The kale is now over but the roses bloom

The title sounds like it ought to be a proverb or a password or something! But it is actually just what was happening today.

Today was another fine day so I was very busy in the garden and polytunnel. I picked the last of the polytunnel Kale

I am now planting out various overwintering perennials into the garden - see these rose bushes on the front right?

While overwintering inside the polytunnel they had produced the most beautiful blooms all winter, I cut these and have had them inside the house since 20 th April - they are still wonderful.

The rose bushes have now been pruned and will stand on the patio when the weather warms up a little more.

I planted out some of the tree peonies I grew from seed, or from tubers moved when we were doing the patio, there are loads more plants waiting to go into this now cleared bed.

And I made a start on clearing out the dead stuff from the "Hampton Court" flower bed I made last summer

The garden looks particularly pretty at this time of year :)

I also thought I would share with you the breakfast routine here at Compost Mansions. We come downstairs and make breakfast and then the ravening hordes gather,

awaiting tit bits of marmite toast :)

Taking cuttings

One of the things I love to do is grow plants for free. I have a lot of different herbaceous perennials in the garden and I love taking cuttings and saving seeds. I get a real thrill when I see that a little cutting has rooted and grown :-) or that some free seeds have come up :-)

One of the ways I find easiest is to take soft cuttings and put them in water until I see roots forming and then pot them into growing medium. I do this with all sorts of plants, Basil, Lavender, Rosemary are the ones I have been planting out recently but I have many jars full of cuttings on the go at the moment.

I take the cuttings ( well quite often they are "tearings" as I just pull bits off the plant ) and put them into water  label them and keep them somewhere not to hot and not too sunny.

This is a jar full of Lavender and Rosemary cuttings which I made on 30 April 2013

Can you see how well they have grown roots?

Lovely strong healthy liittle plants

I potted these on into multipurpose Fertile Fibre growing medium

Here is a video I took of me doing it :-) I love my outdoor potting bench

 and I now have 10 Lavender and 3 Rosemary plants growing well