Six on Saturday 31-03-2018

As is traditional for a holiday weekend in the UK, the weather is atrocious. Truly miserable, pretty much continuous rain is forecast for the duration. Not really good gardening weather. Still, doesn’t stop me, I have a long list of things to get done. As I write this I am steaming gently after coming in from the rain where I have been planting up my early potatoes, more of which later. Rain or shine, the show must go on, and it’s time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything (and might have to be give the shocking weather we’ve had recently!) – a flower, a plan, a success, a funny shaped vegetable, a tool, wildlife, anything at all in your garden. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Florist buckets. I heard that Morrisons, a supermarket chain in the UK, sell off their surplus florist buckets. Over the last couple of weeks I have bought about 40 of these, for the princely sum of £4 total. They are robust enough to use for tomato and chilli plants later on, but for now I have used 24 of them, suitably drilled for drainage, for planting up my early and second early potatoes.

2 – Tulip bud – another appearance (there will be many) for a soon-to-be tulip flower. If I remember right, this is a bog-standard red darwin hybrid variety. This will be their second year, so no issues in this case with a repeat performance.

3 – Lilac flower buds. I have a dwarf lilac which flowers in late April, May. It is revving up now though, ready for the off.

4 – Vinca, periwinkle – flower. I moaned about this plant the other week, it does spread in very unapologetic fashion, and I will soon have to deal with it. It does, however, somewhat compensate for its thuggish behaviour with useful flowers.

5 – Bareroot roses. I’m fast developing a thing for roses, particularly the climbing or trainable varieties. These three were bought in an end of season sale at Peter Beale roses, a very reasonable half price. They are ‘Dr Eckener’, ‘Rosy Mantle’ and ‘Elmshorn’. All will tolerate a bit of shade and I intend to plant them all down the side of the house. They are in temporary accommodation for now as I have yet to build the necessary planters.

6 – talking of planters, here’s one I made a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t filled it with compost yet, that’s a job for this weekend. I have a lot of new climbing plants, one or two of which will go in here, plus a 1 year old rose cutting of ‘danse de feu’ which will work well in this spot. I need to make another 4 or 5 of these.

Those are my Six for this week, what are yours? Do join in, very simple. Just write your post, add a comment below with a link to your post, and maybe a link back to this blog in yours. For more details you can refer to the brief participants guide.

Have a great weekend, stay dry, and don’t forget to check back in as more links get added during the next 24 hours or so.

I’ll be back next week with another Six on Saturday.