Yes, I was thinking of getting rid of one each of the Lady Emma and Jude because I have double, but after it is discontinued, I am keeping it. I do like their fragrance.
Is there anything like too much mulch? I was thinking of adding a layer of mulch to conserve water, but then I read that if mulch is more than 1-3 inch, it may prevent water from going till roots and just soak up water and keep it to surface. It all seems so contradictory and confusing.
At the moment if you put a step in the garden bed, it is so soggy. But in summer, it does get all dried up and rock hard without watering.
I add a couple of inches of mulch to beds annually and have never found a problem @newbie77, each rose gets a 10L can each time I water and it soaks down fine. I mulch the roses with a ring of manure then the whole bed with a pine bark compost. Both are quite rough-textured, so don’t form an impenetrable pan on top. Anything with a really fine texture or pure peat moss (rightly rare these days) can potentially do that, as can putting mulch on dry soil, so best to mulch after a decent downpour.
There has been reports on other threads of peat-free compost with a high coir content being hard to wet, but mostly in relation to germinating seeds and growing on in pots. No idea how that does on beds.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
No issue with the peat free I used. It’s certainly improved the texture and quality of the top soil so no doubt that will have helped with water retention too.
When I first started the garden I took a photographic survey of the beds in sections, then labelled the plants by inserting text boxes over each one. Easy to do with the edit facility on an iPad and no need for physical labels. It’s a useful way of keeping track of perennials and bulbs especially, to save accidentally digging them up over winter.
This is 5 yrs out of date now, time for a new survey!
Hope you don't mind me popping in here, but wanted to ask @Nollie how he does that labelling on the ipad please? I have found an edit button on my ipad photos but can't see what symbol to use to attach and/or write those fantastic text boxes, or how to do that.......super idea! Looks so professional and neat too, easy to identify plants. TIA
Roses really leafing out here, especially in pots! My clematis armandii apple blossom is finally budding this year, covered in them all up the stem too. Excuse the cardboard box - had a nice peter nyssen 9cm perennial order again! I can see buds on my Cartmanii springclematis again, although probably not as huge a display as last year as the female set beautiful fluffy seedpods and those stems then die off as spent.
Cheers @Mr. Vine Eye, beat me to it! @Songbird-2 My iPad is older and the mark-up pen symbol sits alongside the triple dot but otherwise works exactly the same. Double click on the text box that appears onscreen to edit.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Thank Nollie and Mr Vine eye for mulch replies. I will go ahead with mulching this year. I am trying to increase chances of everything staying alright over summer.
The way everything is going expensive, I doubt I will be able to buy mulch every year and will only rely on home made compost. The home made compost is so small in quantity. I call those Daleks black holes as everything just shrinks down inside it.
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At the moment if you put a step in the garden bed, it is so soggy. But in summer, it does get all dried up and rock hard without watering.
The way everything is going expensive, I doubt I will be able to buy mulch every year and will only rely on home made compost. The home made compost is so small in quantity. I call those Daleks black holes as everything just shrinks down inside it.