Florist News

Your welcome Solly

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I got very excited and bought loads of scrummy bulbs recently but I'm really struggling with the planting. My soil is very heavy clay and I can't get them in. I have one on those short handled bulb planters but even that can't get through the soil. Has anyone tried the long handled versions that you stand on before I buy one?

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Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

hmmmmmmm have you had bulbs before in that soil sarah? At home my Dad had soil that was heavy with clay and he use to dig a small trench (shallow one no the deep one for burying the wife in ) he would put compost in the trench and then plant. He had a wonderful garden.

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Rainbow

Quote of the day : To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Sosas I've never used one. You are better off doing what rainbow suggested.
We suffer from heavy clay and over the years i have dug tons of peat and sand into the garden. It's not easy but any soil conditioning will pay dividens later on. maybe Phalanopsis O/H may have some better advice.

Hi Sosas, Unfortunately the real problem is the soil, not the tool! and the only solution is hard work! you need to dig plenty of compost into a heavy clay soil, perhaps hire a rotivator, and blend it all together, this should be done around march ideally, but for now, you could do as already suggested, and dig a trench fill it with a good quaility soil / compost mix and plant your bulbs in that. In my experience, tools that are made and sold by garden centres for specific jobs rarely work as good as they say!

Hope this helps, Bryan.

thanks guy think I'll have to rope in some muscle I literally can't dig it it, I resorted to a pick axe in the summer when I had some plants to put in. I'll have to persevere

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Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

It's getting colder now, here is a few jobs for to to be getting on with this week. so wrap up and get out there!
Take root cuttings of oriental poppies,
Check stakes and ties are secure on trees and climbers,
Move containers of shrubs or winter bedding to a sheltered spot when conditions turn very cold,
Plant new rose bushes,
Empty pots of spent annuals and add to the compost heap,
Move shrubs growing in the wrong place,
Dig up and store dahlia tubers once their leaves are blackened by frost,
Prune rambling roses after flowering,
Rake autumn leaves from lawns and pick them out of borders for composting,
Pile bark mulch over the crowns of hardy fuchsias to provide protection from cold,

Should keep you busy for the week. Enjoy!
Bryan.

We have very bad soil here too and i have given up trying to get bulbs to bloom so last year in autumn i filled my pots and baskets and every other thing i could find that needed planting with good soil and lots of bulbs and ivy...during the winter i put them under a makeshift greenhouse (built by moi!) and in the spring i had literally hundreds of daffodils, tulips, hyaziths etc. in my garden! I placed the pots etc. around the garden and inbetween the rhododendron and the cars started driving slower when they passed the house! i have about 40 old terra cotta pots with moss growing on them and a large array of baskets and "old" stuff standing around! I just filled anything and everything and it all bloomed! When they were done blooming the ivy still looked nice and I filled the then-empty spaces with pillow moss(off my roof!) and added some decorations like a bird house or steel balls and even some with garden lights (round ones that float in a pond). The ebst part was that if one died noone noticed!!

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~

That sounds gorgeous Maple, you should have started charging. You could have called it the fairy glen and had a well for them all to through their coins into as they passed. Nice little side-line

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Rainbow

Quote of the day : To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Amos Bronson Alcott

ha ha ha!good one! but how about "Maple Gardens"? I already have a sign that my friends here made saying that! One of my friends is a really good artist and she made me a sign out of metal thats all rusty and with a plasma cutter cut out the words and put a small maple leaf under it! It was a birthday present last year!
The well idea is good! Maybe we could open a small tea and coffee stand in the summer on Sundays and set up bistro table and chairs and in the evenings a one-man piano player can jazz it up.
...right like i have time to do THAT too!-but the idea is nice!

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~