Companion planting

[fulmar]

I recently moved to a mountainside in North West Wales where I have a large patio with flowerbeds and a view down to the sea. I've grown fruit and veg on a south facing balcony before but this is the first time dealing with stuff you actually plant in the soil! And although spring has been sunny and warm, the location means we're prone to high winds and (I've been told) a lot of salt content. Certainly, my patio is the most exposed of all the properties up here and I've noticed that plants tend to be slower to flower than those downhill. In terms of adding colour, I'm having a bit more success with bedding plants in tubs.

I picked up what I think is a blueberry bush from a local branch of Netto one night. They were selling them cheap and I'd never grown anything like it before. I didn't want to plant it out front as I wasn't sure how big it could get but I thought I could at least give it a try in a pot. Added the marigolds a week ago in order to keep insects away, along with a handful of fresh bark chippings. It's actually starting to look a lot healthier than it does in this picture.

Comments

[teapot_rabbit]

That's definitely not a blueberry. Looks more like some sort of blackberry or raspberry cultivar, but I'm not sure.

A mountainside in Wales sounds terribly exotic to this Californian! :) Good luck with the gardening - sounds like windbreaks may be in order.

[fulmar]

It was labelled when I bought it but that was weeks ago and I've plain forgotten! There are a few things I'm looking at in the flowerbeds thinking, now what were you again?

Not blackberry though - that grows wild in hedgerows, I wouldn't bother actually planting it.

[teapot_rabbit]

It's a currant! Or at least, I'm almost sure it is. The stems aren't spiny, are they?

It looked a little like our native California blackberries, hence my confusion.

[fulmar]

Now that's ringing a bell! Blackcurrant possibly.

[theora]

Could it be a cranberry bush (viburnum opulus or trilobum)? I don't have any firsthand experience with it, but the leaves look right.

[fulmar]

Blackcurrant is the best guess at the moment.

[amalnahurriyeh]

That's so cool! I love your pots, too. I only have raised beds (my backyard is paved--I wouldn't have chosen it, but I rent), which are filled with awful, clay-ey gross soil. After six years in this apartment, I've just about worked in enough compost that the soil can grow things...

[fulmar]

Thanks! The pots are all plastic because I have to be able to carry them up the hill but there are some nice designs around these days.

I picked up a year-round gardening book when I moved in and the instructions for January were "dig". Sadly, we had snow and the ground was rock hard so I've only really started doing that as I planted. Someone did offer me a truck load of horse manure but I suspect the neigbhours would have complained when it was delivered!

[dantesspirit]

My SiL and BiL have a townhouse with a small space to plant in the back, and their soil is exactly like yours- heavy, lots of clay. Pick it up, barely squeeze and it holds the shape type of heavy, clay soil.

I took over a 5gal bucket of my compost and worked it into a section of their area, so they could grow *something* this season at least. And I told her what to do to help loosen the soil more, by working in coffee grounds, egg shells, tea leaves, fruit/veggie leavings, you know, general composting stuff.

So I get a text yesterday, telling me the soil is still pretty crappy. Um, it's been a week that you've been amending it, it's not going to get better overnight. Boggled my mind that they actually thought a week of adding a few things here and there would make their soil better. O.o

It's taken me 10 years to get my soil- slate and clay mostly- to a good, not great, just good, growing soil. There's a reason most of my beds are raised afterall.}:P I should tell them about yours taking 6 years.}:P

[amalnahurriyeh]

Ha, yes! The first year in this place it was good, because the landlord had put in maybe 6-8 inches of potting soil, complete with those crazy styrofoam beads, on top of the clay in-fill (our backyard is paved, and then it has raised planters around in a U shape, maybe two feet tall, with these incredibly annoying evergreen bushes in them). But I had worked through that by the end of the first summer! Since then, it's just been about feeding in enough finished compost to get it going.

I don't just have clay, I also have tons of rocks and chunks of building material in there. It's clear no one ever intended my garden to be fruitful. :)

[dantesspirit]

I keep finding broken shards of glass- bottle, plate, you name it- that washes out of the back hill everytime we have a significant rain. I'm of the opinion that the top of the hill was used as a dumping ground at some point.}:/

[fulmar]

Oh yes, the evergreens. The guy who sold me this place had put a few cheap shrubs in to make the garden look presentable and I then had to pull out two trees that were way too tall for the environment. No effort was involved because they were constantly rocking in the wind and the soil was completely loose around the roots. I put some compost in and replaced them with small rose bushes.

Meantime, I am also learning the meaning of stony ground!