tulips

Tulips all over the Heart

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

The Grand Finale has come at last, to the Heart for the World. Tulips in different forms and colors are overflowing the heart bed. I managed  to  prolong the poles that hold the chicken net, to give the flowers more room to grow. But now, in full bloom, the tulips struggle to get through the net. And I struggle to decide whether to “let them free” and be afraid every morning to see the tulips all eaten up by the deer. But perhaps I do anyway. People say the deer are more interested in buds, not the full blooming flowers. A heartful greeting from me and my garden 🙂

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Black Hero, still a secret

 

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Pacific Pearl showing off

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Claudia behind bars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Status: A Heart for the World

~ Eva the Gardener ~ 1 Comment

Some of you have been wondering what the Heart for the World looks like today, in the beginning of spring. For you who have not read about it, go back and read about the construction of this special heart, a flower bed filled with tulip bulbs. The post is called A Heart for the World. As a reminder, here is a photo of how it looked at the end of the autumn 2015.

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This is the heart bed, newly digged in the slope in front of our house, autumn 2015.

Today, april 2016, the heart looks like this. I have protected the tulips against deers with a chicken net across the bed, placed on poles to hold the net up in the air so the tulips have room to grow. Really, I have no idea what to do when these 30 centimeters (12 inches) of room for growing is used up and the tulips need more space.

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On top of every pole I put a plastic bottle or a metal can to make the net move smoothly over the area and not get stuck on the poles. Some extra poles hold the net to the ground all around the bed.

For extra protection I put wads of unwashed sheepwool here and there, and soaked it with the badsmelling liquid I get as a side effect from my Bokashi compost. I dilute it a bit and spray on the wool. I have noticed the deers avoid places where I have sprayed this stuff.

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I will keep you posted on what happens with the Heart for the World. I can tell you all the neighbours are as excited as I am about it.

To be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

Crazy about tulips

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment
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Combine new buds with tulips nearly faded – makes an abundance of joy!

If the Dutch are famous for growing and knowing everything about tulips – the Swedes are known to be the people buying most tulips in the world. A fact confirmed by statistics.  Right now I am part of all those crazy Swedes, with my mind only tuned in on tulips, tulips, tulips.

Combine tulips with delicate branches from plants in the garden, here flowering quince and willow.
Combine tulips with delicate branches from plants in the garden, here flowering quince and willow.

I see tulips  – and only tulips – everywhere. And buy them. And arrange them in different groups depending on color, form, size, state of ripeness.

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Sometimes I let the tulips stay in the vase, when the decay is setting in. There is a beauty in the changing of color, in the petals falling off and leaving only the pistils on the stem. IMG_0666

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And of course do crazy things like hanging them upside down outside, with the bulbs still there! It was an experiment. It was winter and freezing cold outside, and I let the tulip with its bulb hang from the bird feeder. That was oneIMG_0673 month ago, and it has met wind, snow, ice – and is still alive. Seems like the bud is waiting for spring, because it has not yet started to blossom. So yesterday I bought some company for this courageous flower – six different kinds of tulips, all attached to their bulbs .

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And of course I am waiting with eagerness to see the tulips in my “A heart for the world”, showing themselves. But that will take some weeks still, before they are peeking up through the soil inIMG_0407 the garden. If you are interested, go to the post called “A heart for the world” and read more about how I made a huge heart flowering bed in the garden.

 

A heart for the world

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

I don´t know if the heart called me, or if I called the heart, but two weeks ago I started thinking of building a heart in my garden. There is a dull slope from our veranda and down to the lawn. It´s pointing east and has a lot of sun during spring and summer season – a perfect place for a flowerbed with the shape of a heart. And what would I fill it with? Well, tulips of course, lots and lots of tulips. We Swedes are crazy about tulips, in fact we are one of the largest buyers of tulips when spring season comes. Why then? Well, I believe here in the north of Europe we are so so tired of the winter IMG_0395darkness, and when spring peaks out we want colors and colors and colors. Tulips!

I decided to build a heart of tulips. A week ago I bought lots of different sorts of red tulips at a huge garden shop north of Stockholm. Don Quichotte, Cummins, Red Shine, Pacific Pearl, Bastogne, Blue Diamond, And topped with a few black and white as a surprise among the others – Black Hero, Purple Prince and Ice Wonder. What names! They all soundIMG_0387 like some ancient knights, don´t they?

And perhaps they are. The more the heart took form in my head, the more it came to be a symbol of love and empathy. A heart for the world.

So how did I make this unusual flowerbed? I started measuring out the area. With sushi sticks. The size is about six yards high and four yards wide (5 x 3 meters). It took a while before I was satisfied.

The digging started. First I cut the edge of the heart with a spade, continuing with cutting out piece after piece of the lawn inside the heart. It took me nearly eight hours to dig the whole heart. There were a feIMG_0390IMG_0389w bigger and smaller stones that had to be coaxed out. It did not seem much, but when I looked at the heap of stones I realized it was.

I don´t know how many loads with the wheelbarrow I drove from the heart and up to the compost. Loads that also emptied the heart of soil, so I needed to fill it with fresh soil. Six big bags of soil from the local store made the heart a cozy place for all the “tulip knights”.

IMG_0392While I was busy planning, digging and filling with soil, our neighbour’s ten year old son helped me with some of the “bling bling”. I wanted to fill out the borders of the heart with pine cones. It looks nice, it makes it easy to see the border and I hope the cones with help stop the soil from being washed away by autumn rain.

Now to the creative and artistic part. I put all the bags of tulips beside each other, just to admire and enjoy the colors of the photos. Also I divided the heart into two parts, a right and a leIMG_0400ft one with a piece of string between two sushi sticks. Every bag of tulips I shared equally between these parts of the heart, but was not so strict inside the parts, just spread the bulbs out more or less stochastically.

Planting was easy. In the planting store I found this very simple little scoop. You just press it down to the desired depth andIMG_0402 then pull – and all the soil follows, leaving a nice hole to put the bulb in. With the bulb in the hole, one presses the handles together and – whoops! – the soil in the scoop let go, covering the hole. I suppose many of you already know this toIMG_0406ol, but it was new to me and I was like a child with a new toy, playing down all the bulbs with a smile.

And this is the result! For protection, so the deers will not dig it up in the winter, I will put    cIMG_0408hicken wire over it. Also I am thinking of planting the new sprouts of strawberry I got this season, to make the heart a green bed. Hopefully the tulips will give joy in springtime,IMG_0407 and the new strawberries will give tasteful berries in June and July.