This is the journal of my endeavours to grow a range of fruit, veg and flowers from seed, grow organically, and my attempts to create a personal paradise with 1/2 acre of maintained gardens and 1/2 acre wild meadows. Northern Ireland's average daily high temperatures are 18 °C (64 °F) in July and 6 °C (43 °F) in January. Soil type: Clay

Monday 23 April 2012

Perennials Pushing Up

The weather is really mixed this month - lots of rain, frost, sun, chilly and warm spells (clothes best layered type weather). Inside, the sun room is filled with seed trays and plants are slowly emerging. However, outside, there are perennials to stake and young plants to protect from slugs.

Left: A store bought stake helps protect the Delphinium from our windy weather and will continue to provide support as it grows into a much larger plant.
Looks like one of my young Delphiniums has been a feast for the snails! I use slug pellets on emerging perennials - otherwise I wouldn't have any!
Other plants get staked with various sticks and twigs. 
The phlox gets the X Factor to help give it added support. 
The Aquilegia / Columbine look close to flowering.
The native Cherry trees are lovely this month.
 Before the cherry trees were in flower, I used a few limbs to mark emerging plants so I wouldn't step on them when weeding. Ever end up trampling over your own plants! Anyways, I was surprised to see the sticks had  flowered.
Here's hoping the April showers bring gorgeous May flowers!

12 comments:

  1. What a great time of the year is spring. I love the cherry tree in bloom, I can only imagine the aroma around it.

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  2. I have a Philadelphus tree / shrub, which I treat as a crop - it produces some lovely long straight branches which make great stakes for other plants, and row-markers etc.

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  3. Looks like it's spring in your neck of the woods! You have some of my favorites growing in your garden! I bought my first columbine flower this year. I hope it survives!

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  4. Nice to see I'm not the only one who tramples over their own plants. Like how your markers are flowering.

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  5. I'd say that Northern Ireland is just a bit ahead of Northern Colorado. Most of our perennials are up. The peony are reaching towards 24 inches now. I remember the delphiniums I saw in Ireland; they must have been 6ft. tall. Tramping over plants? No matter how careful, always--especially my husband.

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  6. Isn't it great to see the perennials emerging. I wonder whether you cherry sticks will have roots?

    Aquilegas that I grew from seed last year are in bud so I'm dying to see what colours they are. I've even ended up with some that have lime green leaves.

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  7. We may have had lots of rain just recently but it's done wonders for all the perennials, they're growing like weeds. I noticed that my aquilegia has buds too, it won't be long before they're in flower.

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  8. You are a little ahead of me but I can't wait to see the next batch of flowers coming along now that the bulbs are almost finished. A good idea to put markers around the perennials - it is really hard getting to the back of borders to weed - it would be nice if someone invented a way of floating about the flower beds.

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  9. Everything looks wonderful! And yes, I trample on my plants all the time. And then I apologize to them! If people ever heard me, they'd probably think I was crazy! :)

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  10. Looks like everything if doing really well. I love the beautiful blooming cherry trees. Can't wait to see everything in full bloom.

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  11. Look like the plant is happy with the weather!
    What a surprise to see lovely flowers! ;)

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  12. We also did a lot of staking for our capsicum plants last weekend because it gets windy here. Hope they bloom soon.

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