A very wet day.

It is still raining here. Continuous, relentless water falling from a dull grey sky. Not a day to be outside, apart from essential stuff.

So, I cleared the ironing mountain (!) and then made a start on the mending pile. I have dropped 4 dress sizes since June, so this was much needed work :) I have a load of clothes which are now too large for me so I am taking in as many as I can to save some money by not buying new clothes. Most of these will only be worn in the garden although some are good stuff - some of the more difficult/expensive/favourite items I will take to the seamstress in Ledbury to be taken in for me.

I am all set up in the corner of the sitting room, the fire is lit, I have music or Radio 4 or TV to entertain me if I wish and a mug of tea.

I also got lots of old clothes cut up for rags, quilting and buttons. As they are all natural fabrics the remains will either be composted or used to make char cloth for fire lighting in the wood.

After a lengthy session with needle and thread I have 8 pairs of trousers taken in at the waist, legs taken in up the seam and some shortened as well (I have not lost height, but I had not got around to shortening them!) That will save me some money not having to buy new trousers :) I also have three shirts which have been taken in at the sides and bust and three favourite t shirts which have had the same treatment.

And it finally stopped raining late afternoon and the sun came out, so I went and picked the last of the Cosmos from the cutting garden to add some colour to the house :)

All in all a good and busy day  :)

Not safe to let me go to Garden Shows!

I was very kindly sent some money by MoneySupermarket.com as part of my entry to their home improvement hero  competition.

 They are asking 

Is it possible to change the look, feel and even functionality of a room on a low budget? We’re asking bloggers to provide step-by-step instructions to help educate the nation on how to carry out simple, yet effective home improvements. Whether you have skills in craft, art or DIY, we want to see what you can do with a £50 budget.

 My bright idea was to use the money from this competition to change the look, feel and  functionality of my "garden room" ( ie flower beds) outside my sitting room.

I wanted to improve the view from our sitting room and (nearly finished - yay!) newly refurbished bedroom, so when we looked out of the windows we would see lots of colour and insect life. The view  is not very attractive at the moment, with weeds and a half dug patch of soil on show.  This area used to have Leylandii trees, but they blocked the light and shaded the sitting room so last year we cut them down .

Compostman then dug the stumps out (using the JCB) and we moved a large tree Paeony into the hole, but that is all that has happened so far. It is a bit of a mess and as it is by the road and we look directly out on this area I felt it could do with a makeover.
 

View from sitting room and bedroom window

I was working with the idea that if I improve the view out of the window, I have also improved the room itself. Inspired by some of the planting I saw at Hampton Court I came up with a design for planting up a new herbaceous perennial flower bed, as well as some improvements to at least one other existing bed. I used some of the money to buy some nice new plants but this is going to be frugal flower planting as I can't afford to spend the sort of money on plants that I saw at Hampton Court!

I marked out where I wanted the new bed to go and then Compostman got to work digging, while I gathered up plants and seeds and took stock to decide what I would need to buy.

At the moment I have quite a good collection of plants I have grown from cuttings or seed. I also always keep an eye open for "past their prime" plants sold at a discount.  I bought three plants late last year (Coreopsis, Solidago and Aster) which would have been £8 each full price, for £1 pound each and re potted them and over wintered them.  These have been earmarked to go in my new flower bed.

I also took advantage of the good deals on plants at various local nurseries with  "4 for £10"  offers which I used to buy some rather nice RHS award of merit Geraniums as well as some Campanulas and Nepetas. I am also a member of various Garden Centre loyalty schemes so was able to get BOGOF deals on some of the plants I wanted to buy (the two Dahlias in particular were a bargain at £4 each)  I also got lucky at a local garden supermarket where they were selling various herbaceous perennials cheap because they looked rather tatty. A bit of tlc and some dead heading and they looked pretty good again and will look even better next year. They cost me £1 each rather than the £5 each full price.

I had no need to buy in soil improver, either! I dug out a lot of wood chip compost to enrich the very hard clay soil in the new bed. Note my lovely new wheelbarrow - thank you, Argos!

I then got cracking and and laid out the plants in their pots on the soil and arranged (and rearranged) them to my design. Then Compostman and I got to work planting them. As it is so hot at the moment we waited until the evenings so as to be a bit cooler.
 

I also had some summer flowering bulbs which I planted in the bed in drifts of colour. These were reduced at the end of last year so I got them cheap (£2 each pack) and planted them in pots to overwinter in the polytunnel - some of them came in handy today. I also planted some of the Crocosmia bulbs I got free from Spalding Bulbs.

I had a lot of (free) wildlife friendly seeds stored up, which I scattered around the herbaceous perennial planting. Hopefully it is not too late for these to flower if the weather continues fair. If not, I have more seed packets and will be sprinkling them on the bed next year. I have also planted some daffodils and snowdrops in this bed - we have a lot from where we were digging around the pool so I have moved a lot of bulbs across

part way through planting up.

Compostgirl helped me with some of the watering

The colour scheme starts yellow at the left, moving through orange, red, blue, purple, pale lilac and then finally white on the right of the bed, with the backdrop of the honeysuckle and the climbing rose on the fence. It still looks a little sparse; I wish I could afford to buy lots of each plants to re create the dense planting effects I saw at Hampton Court, but I can't so have done what I can, with what I have. I do have lots more cuttings growing, especially Lavender, Geraniums, Nepeta and Daisy though, so will be able to add more plants to this bed as time goes by.

Finished, for now

View through the sitting room window now

I view my garden as a part of my house; an "outside room" if you like, so I want to make it all as attractive as I can. With the money I got from moneysupermarket.com I could have bought a picture to hang on the wall in the sitting room but rather than a frozen image in a frame I have chosen to improve the view of the "living picture", outside. The wildlife love it as well!

I spent a total of £43 on plants for this new bed, both new and bought at a discount.  I have also planted three Pulmonaria  and a couple of extra Lavender plants, which I grew from cuttings for free.

Planting

Wildflower Seeds (free)
many different Bulbs (free)
Globe Artichoke x 3 (from Rocket Gardens delivery)
Solidago
Coreopsis
Dahlia
Geranium (split into two plants)
Campanula Globerosa (split into two plants, one used)
Nepeta (split into two plants, one used)
Aster
Salvia
Penstemon
Dahlia
Lavender
Pulmonaria (several, split from plants in the garden in spring)
Polemonium
Aqueligia
Centaurea
Philadelphus
White Foxglove
Campanula persicifolia (split into two plants, one used)
Buddlia alba


Most of these plants would be £5 each, to buy full price, some (like the Buddlia and the Philadelphus shrubs) would be £8 - £10 to buy so I think we have managed well to buy so many plants with the money :-)



So, if you want to plant up a frugal-ish herbaceous perennial flower bed, have a look round for discounted plants and give them some tlc, maybe re pot them into a bigger pot as well? If you can, split plants into two or maybe three? Also look out for discount flower seeds which you could sow now and then plant out as plants next year? At this time of year a lot of gardening magazine are giving away free perennials and biennials seeds on the covers, why not buy one and sow the seeds? And look out for BOGOF and multi - buy offers to collect lots of plants together.

Have fun!

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

Saturday - soapsuds and soil.

Hello lovely people!

Another cold but sunny day and yes, yet more blankets and sheets were washed and put on the line to dry today - this time I did our normal weekly bedding and towel hot wash and also washed and dried the very last king sized blanket. That is now all the spare bedding and blankets clean and packed away AND all our bed blankets now clean and fresh and a couple of those are also packed away for next winter. 

Next in the washing machine will be the curtains from the Pink/Guest bedroom - they can then be ironed and packed away until the room is completed. I am keen to take advantage of the sunny weather as we are generating lots of electricity and lots of hot water, so its a good cheap time to be doing a lot of washing :-)

The Guinea Piggle girls

went outside into their new run today!

They pop corned in delight and wheeked a lot, they were obviously very pleased to be outside in the sunshine with fresh grass! I thought about it and realised that they had not been outside on grass since Oct 2012 - they have only been out in the run inside the Polytunnel since then - so no wonder they were so happy ;-)

Have any of you joined the B & Q Club? I was having a look around for more gardening ideas and found out about it . You simply complete the sign-up form , including your contact details and a little bit of information about your DIY preferences and then you get an email with your membership number in - and away you go!

B & Q say on their website

Most members will receive a welcome email immediately, which includes your membership details. From time to time, there may be a bit of a delay for some customers. It's usually because loads of other people want to join too! So we're grateful for your patience.

The B&Q Club is card-less.  All you need is your 16-digit membership number to access its benefits.  No cards, no vouchers. You can show your membership number or bar code in any format – a printed copy, on your phone or written down on a piece of paper.  Simply present your membership number or bar code at the tills in-store to take advantage of any of The B&Q Club rewards. It's that simple. 

I got my membership details within 5 mins. I do shop at B & Q and so am always keen to get a discount offer. At the moment they are offering 

3 for 2 on smoke alarms & carbon monoxide alarms and 3 for 2 on all bedding plants

 

Hope you are all having a good weekend :-)