Arrangement Of A Summer Cottage

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

How we equip our summer cottage For the sixth year now - in spring and summer, autumn and winter, we are equipping our eight acres. And although perfection is still far away, a lot has already been done. Our garden is buried in flowers in warm weather. Flowerbeds blaze with a bright carpet from spring to autumn, flowers shimmer in the wind with all the colors of the rainbow. As soon as the snow melts and the sun warms up, crocuses and daffodils, primroses and tulips bloom, later - peonies, followed by roses, irises, lilies, clematis, chamomile and many other flowers.

Our house stands at the end of the plot, and in front of it is a continuous flower garden, on its sides - an orchard. You will leave early in the morning in pajamas and slippers, when the dew glistens in the grass, and the children and neighbors are still sleeping, you walk through the garden, admire this beauty, your soul rejoices. And you are charged with energy from this beauty for the whole day. It is doubly joyful that we have created this beauty ourselves, with our own hands.

Last season, my husband attached to the house a large terrace measuring 2.5x6 meters with a transparent roof made of bronze polycarbonate. Of course, I wanted to arrange it and decorate it with flowers. To do this, at the end of February, I sowed ampelous lobelia and petunia seeds. It seemed to me that they are most suitable for this purpose. I sowed Lobelia for the first time in my life. However, everything worked out, even I had to distribute extra seedlings. Perhaps my experience will be useful to novice growers.

Lobelia seeds are very small, so I sowed them on the soil surface in a shallow container. I took the same soil that was prepared for the tomatoes. Before sowing, the soil was lightly tamped, soaked with warm water. Then she sowed the seeds and lightly pressed them to the ground with a matchbox, put a cellophane bag on the container, leaving a small hole for air.

I watered the seedlings from a pipette, very carefully and little by little. The seedlings grew very slowly, the seedlings were weak and tender. When 2-3 true leaves appeared, I cut the seedlings into other containers with a distance of 2.5 cm between the plants. If your plants were sown densely, then you can pick earlier. Capturing several seedlings along with a lump of earth, transfer them to another bowl. When picking seedlings, I plant them in a very loose, dry soil with the addition of sand, and then I put a bowl with seedlings in a pan with water for complete saturation with moisture. Planting seedlings directly into wet soil is, in my opinion, worse - the plants fall out.

I live in an apartment, I grow seedlings on the windowsill, and then I take them out to the glazed balcony. I try not to spoil her, I start to temper her early so that I don't get sick later. At a tender age, all the plants are sometimes fed with a very weak concentration of Gumi. In the same way, I grew seedlings of remontant strawberries of five varieties and petunia. It must be said that petunia seedlings are larger than those of lobelia and strawberries at all stages of development. And it grows faster.

In May, I planted the grown seedlings in containers, hanging pots in the country. Several days after the transplant, I held the containers in the greenhouse, covering them with spunbond on top. Then she put them out on the terrace. In the photo, readers can see two-month-old seedlings in mid-April and already flowering plants on the terrace in June. She also grew other annuals with seedlings - zinnias, snapdragons, marigolds, ageratums, balsam, sanvitalia. But she sowed them in March, and some - right in the greenhouse. Our flowering terrace was a favorite spot for my 8 year old son and his friends. All summer they played chess, checkers on it, assembled constructors. The terrace allowed the children to be outdoors in any weather. In the heat, the flowers on the terrace protected them from the bright sun, and in the rain, the roof protected them from precipitation.

And how pleasant it was for the whole family to sit on the terrace, drink tea brewed with mint, currant and cherry leaves or with monarda and thyme, while inhaling the aroma of a blossoming garden, admire the sunset, listen to birds singing, and the chatter of a grasshopper. What else does a person need to be happy ?! In the past season, roses and clematis bloomed very luxuriantly in our garden. And although some climbing roses pushed up in winter (there was a lot of snow, they were pressed to the ground), still the flowering of the remaining plants was magnificent. Flowers hung in whole garlands. There was almost no black spot on the plants, although in previous years it very strongly affected the bushes. Perhaps it was the fact that in the spring, after removing the shelters, I sprayed the roses with Bordeaux mixture, and then at the beginning of the growing season spilled phytosporin. I fed them with Gumi's solution,complex fertilizer for roses and humus.

A little later, clematis gained full strength and bloomed, fascinating both us and all people passing by, with their beauty and variety. Clematis of the varieties Vilde Lyon, Romance, Rouge cardinal, Marmory, Piilu, Skazka, Josephine, Purpurea captivity were especially good. Hybrid tea and floribunda roses were also not far behind. By the end of summer, the bushes had grown so much that some of the shoots had to be cut in the rose garden.

Phlox and lilies bloomed wildly. Their unique aroma filled the garden, especially in the evening. And the overgrown clumps of the host, wonderful "thickets" of conifers and astilbe created a unique coziness in the garden, which delighted us, lifted our spirits and inspired us to new garden exploits. In the orchard last season, apple trees did not bear fruit, but pears and plums ripened. Even the cherries ripened on our three-year-old Tamaris cherry. The pear of the Lada variety was strewn with fruits, we even had to put props, and the pear of the Otradnenskaya variety gave the first fruits to our joy. They ripened at the end of August - medium-sized, but very tasty - sweet and juicy, fine-grained. In our garden, two more pear saplings of the varieties Cathedral and Krasulia are growing… By autumn, there were many plums - blue, yellow, dark pink. The yellow plums turned out to be very tasty - large, sweet, we ate them before they ripen to the end. Unfortunately, I don't remember the names of their varieties.

Pleased with the garden strawberry variety Gigantella. The berries grew so large that they did not fit in the handle of my two-year-old daughter. We are very pleased with this variety, it has been growing here for only the second year. Other varieties of garden strawberries grow on the beds - Lord, Surprise to the Olympics, Wonderful, remontant strawberries Queen Elizabeth II. There were a lot of berries that season, it is a pity that during the ripening period there were endless rains, and the fruits began to be affected by rot. But the strawberry harvest was enough for us: we ate it both fresh and froze it for the winter, rubbing it with sugar. Fruit grapes of varieties Korinka Russian and New Russiangave the first bunches of fruits. We were so pleased and inspired by this that we planted the entire greenhouse with seedlings of different varieties of grapes. In total, 12 bushes fit in it - on an area of slightly more than 25 m2.

We planted a few more grape bushes of the Baltic varieties for open ground along the neighboring plot on the south side. We hope that he will create a green hedge for us there, and will also yield a crop. But for tomatoes, you will have to build a new greenhouse in a different place. In our small vegetable garden, all the beds are made in the form of boxes measuring 1x3 meters with wide paths between them, covered with gravel. I plant a small amount of different crops there: onions, carrots, beets (we really liked the Mulatka variety), cabbage, leeks, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumbers, garlic. Last year, everything grew well and bore fruit on these beds, the harvest was enough for us and our friends. And the cucumbers even had to be handed out. And they ate themselves, and rolled them into the jars, I even cooked caviar - not only squash, but also cucumber.

I didn't plant potatoes until last season. But last spring I decided to try it. I bought tubers of four varieties: Lugovskoy, Nevsky, Red Scarlet, Elizaveta. I planted them the way one gardener advised in Flora Price magazine. They planted potatoes not on the ridges, but in ditches with compost. Periodically he huddled, and gradually the ditches were filled up. Used fertilizers "Kemira" and "Potato Giant". The bushes grew very tall and beautiful. Everyone who visited the site was amazed at the beauty of my potato garden. And then there was a heavy downpour with a gale wind, which laid all the potato bushes on the ground. But in mid-June, we already began to eat our potatoes. We liked the Elizaveta tubers the most. I think I did pretty well for the first time. I will continue to study and gain experience.

We did not manage to do everything that was planned last season. Not enough time for all. But we do not despair. Last winter we planned new plantings, interesting flower arrangements, we will try to come up with something new. Looking through the photographs of the last season now, I try to imagine what our dacha will be like this summer. We will try to make it prettier from year to year.