Saturday 20 March 2010

Goodbye maturing garden.

Tired tonight. Gardening weather today, and most of it is dead thanks to global non-warming. Having a garden under snow for three months means that even my ten-year-old plants are dead. Now I have a lot of bare earth and a mound of rotting vegetation on what used to be a lawn but is now a yellow swampy moss-patch. I think my fruit trees made it, at least the roots haven't rotted away, but I'll just have to wait and see if those buds sprout.

If it wasn't for the promises of global warming, I might have gone ahead with my idea to cover the lot with a perspex dome and grow Kiwi fruit, hops, barley and tobacco. Although perspex dome, chimenea, maybe not an ideal combination. Glass dome, local banjo-playing inbred freaky kids, definitely not a good combination. They can throw stones really accurately with six fingers.

Enough gardening talk. Maybe I'll just concrete the lot, paint it brown and drill holes to put plastic flowers into.

Astroturf. I need astroturf.

16 comments:

subrosa said...

Your grass may come back LI, give it a very gentle rake to waken it up. As for your plants, I'm in the same boat. The heathers have survived so I think I'll just fill the borders with more.

For goodness sake don't resort to astroturf. Put down bonny pinkish chuckies rather than that stuff.

Anyway it's too early to be digging up plants, give them another month or so.

The invoice will be sent tomorrow. ;)

BTS said...

Paint it black.

Paint it all black.

TheFatBigot said...

You might be surprised. A lot of herbacious stuff can survive very harsh winters.

I'm with Mrs Rosa on the grass (phnar, phnar), free it to the air by raking out moss then give it time; many a bare patch will have viable root systems underneath. Once raked, try not to walk on it for a couple of weeks especially if its wet. When spring really arrives aerate it and give it a top dressing or use a chemical treatment like Fisons Evergreen. Works wonders.

Leg-iron said...

Subrosa - The grass might need a serious raddling and reseeding this time. It's in a bad way.

Pink chuckies? Me? Pea gravel maybe,or concrete, or more likely spuds...

Leg-iron said...

BTS - I once had black tulips. They weren't perfectly black and in later years they came up maroon but they did raise eyebrows.

Leg-iron said...

Fatbigot - I'll try that with the grass. The most annoying one was a large clump of red hot pokers I'd had since moving in. These things, if the name is not familiar.

Their rhizomes run along the surface and most were turned to mush. They might come back but it'll be a while before they reach their former glory.

John Pickworth said...

I'd go with the concrete.

Its heavy on the CO2, promotes flooding and causes urban heat islands -- yes, you too can have your very own Ibiza in the back garden (henceforth known as the slab).

Seriously, the Government should be giving everyone grants for this sort of improvement. If enough people did it we'd solve global cooling overnight, cut the numbers of pollen choked wheezy asthmatic kids blocking the entrances to A&E and with luck, shorten a few of the planned skyscrapers in Shanghai due to the lack of cement. Seriously, those skyscrapers are a huge problem... You know how if all the Chinese people jump up and down at the same time then Aunt Mable's photo falls off the mantle-piece here? Well imagine what would happen if all the Chinese skyscrapers fell over at the same time? Exactly. What amazes me is our Government completely ignoring this issue, surely we should have a Minister with portfolio appointed immediately?

Next week: Pebble dashing and poverty.

TheFatBigot said...

I inherited a clump of red hot pokers when I moved to FatBigot Towers 16 years ago. And still they flower wonderfully (not now, it's March, but you know what I mean).

They need to be lifted and split every three years or so, some people do it every year. Retain the newer growth from the outside of the clump and replant it, compost the old stuff from the centre of the clump. Red hot pokers are terrific plants, it wouldn't surprise me at all if yours have survived through the winter.

percy throwers secret lovechild said...

My lawn sounds like yours leg iron.
Either moss or yellow and brown patches. It was frozen for 3 months so that may not have done it much good. I think the worms probably burrowed to Australia to thaw out. My fruit trees look ok so far ( apart from the ones I bought recently from the garden centre - I think I got ripped off as there are no buds coming out yet and the rootball didn't look up to much when I planted them the other week. I wonder how you go about taking a tree back. Could be fun esp with Dobbies).
My leyllandi trees look poorly aswell which is strange as they're supposed to be bullet proof and terrify the neighbours. They look brown and dying.

Pogo said...

What ever you do, don't let them rot. The methane they'll create could set off catastrophic global warming... :-)

microdave said...

Rather O/T but this thread is to do with gardening and food, so I hope you don't mind.

I have just consumed some "seasonal" fayre from Aldi, but having read the list of ingredients I'm not sure how much my life expectancy has been reduced. See if you can guess what it was:

Wheat Flour, Water, Dried fruit (Currants, Raisins, Sultanas), Invert Sugar Syrup, Yeast, Candied Orange & Lemon Peel (Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel, Sugar, Citric Acid), Vegetable Oil, Salt, Wheat Gluten, Modified Wheat Starch, Emulsifiers: Sodium Stearol-2-Lactylate, Mono and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Soya Flour, Spices, Potato Dextrine, Flour Treatment Agents: Ascorbic Acid, L-Cysteine Hydrocloride.


And, by the way, they tasted pretty foul....

mrs mingins pies mmmm said...

Is it something to do with easter ? Hot cross buns ?

Stewart Cowan said...

Down here in balmy Galloway, my friend has a wonderful (small) garden (he is a professional gardener). He pointed out to me some of the shrubs he has had for years that he doesn't think have survived the frost.

Hope the Spring sunshine rekindles life into yours and his.

P.S. I now believe in climate change - i.e. it's getting colder!

BTS said...

I was getting concerned about people's diets what with all this talk of clumps of red hot pokers and pebble dashing. Microdave has confirmed my worst fears..

I guessed Christmas cake btw.

But I then tried to cheat by googling 'Aldi, list of ingredients' followed by a cut + paste of the list. Third link down I got this:

http://www.vix.dk/b/39917

Seriously.

You need to be really worried..

microdave said...

mrs mingins is correct. It's all the more surprising, as Aldi do some very good products. These were from "The Village Bakery", but nothing on the packaging tells you which village!

Sainsbury's don't list ingredients at all, but as they bake them daily I doubt they contain so many preservatives. They certainly taste better, although not as good as ones from a REAL local bakers.

How the hell did Google link that to a bomb in Pakistan???

BTS said...

Buggered if I know but you can try it for yourself:

Aldi, list of ingredients, Wheat Flour, Water, Dried fruit (Currants, Raisins, Sultanas), Invert Sugar Syrup, Yeast, Candied Orange & Lemon Peel (Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel, Sugar, Citric Acid), Vegetable Oil, Salt, Wheat Gluten, Modified Wheat Starch, Emulsifiers: Sodium Stearol-2-Lactylate, Mono and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Soya Flour, Spices, Potato Dextrine, Flour Treatment Agents: Ascorbic Acid, L-Cysteine Hydrocloride

That's what I googled.

And that's what you've been eating.

Apparently.

Best get some triple velvet in..

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