Lemon verbena, division, pea shoots and leaf mould!
Hello friends!
Before I kick off, I wanted to get your feedback on something - I'm thinking of making a little booklet/bundle thing, full of tiny, five minute, simple projects that will turn you into a gardener stealthily, without your knowledge! ๐ It would be free, no strings etc...basically a little present from me to you. Is this something you'd like? Do let me know if you have the time, either by answering this message, or via my instagram... It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but obviously I don't want to waste my own time or anyone else's! Do let me know?
My five minute forays this week
Monday: Lemon verbena cuttings. I went out and snipped off a bit from one of the tips of my leggy lemon verbena plant. If you don't know lemon verbena, then you'll want to buy one of these gems next spring. The scent is the most lemony of lemon-isa things...more lemony than lemons (if that's possible) and you can use it in herbal teas, puddings, cakes, ice creams, smoothies, cocktails, salads...anywhere you want a real hit of lemon. This type of cutting, off a woody plant in late summer, is called a semi-ripe cutting, because the stem is quite tough and the tip is quite soft. You do it in the same way as pelargonium cuttings (see my previous letter on this) and you'll have a new plant for next year. You can use this method for other herbs like sage and rosemary too.
Tuesday: I divided my iris. I use Iris sibirica in the flowerbeds a lot. It's such a reliable plant with beautiful flowers and, unlike other, posher irises, doesn't need its roots to be 'baked' over the summer. Posh plants are all very well, but they do need rather more care than I'm able to give, so I generally steer clear of them and stick to what in the garden world we call 'good doers'. So, if you have perennials that need dividing then NOW is the time. Perennials are those plants which come up in the spring and do their thing, and then disappear over the winter, in a sort of 'hibernation' until the warm weather arrives again. They are generally soft rather than 'woody'. A geranium is a perennial, and so is a japanese anemone. If they get too big they often lose their vigour, or they just outgrow their space, and you can dig them up and divide them up and then re-plant the bits in other parts of your garden. To divide my iris, I dug it up carefully, trying not to damage the roots, and then I pulled it apart into bits. This sometimes takes a bit of doing, depending on what plant you are dividing. You sometimes need to use two garden forks, back to back, levering them about a bit to tease the thing apart, and sometimes you just have to go in with a bread knife. It's always better to do it by pulling though, if you possibly can. Make sure you've got a good lot of roots and shoots on each bit, and then plant them up as normal.
Wednesday: I sowed a pot of pea shoots - how-to below. These are the easiest greens you can grow and they taste utterly delicious. If you grow only one edible, let it be this. (Warning: I say that about a lot of things).
Thursday: I dug up some rudbeckia and replanted them - same deal as with the irises above. All this dividing is actually quite a big job - I've got a lot of plants to move around, and plans to plant quite a lot of other stuff. I don't know how long it's going to take, and I honestly don't dwell on it. Thinking about how much time something is going to take often leaves me paralysed and doing absolutely nothing at all. With big jobs like this, I just keep doing my five minutes a day. Yes, that means I only divide one plant a day, but that quickly adds up, and the job gets done eventually, in a pain-free way that works for my life. This is how I mulched the garden earlier this year, and planted my bulbs last year. Bit by bit, little by little.
Friday: I finally got up a ladder to trim my neighbour's vine which is about to strangle my hornbeam lollypop. It's an absolutely gorgeous thing, called Vitis cognetiae and it's obviously really happy which is GREAT *digs nails into palms* but if it's left unchecked, then it'll obliterate my little trees. The law on this type of thing is clear - you can cut or use or eat anything that grows over the boundary onto your garden. The owner of the plant has no responsibility to prune it for you unfortunately. It doesn't matter then, that if the shoe was on the other foot, this lady would come straight to my door and let me know how she feels about something I've planted (it's happened before!) so I prefer to remove the annoyance and 'borrow' her beautiful plant to clothe my trellis. It has gorgeous autumn colour and if I keep tying it in it'll be fantabulous...that's the plan anyway!
Saturday (bonus!): I put some fallen leaves in a bag to make leaf mould. This is totally easy. You just put a bunch of leaves in a black plastic bag, punch some holes in it with a fork tie the top up, and put it somewhere out of the way, preferably with something heavy on top of it, for two years (I know!). When you open up the bag you'll have wonderful crumbly black stuff that you can either add to compost or use as a mulch on top of your containers.
How-to: Pea-shoots
You need a wide shallow pot (mine is about 35cm diameter), filled with multi-purpose compost, and a packet of pea seeds - variety unimportant.
Simply water the compost first, then scatter the seeds over the surface, evening them out a bit so that there aren't any gaping spaces. Cover these with another cm of compost and carefully water again. Leave the pot outside and shoots should appear within days. When the weather gets chilly you can grow these indoors.
When to pick is absolutely up to you - I usually start chopping when the shoots are about 10cm high; after that they get a bit more chewy. You can also, obviously eat the pea at the base of the shoot too; just pull the whole lot up and wash very thoroughly. You can keep lots of pea shoots in the fridge drawer, lined with a wet paper towel to keep them from drying out. I prefer to cut as and when I need them, and I use them more as an anointing thing, than as the main event. They a little bunch of pea shoots will lift pretty much any piece of meat or fish from the ordinary to the rather special. I also plonk them on top of soups and stews etc...you get the idea.
Five minute things I might do next week
continue dividing perennials
plant some bulbs
mowing, trimming, sweeping, and generally messing around
All the good things, always
x Laetitia
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