and recovering from my op  , I couldn't do as much as I would  have liked .

 This old cloche is like an umbrella. I bought it about ten years ago and at the time my husband was away and I couldn't get the spokes into the pockets of the cloche properly ...so that is why it looks so wonky . I really need to get another one if anyone knows where I can get one or one that is similar ?

 Here it is with all the branches holding it down against the winter gales  !

 So here we are today  , over the winter it did begin to get a bit yellowy  but it certainly picked up again through this Spring and Summer .
 By the way , the Agave behind is Agave Americana , a much hardier one  and in fact probably the toughest one , I don't usually cover it unless it is really cold and wet .
 It is usually the wet that kills Agaves rather than the cold , hence all the flat slabs of slate tucked in under it's leaves and all around ...and it is also in a bed of sharp gravel , which helps drain away rain water from it's roots and also keeps the slugs off .
 The gravel bed is a complete mess now and needs serious weeding and even  totally replace the weed membrane underneath the gravel and another fresh load of gravel .
 It was so lovely when I first created it......now I look around and feel sad .

                                             ....but what is this ? !      Look !

                          It has begun to push up more babies / pups all around !
I am so happy ! I will be taking these up and potting them on . You know ,  Agave potatorum is such a lovely bluey Agave !
   Well , we are once again heading into Autumn and I am wondering if I can get the mother Agave through a second winter  ?  
 Cheerio for now .. Daisy Debs is off to dig out the big umbrella cloche again  .... somewhere in the shed I think ........

Sorting out the Gravel Garden and Agave Pottatorum

Tuesday I made a start on this area of my garden , After a year and a half of me  being very poorly , the Pittasporums had grown too tall and spindly , they need to be forced to bush out at the bottom more . There are evil brambles clambering through its branches and it is awkward to get in to ..I have to climb in through the branches of my beautiful Acer " Bloodgood ". There is a pretty young  Corkscrew Hazel  and a lovely shrub that has bright yellow pea shaped flowers ..it usually responds well to being hard pruned after flowering....I may have cut it back too hard ..since I accidently cut off the one lower branch that I had meant to keep .
 Next job .....Agave Pottatorum..that I grew 15 years ago on my bedroom windowsill , the seed that I got from the British Cactus Society .
  This year it put up a splendid flower spire , to the delight of local honeybees and butterflies ....and me : )
  I watched as the flowers developed seed pods and then one by one they fell off . Some of these I saved  to try and dry out and grow..the rest fell to the ground and mysteriously disappeared  .
 Now here's the thing ....people keep asking me " Will the mother plant die now that it has flowered ? " " Could it be saved ? " "What if you cut off the flower spire , maybe it would have enough energy to survive ? "
                                                    So , I thought , lets see !

                  I had to use the biggest loppers in my husbands tool shed !

                                            Scrunch .......and down it came !

 So with more horrible weather coming , I decided that I must get the Agaves covered
over...they are o.k with the cold ..but dont like too much wet .
                                             

I have slabs of stone all around and tucked under the Agaves leaves which direct the rain water away from the centre  to keep those roots dry as possible .

I bought this umbrella cloche many years ago, no idea which make it is . I never managed to put it together correctly but used it in its semi put together state anyway . It is forecast to be very windy,  so I have weighed it down with some of the Pittasporum branches .
 There is another Agave behind it , this one is Agave Americana which is the the most commonly seen one, it is the hardiest one of all the Agaves here in Cornwall England .
I know if you happen to be reading this in somewhere like Mexico , then I,m sure you'll be laughing at all this  !

 I found a baby Agave Pottatorum some distance away from the mother plant in the surrounding gravel ....now rescued and taken away to be potted up .
I called it a day after all that . It was getting too dark for me to see what I had achieved even !

Wednesday I left it as I had other things to do and Belly Dance Class in the evening  .

Thursday , I got up at 5.30 am and did the washing and hung it all out and got straight back to lopping the Pittasporums , which smells like lemons and has wood like iron ...cutting spiteful  brambles and pulling out the Ivy which is taking over the gravel area .

With my two best friends  watching and following me , I weeded ,weeded , weeded !

I finished off with some more weeding and pruning the red stems of Cornus alba Siberica
those red stems are now sitting in a deep bowl of water , where they will put out roots ready to be planted out somewhere else in the garden or share  .
 Friday --went shopping in Falmouth with my friend  , exploring all the lovely little shops we'd never been in before ....had delicious fish and chips in The Harbour Lights Fish + Chips Restaurant .... we always used to take our children in there when they were small...it was always so child friendly. So it brought back happy memories  , lovely views across the harbour too .
 So housework , gardening , dancing , shopping ,eating well and talking ....I should sleep well tonight !
                        More wind and rain coming  .......yawn  ! Goodnight !

Agave Potatorum Update

Well , it has certainly taken it's time , but Agave  potatorum is at last opening her spidery blooms . ....and the honey bees are loving it !
Just look at all that pollen on this little chaps knees !

Yes that is our beautiful blue sky ! After weeks of drifting fog and Cornish mizzle ,we are enjoying a wonderful Indian Summer .
Clear nights are getting a little chilly , but WOW !.......I even got to see that Super Blood Moon at 3.20 am ..in my little sainsburys short set pyjamas and pink wellies : )
  I,m afraid I didnt get a very good photo of it though . lol !