Clueless with Claire

Helloooo, welcome to my weekly post about someone (me) who doesn’t have any knowledge at all of gardening, relaying the enormous amount of fun she has killing off looking after all the plants in her garden.

Okay, I shall return to speaking in first person now 🤪

This is my new bed at the beginning of the week:

My lovely friend, Anna, offered me lots of plants from her gorgeous garden, so Gary and I picked them up and got them planted straight away:

We planted forget-me-nots, Garden Cosmos, Verbena, Bistort, a Rose, two Fushias, a Buddleia and a few more vegetables. How blessed am I? I’m looking forward to paying it forward sometime in the future.

My Dahlia is definite a favourite in the garden, although it’s flowers don’t last very long. I have been dead heading, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do…

I’ve also been putting coffee around my Verbena for two reasons. The first is to deter the creatures that shall not be named, and the second to fertilise and hopefully encourage it to grow stronger. There seems to be lots of new growth at the bottom:

On the subject of slugs and snails, I have been out with some beer and jars – thank you to all who suggested it – this method seemed to be the most popular. We have had success, although we lost most of our lettuces before they succumbed to their alcoholic tendencies. As my daughter said, at least they died happy!

Our veg are coming up nicely although, apart from watering, I don’t really have much to do with them:

I continue to make banana skin fertiliser every few days. It is such a great thing to do, and so simple. I took a photo of the resulting fertiliser, which I poured in our small watering can and filled it to the top with water. Becca then used it for her strawberry plants. I dug the remaining half rotted skins into the soil surrounding some newly transplanted Lillies:

We are not just battling slimy creatures. Mum kindly donated me some plants but they were smothered in black fly (probably why she donated them!). I then noticed some green fly all over our roses…

Gary sprayed them for me, and they are looking much healthier. And they have begun producing their huge yellow roses. So beautiful!

I have been busy with some maintenance garden chores such as weeding and sweeping. I kind of say a quick prayer and pull, hoping that I am actually pulling a weed rather than a flower…We had loads of weeds coming up all over our little patio where my planting table is. Now those I knew were weeds. So I picked and pulled and swept and was thrilled by the result! Looking good, Claire!

I’m going to leave you with my favourite flowers, a present from Gary. He bought me three Rhodanthemums:

They are so pretty:

And a few of my other favourite plants…let’s face it, I just love them all!

And I shall leave you with a tantalising photo of some very cool plans we have in the working:

Any ideas?

Have a great week everyone!