Roses and Potatoes

 

                              Lovely climbing rose back in June .

Early this morning we had a very mean sprinkle of mizzle .  The water barrels are still empty .       Anyway it meant that for the first time this summer , I was able to do a few jobs in the ornamental garden . 

The climbing rose which looked at it's very best last month , now needed some serious attention . 

The petals were dropping into the crown of my Musa basjoo below .

So now the rose has almost finished flowering , I thought I'd give it a good tidy up and tie in some of the remaining branches to encourage it to grow the other way .

I went in quite hard , but there are still some sprays of fresh rose buds to come .

                            Musa basjoo  ( fairly hardly in my location )

It's looking very dry . I'm going to give it a good feed and a drink , put a good mulch around the bottom .  I want it to get nice and strong in order to get through next winter . This banana plant is quite hardy here in my location S.W. Cornwall .

  It has been cooler this morning , but they are saying that we are going to have another period of very hot weather , coming by next Wednesday .

      Musa ensete "maurelii  ( needs to be brought under cover for the Winter )

As for this banana plant , well , Musa ensete "maurelii" looks to be doing really well . . . . but I will give that a feed and a good long drink . . . I'll be digging it up again in a month's time and dragging it under cover for the winter .

Ricardo has been on Spuds in tubs duty and with all the joy of an eight year old proudly presented me with all of these from just one Spud tub !   🤗

                      ....and he scrubbed them all nice and clean too !  

          That's all fer today folks , hope you're having a great weekend .

                                             love Debbie 💐x

                                                   🌿☀️🌿🌦️🌿

Banana plant update

 

The Banana that I planted out the other day has a lovely new leaf . 

Now I have to plant out this other one  . I really need to do it while the earth is still soft after all the rain  ....but I am aching !

I have hurt my foot , broken two toes . It's not too bad and I,m managing to get about and do things o.k with comfrey balm , paracetamol and my sandals are comfortable .

Anyway ,  The rest of me is aching too much to do it today from all this week's weeding and planting .

The water-but is only half full , so we didn't have as much rain as I had originally thought .

The other Banana is going somewhere up here .I might move some of the Echiums up here too.

I have been  told I'm not to do anything in the garden today ....but I did sow some seeds up in the shed .

Keeping busy in the garden is helping to distract me from pain .

Seeds I,ve sown today are Collard "Flash" . It's a kind of cabbagey kale thing that is very popular in America ....or it was in olden times. It's a bit late now really but thought I,d give them a try .

O.K . o.k .so the rest of the day I,m chilling . Feet up . Doing my embroidery   .

Musa ensete " Maurelii" - Time to plant out .

 No matter what I plan to do in the garden , there is always something else that I have to do first !

" I,m just going to plant out the banana plant ! " I called out to my husband " Get the kettle on ! I,ll be in in a minute !" Like all I had to do was dig a hole and drop in the banana plant .

Wrong !  I had to clear a whole lot of weeds first and mostly ... sigh ... Ivy ! 

                                                      All of this !

                                   From just this 2ft by 4ft space !

I like to do a proper job , so I pulled out this large tub which has the Jubaea chilensis in ...also known more commonly in the U.K. as the Chilean Wine Palm .

My husband was given permission to bring it back from Chile , we haven't planted it out yet to keep it small in it's tub .This can grow to be an absolutely huge beast of a palm ,it is a very special one , so we are still deciding where to plant it  .

                             So then that paving slab had to be pulled out .

                    More Ivy weeded out and slab and tub put back in place .

Only then could I begin to dig out the planting hole and the ground was rock hard .

I mixed some nice fresh compost in with the earth  and finally hauled the banana out  of it's plastic tub . It had been over-wintered in the woodshed  and over the last couple of months I have been dragging it out of the woodshed by day and back in at night to slowly acclimatise it  .

          So there we are ! One lovely Musa ensete " Maurelii " planted .

I hope it will be happy in this position . It should very quickly fill this space and look fabulous with its huge red leaves .

                                      Now I really need that cup of tea !