Baby lawn

Last year I prepared the ground to make a tiny camomile lawn under the fruit trees - but I didn't get it finished before the end of the planting season. Consequently the area has been under a tarpaulin recently - to inhibit weed growth. Finally this week the new planting season has begun and our baby, bare-rooted plants arrived and have been planted. I have never grown camomile before so have been dependent on the growers' advice regarding planting and care. If all goes well, next year we will be walking on a sweet-scented lawn to pick our plums, damsons, gooseberries and redcurrants! The two fruit bushes are being tied in to a fan structure as the new shoots develop - something I've tried before but didn't continue, so I'm hoping to have the time to get them right this time. The plum and damson trees have flowered - but as they fruited heavily last year there may not be such a good crop this time. We tend to get good crops in alternate years.

There were a few camomile plants left over - I've planted a few in another part of the garden to use to replace any which don't "take" in the new lawn. With another few, though, I'm trying something different. I have two blueberry bushes in pots, and have had trouble with squirrels digging in the compost. My first solution was to cover the compost with pebbles to stop the digging - but in one of the pots I've now planted the leftover camomile plants to cover the ground (after checking with the growers that camomile like acid conditions, as the blueberries grow in ericaceous compost). To stop the digging while the plants get established, I've used an idea I spotted on the internet - sticking plastic forks in the soil around the baby plants! I wouldn't be surprised if the squirrels don't chew the forks too - they seem to gnaw on just about anything... we'll see.

Here we go round...

...the lemon tree. The new lemon tree is now planted in its pot. All being well there won't be any more really cold snaps now that both lemon and kumquat are potted up. They are at least sheltered from the predominant west wind. Next year I will wrap both up over the winter, and leave a little water going through the system whenever we're going to be away, whatever the season - I don't want to lose these.

The new kumquat had over 1.3 kg of ripe fruit on it - so today I've been able to make six pots of kumquat marmalade.

I've also begun adding summer colour here and there throughout the garden, having bought various annuals from the garden centre. I'll be back here again in a couple of weeks, by which time I think there will be the opportunity to put in more bedding plants.

Replacing the citrus

In the late autumn there was a leak in our water supply in the back garden, so I turned it off completely until we could repair the problem. I imagined this wouldn't be serious for the garden as the winter weather was due. Unfortunately, though, it didn't rain for weeks, and the plants in pots dried out completely. Most will recover, but the lemon and kumquat trees showed no signs of hope. I therefore decided to replace both with new plants (having got the automatic watering working again). A visit to my favourite garden centre in Spain (Vivers i Garden Moner at L'Escala) provided two healthy looking specimens, the kumquat being already laden with fruit (marmalade pan calling!) and the lemon looking nice and healthy - and a lot less prickly than its predecessor.

I'd already prepared the pot for the kumquat, so that is now in its new home. Wind and weather permitting, the lemon will also shortly be potted on.

Time for bedding

Back in London after a few days gardening in France, I completed the job started a couple of weeks ago - topping up the soil level in the raised bed which was begun last year, and in which the new soil had settled down to a level well below the original one. Having cleared out dead foliage and weeds, and brought the soil level back up, I splurged on bedding plants - knowing that if I left a clear area of soil, squirrels would soon come in and mess it up. Part of the bed - the bit which is below the rotary washing line - has been given over to strawberries (transplanting from the various bits of garden and pots where I had set new runners) as these will always be close to ground level. I also split up and moved into this bed a crown of rhubarb - it's not looking too healthy at the moment, but I hope it will recover. Also  in are several pelargoniums which I grew from cuttings.

Meanwhile my other half has been repairing the walls beneath the pergola which we built about twenty years ago. One side of the pergola - the side facing the house - is now several inches lower than it was originally - no doubt the effect of tree roots undermining it. He has been dissuaded from taking the whole structure down and is now just supporting it at the new level. A considerable portion of the brickwork has had to be replaced too - but we hope it will now last another twenty years! Yesterday I lifted a section of the brick paved patio so that we could remove one of the tree roots which was forcing the paviors upwards.

I have taken a few more pelargonium cuttings - some from the flowering ones and some from a scented one - and these are in the conservatory. The last ones were very successful in there so I'm hopeful for these too. I used "Strike" rooting powder.

Thinning the olive

It's a while since I posted anything on here... the winter's been very mild and some things have been done but others haven't - the trees are already coming in to leaf and they haven't had any winter treatment, so I expect to see lots of pests on them in the summer.

For a few years now our olive tree has been getting out of control. It produces masses of olives, but very small ones, so hardly worth the trouble of curing and bottling them. The birds are the main beneficiaries, but this means that what used to be clean white gravel under the tree is usually covered with black olive kernels as well as dead olive leaves. I've seen many olive trees recently trimmed back, like this one in Villemolaque:

I think if I could train mine in a similar style, I would have much less of a problem with the mess on the floor. So I've made a start by giving it a severe pruning - removing one of the four main stems (the one which looked very wobbly when the tramontane was blowing) and also most of the top growth.

Before...

...and after.

It should also make walking from the house to the postbox easier, the branches at eye level having been removed!

Progress

Over the last week we've been making progress in the London garden when weather permitted. The steps down from the conservatory doors at least have their base constructed now, but progress upwards is now halted as the forecast is for continuous rain tomorrow.

While Mike has been mixing concrete and mortar, I have been concentrating on getting other parts of the garden dug, raked and planted... well, one other part anyway! We now have a herb border, containing a few plants we'd retained (rue, feverfew and chives), and many more bought on a trip to Ruxley Manor: lemon balm, hyssop, two different lavenders, two different oreganos, marjoram, thyme, angelica, sage, heartsease and tarragon. The bay tree and mint container haven't been placed yet. Interspersed through the other plants are some mustard seedlings which should provide some salad interest.

I'd planned to have the area under the fruit trees as a mini camomile lawn; now that I've levelled and dug over part of it I looked for plants, only to discover that I've missed the planting season so won't be able to establish that until next year.

French weather rules

We've been at our French house for a couple of weeks, and there was plenty to be done in the garden. However, unseasonal June weather has meant grabbing chances to work in between thunderstorms and downpours. That said, the frequent soaking has made the ground much softer than usual, so removing the weeds hasn't been as much of a problem as usual. Several of the raised beds, in place for a few years now, needed a top-up of soil, so I ordered a ton to be delivered on a Monday morning, having checked the weather forecast - rain wasn't expected until Tuesday night. Delivery was made just after 8 a.m. and was in fact nearer a ton and a half. We started work straight away - me moving plants out of the way while Mike shovelled barrowloads of topsoil. The forecasters, though, were out by over 24 hours, and the thunderstorms started just after lunchtime on Monday, downpours continuing throughout the rest of the day. This meant that when we re-started work on Tuesday, the soil was extremely wet and therefore much heavier to shift. Still - we made it. The soil delivered was enough to top up all the raised beds, all the fruit trees, and the bed near the bins too. It's all looking great now - the continuing rain gave the plants I moved a good start in their new homes, and the empty spaces give me a great excuse to go plant shopping on my next visit here.