Good Weather Equals a lot of Progress in the Nursery

A very wet, cold and windy Wednesday, we've stepped back with the weather. A day for being indoors and catching up with writing, admin and so on. Having done the cafe flowers and watered plants I did some tidying in the office and covered area and then contemplated what to do. Started writing a blog on the native garden entrance to the wild life garden and then wrote a new web page for the website on plants for water logged and wet soil which you can see here. and the cercidiphhyllum page here, I got more seeds sown to go over to the tunnel. Thank goodness for the office heater and coffee today, its been colder that alot of days through winter, especially with the wind coming from the north and straight into the potting area.

Aeonium arboreum 'Magnificum' in the greenhouse at home

Mammillaria sp

Pelargonium stellar zonal 'Chocolate Twist'

Rhododendron 'Snow Lady'

The Sun was out on Thursday, still cold though but at least dry. I had another trolley of seed trays to go to the tunnel and a trolley of Sanguisorba came back to go in the stock beds. Herb planters, having been refreshed went back in to the cafe and a mocha treat for me. After some admin I got on with preparing the ground for extending the stock beds. This involved taking off the humps and bumps with a spade and raking all the dead grass off. A good job for chilly sunny day. I also started digging over the narrow bed that is going between the existing stock bed and the new one. I'll plant this up with low plants in interesting colour combinations, as they say, watch this space. It was great to get some progress outside again and starting the stock bed extension will mean we can get on with a lot of other tasks.

I've been taking lots of photos of plants flowering in the garden at home and rather than fill this blog up you can see them here

A glorious sunny day in the nursery

Looking back over the stock beds

The next area to tackle, new stock beds!

And new borders going in between old and new stock beds

After some sun it was back to freezing drizzle then heavy rain on Friday. I did get the track bed hoed before it got to bad and the rest of the box cubes trimmed and fed and spaced out. This will hopefully encourage them to fill out on the bare sides that were defoliated due to being crammed together for so long before we got the nursery. I sowed more seeds, feeling like we are getting there with them now although Ben worked out how many I've sown so far and it was a frightening number! The rest of the day was spent doing indoor jobs near the heater, brrrrrrrrrr, while there was rain, sleet, hail and snow, (fortunately not lying). It was great to get home to the warm and a hot and spicy prawn and choritzo jambalaya for dinner. Followed by a wel deserved relaxing evening of hair, shower, reading and relaxing while David was out doing bat stuff.

I've been given some Dalefoot compost to trial. The composts are either made from recycled wool or bracken
so it will be interesting to see how it performs alongside the compost I usually use

The Dalefoot compost is similar to other seed composts in texture and looks

We had an over night frost annoyingly but plants all seem to have coped with it ok. I'd really like to have switched the big greenhouse heater off at home by now to save some money, but with temps as low as they have been in the past week or so this isn't going to happen any time soon. David and I headed over to the nursery on Saturday morning in brilliant sunshine but deceptively cold. There was still snow on the hill and snow and hail showers through the morning. Still we got on with extending the stock beds, levelling and laying mypex so that we can move the grasses and shade plants and have everything together. We'll then put a hedge and gate in to give us a boundary on the north side of the nursery. I even got some plants in place once we'd finished. The new area looks huge, a sea of mypex! It was great to work together and get another big job ticked off the job list.

Lovely blue sky, green fields and lots of lambs, love this time of year

I met the pet lamb when I took some plants across to the polytunnel. It didn't run away and came running over to me, easy to tel it's the pet lamb then, so we did some lamb selfies!

Colourful Pelargoniums in my collection at home

Mrs Blackbird has chosen an interesting place to nest, amongst the pot
carry trays!

Lots of seeds are now germinating

Laying the new stock bed mypex

This is where all the shade plants and grasses will be moving to

Looking back over the new stock beds

It's amazing the difference two days and dry weather makes in the nursery. With the help of Adam on Sunday David has put in a wooden edging along the top of the new and existing stock beds and Adam has barrowed up four ton bags of chipped bark to put on the mypex around the black currents. It's all looking very neat and tidy. In between helping customers I continued to dig over the new border between the old and new stock beds. These will be planted up in wee planting plans of plants we have for sale, I have ideas, watch this space. There was the odd short rain shower through the day and frost first thing. On the way home we went to lanark and picked up middle son who is home for a couple of days, it is always great to have my three boys home together :)

A narrowborder between old and new stock beds

The pet lamb is now in the field behind the nursery

First of the shade plant tidied and in their new home

Monday and its still windy and cold despite the sun being out, most of the time. After stocking up the sales tables I spent the rest of the day tidying shade plants and moving them to the new shade stock beds we made at the weekend. I also planted up one of the new borders, I couldn't wait! I've put in Stachys byzantina, Alchemilla erithropoda, Chives, Sedum 'Bertram Anderson' and Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant'.The will make a low growing planting between the stock beds with lots of colour and scent through summer.

Meanwhile at home in the wee greenhouse the scent from Pittosporum 'Silver Queen' is over powering when I
open the greenhouse in the morning, lovely

In the evening or before breakfast if dry I've been continuing to tidy the greenhouse plants. The wee green house is done, apart form a few plants I've kept in until the threat of frost is well and truly over. Everything is re-potted or top dressed and fed and out on the patio. I finished the auricula primulas on Sunday night when I got an hour or so out after tea. It wasn't too cold and great to get another wee task done. Some of the smaller pots of auriculas had vine weavil so were stripped right down and re potted.

Tidying out the big greenhouse and re-potting the Pelargoniums
and taking cuttings

Awaiting re-potting and the chop!

Auricula Primulas outside for summer

Primula auricula 'Kisum Krushna'

Out for summer

A glorious sunny Tuesday and I was off. After doing some errands to Lanark including taking youngest's gym trainers to school which he forgot I spent a lovely four hours in the sun in the garden working through more of my Pelargonium collection, re potting, feeding , cutting back and turning the off cuts into cuttings. I emptied the bench and shelf putting everything on the floor and am now working my way through the plants, small ones back on the shelves and bench and bigger ones rowed up on the floor, working from the door in where I've cleared space. It's a bit of a guddle at the far end but will improve as I work through the plants and very satisfying too.

At night we went into Edinburgh for a family get together with all 5 kids and granny at Cosmo, a great place to eat with the hungry horde as they can eat as much as they like. It was great fun , Jamie went back to Glasgow after, great to have him home for a couple of days.

One of my dessert plates!

Giraffes at the Omni Centre, Ednburgh

Getting a photo of me and my boys without them realising

Dan is trying to ignore me, lol

Sunset on the omni centre

So that's my week, busy, hectic and mad as seems to be the way these days. Hope yours has been good too

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