I use tubs in the greenhouse to grow tomatoes/cucumbers, at the end of the year I just cut them off at soil level and leave until now. Now I use the dry compost as mulch on my beds. It's good for my heavy clay soil and nothing is wasted.😁
The Strulch looks good if rather expensive if you have a lot of roses... in a normal year composted manure or spent garden compost... this year.. nothing - they will have to make do...
.. a couple of garden visitors today.. ..I think it's a Kestrel....? .. a welcome sight..
@Mr. Vine Eye I'm sorry about your Brunnera not doing well... I like to put little pieces in the ground and they all seem to grow.. I've got loads of little ones like this..
..yes some of the newer DA's get going a bit sooner and can be good roses in the 2nd year... but something that a lot of people may not be aware of is that they keep their bare roots in cold storage, which is good for them as they can sell right into mid April, long after everyone else has finished for the season... this is not so good for us, as the roses are not acclimatized the way roses are dug fresh from the fields and despatched the same day... it can take them weeks to catch up... a way around it is to grow in pots in a greenhouse which brings them on quicker, and plant out as container roses in May.. 'Windflower' still looking frozen and hardly moved a muscle.. 2 Gabriel Oak roses bought at the same time.. potted in greenhouse, doing well..
I use bark mulch because it really helps with weeding. Last year, I did a layer of manure and bark mulch on top of it. This year, there is still some bark left, so I did manure only around roses and a thin layer of fresh bark mulch on top of that, keeping the total thickness of the mulch somewhere between 3 and 4 inches. The downside is birds, I spend way too much time picking it from the lawn and returning it to the beds. I hope the dwarf lavender hedge will help with this and also with edging. In my mixed/perennial beds, I only use compost or manure, if I have some (and used compost from vegetable growing too). I weed it in the spring and then it is up to the plants to shade the soil enough to prevent weeds (or to make them less visible).
@Marlorena thank you I’ll have a think about mulch - I’ve got some leftover compost from last year so I could use that.
my Gabriel Oak was bare root - the canes are just starting to form buds at last. Everything else is well on it’s way. Lady Emma Hamilton is flying along.
I use ericaceous compost as a thick mulch around all my beds. I buy it by the builders bag load from a local compost maker, it’s made from locally sourced pine bark, mainly. I have very alkaline soil and it seems to work really well at suppressing weeds, plus, as it is quite light and loose, weeds that seed into the top are easily pulled out. Can’t get a delivery this year, but they have a thick enough mulch on from last year and I manured around my roses in early February so that should see me through.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Something I like to do is check out the sepals on roses, that form the calyx.. some of them can be quite exotic and flamboyant looking.. ...on this French rose I see what looks like a glamorous French lady's feathered hat from the 1920's... when they wore those tall feathers.. I find this so elegant..
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.. a couple of garden visitors today..
..I think it's a Kestrel....?
.. a welcome sight..
..yes some of the newer DA's get going a bit sooner and can be good roses in the 2nd year... but something that a lot of people may not be aware of is that they keep their bare roots in cold storage, which is good for them as they can sell right into mid April, long after everyone else has finished for the season... this is not so good for us, as the roses are not acclimatized the way roses are dug fresh from the fields and despatched the same day... it can take them weeks to catch up... a way around it is to grow in pots in a greenhouse which brings them on quicker, and plant out as container roses in May..
'Windflower' still looking frozen and hardly moved a muscle..
2 Gabriel Oak roses bought at the same time.. potted in greenhouse, doing well..
The downside is birds, I spend way too much time picking it from the lawn and returning it to the beds. I hope the dwarf lavender hedge will help with this and also with edging.
In my mixed/perennial beds, I only use compost or manure, if I have some (and used compost from vegetable growing too). I weed it in the spring and then it is up to the plants to shade the soil enough to prevent weeds (or to make them less visible).
my Gabriel Oak was bare root - the canes are just starting to form buds at last. Everything else is well on it’s way. Lady Emma Hamilton is flying along.
...on this French rose I see what looks like a glamorous French lady's feathered hat from the 1920's... when they wore those tall feathers.. I find this so elegant..