Gardening in February on the Left Coast

 

  

  

The Spring Bulbs are looking very good.  It is so early.  The snowdrops, crocus, daffodils, hellebores, and camillias are all out in my garden.  Around town there are rhodos and azalias out too.  The flower count is going to be amazing this year.    

I managed to get the firethorn debris chopped up and put into the green bin.  The guys will be around tomorrow to do the pick up and leave the bag of compost.  The firethorn is taken down to about 10 feet with some large cut stems showing.  Hopefully, this will all fill in with new growth in a few years.  I hope I can keep it trimmed to size.  I can just reach the top with my long handled pruners now.   The holly tree is growing up in the same area to screen the view from the neighbors front window.  

The pond seems to have a slow leak.  I have the water fall turned off, and am letting the water drain from this slow leak, until it stops.  I will then know at what level the hole occurs.   Once the water level stops dropping, I will top it up again slightly, pour a cup of milk on the surface... around the edges but not right at the edge.  The leakage should draw the milk out and I should be able to see where the hole might be.   If I can find the tiny hole, I can patch it.  If I cannot find it, I will drop another liner inside the existing one and redo the edges while I am at it.    Maybe I could get a plastic waterfall tub at the same time and get my waterfall looking better.  I would be able to add the mossy rocks I have now, as well as any sedums and grasses.   All of this to do after our trip. ... maybe.  If I do not get to it this year, I will just keep topping up the pond every few days.    The fish were on the surface today.  A couple of them are growing bigger and I know there are numerous babies in the pond that are still black.

I was dreading pruning back the firethorn and it was not all that bad of a chore.  So, the pond, will be much the same.  Easy enough, once I get at it.  Last year I managed to get quite a bit done, after having let things get a bit wild.  

The woodland is full of  bluebells.  They look nice but they just take over everything.  Very invasive.  I might have to use chemical control on them soon.

Creating the little rockery

Cannor Nursery delivered my bags of sand, top soil, pea gravel and the few plants I had picked out to use. I have a six pack of small marigolds and a trailing yellow annual put into the strawberry jar that sits on the little rockery along the vegetable garden. I am going to replace the rosemary and the lavendar in the herb patch. I have a thrift and an iberis that I will probably use out in the front garden. I put a 20L bag of sand over the garden soil that I had over a few bits of broken pots in the new little area of the small rockery by the vegetable garden. I then positioned the small rocks and added the bag of top soil. I topped this off with a bag of compost. I might add another layer of sand as the plants that will go in here want good drainage. I shall let this settle for awhile before adding any plants and the final top dressing of pea gravel. I want to divide the mounding green plant, and the very nice cyclamen. I have a cyclamen coum and a daphne that will be added. The lewisias, a lovely campanula, a primula marginata, and a couple of other tiny plants are growing in the front part of this tiny rockery. I have not expanded the rockery into the vegtable garden, as I think it is a good size as it is now. I cleaned up along the lawn edge, dug over half of the vegtable garden and moved all these bags of dirt around today. I have some sore muscles, again.

The daffodils are mostly finished and should be dead headed. I was afraid I had lost tulips to the squirrels but they are showing now and starting to open. The primulas are doing great and the hellebores are still in full bloom. The magnolia is almost finished. The arabis and aubretias are going great! The strip along the driveway looks pretty nice. I must weed it and add compost along the front of that bed. Pat and Jim will be gone 5 days to the Red Deer Swapmeet, so I should be able to get a lot of my gardening done. It all looks so much better when trimmed and weeded.

The strawberries are weeded and have added compost around them. Dug over half of the vetable garden and added compost to the rhubard which is doing much better for having its annual feed of compost. The soil is quite dry, already. When I do the seeding, I shall try to keep the soil moist for the first few days and then start a good watering schedule once the plants are up.

All the newspapers and news sites and blogs are full of news about this swine flu that is jumping around the world quite quickly from its start somewhere in Mexico. The cases in Canada have been mild, as compared to some of the infected people in Mexico who have died from the worst cases. We have stock piled some medicines to combat this flu in B.C. The WHO has listed this as a 4 on the scale that goes to 6 as a pandemic.