My summer feeding regimes, pruning my apple tree, a pot of hellebore glory, and more 5am chat 🌸
Hello Friends!
Look! The first iris has popped in this little bowl I planted up before Christmas. The control freak in me is wanting them all up at the same time but I have to remind myself to chill, because these flowers are not here to do my bidding. I spent far more time than is strictly necessary trying to capture the beauty on my big camera...only finally to realise that all I had to do really, was appreciate them for myself. Anyway...onwards...here are my five minute endeavours this week:
Monday
Lots of sprucing up today. I've had to move quite a few pots on the terrace because there is a very brave man on the glass roof, cleaning the algae off it. This has to happen every six months (although in reality, it's every nine) and when it's done I simply cannot imagine why I left it so long. Dirty glass has a way of getting me down, like the slow drip of a tap might drive you mad. I promise myself to put an alarm on my phone and get the guy back sooner this time. I also put alarms on my phone for other things. Here they are:
April and May: Fortnightly alarm for feeding containers
June, July, August and September: Weekly alarm for feeding containers
May to September: Fortnightly alarm for feeding houseplants
April: Alarm for feeding and mulching trees and shrubs
Obviously I could write all this in a diary, but I find that alarms work better, because they are more annoying; sometimes I need to be nagged into doing things. And friends, there is no QUESTION that I am going to ignore the alarms, and leave it a few days, but I do need the memory jog, because my brain is addled, not from too much partying, but from too much mothering. I also move my sleeping lions away from the door, with the result that I can actually see their beautiful faces. I love this. I rearrange the terrace.
Tuesday
Today I begin pruning my apple tree. Last year I got someone in and went out while they did their work. The result was a general all-over haircut, which is just about the worst way to prune an apple tree. It wasn't his fault; it was mine - he wasn't a tree surgeon and I didn't leave proper instructions. My bad. The upshot is that there are now eleventy billion watershoots sky-rocketing from the branches. This is really bad news for a fruit tree as it causes over-fruiting and lack of air circulation.
The water shoots (see them? poker straight? Ugly?) need removing in stages, over the course of the next three years (I don't want to shock the tree). I begin with my secateurs, and before long I am having a REALLY LOVELY TIME doing something I had been dreading for ages. I amass a large pile of thin shoots. The larger ones though need a better tool and I had been gifted a mini-chainsaw from Stihl which I have up until now been too frightened to take out of its box...TERRIFIED I TELL YOU! It comes with a load of safety kit - helmet, gloves, trousers and boots - all very sexy, but I'm still scared. It's a battery-operated thing and the moment I start it up I fall in love. Far from being the pulsating killing machine I was envisioning, it feels like an electric toothbrush in the hand, and couldn't be easier to use....I want to chop everything. It's dangerous. I chop a few of the large watershoots that I can reach easily and then stop as I can't do any more safely. As I go indoors I vaguely promise myself that I will tie up the pile of shoots and store them away in the dry, as they'll make excellent kindling. I don't act on this though, and they are still out there by the time the rain begins. Oh dear. 🤷♀️
Wednesday
It raineth. I'm actually really pleased as it's been so very dry over Christmas and New Year. It cleans the terrace too, so I don't have to. I'm obsessed with having more hellebores after I saw them everywhere at the weekend at Petersham Nurseries. I used to own a lot of hellebores, when my garden was in its first incarnation. There was ample under-tree space which led to a perfect hellebore sanctuary. I also had three growing in hanging baskets which I adored - they stayed in there quite happily for years until the baskets rotted away and they fell to the ground. All of these plants were gifted away when I made over the garden and now I'm regretting it. There are numerous hellebore-shaped holes in my garden. I go to the local nursery and am shocked at the prices. £28 for one hellebore! I manage to find a slightly cheaper one than this, and make away with it, deciding it'll go in one of my empty pots...pride of place, so to speak.
A souped-up pot of hellebores.
You need:
1 Hellebore
3 little pots of muehlenbeckia
15 or so crocus bulbs
Multi-purpose compost
A large-ish container - mine is 40cm diameter.
Fill the container with compost, put the hellebore in the middle and tuck the muehlenbeckia around the edge. Before you back-fill with compost, place the crocus bulbs into the gaps and then cover. Water well and that's that.
(all those roots you can see are the remains of last year's gladioli; I planted this up straight into the same compost).
Thursday
If you were here last week you'll know about my 5am mornings writing my book; Well, they have been continuing, and I am now at the stage where I'm painstakingly putting in extra tiny tidbits into the text, and checking each and every fact to make sure it's correct. This fact-checking is difficult in gardening as there are so many grey areas. Despite the drudgery of getting it done, I am still enjoying having these mornings to myself immensely; almost two whole hours of calm and quiet before porridge boy comes down, followed closely by his two sisters. I do think I drew the short straw when it came to my children's breakfast whims. They all prefer entirely different things. The eldest is most happy with last night's supper, (spaghetti bolognese is a particular favourite) and the youngest one, although the easiest (she is happy with breakfast cereal) needs COMPLETE CONTROL over the whole offering. She has to pour the cereal and the milk, and she invariably spills all of it. I am usually pretty dictatorial about meals. I truly take no shit when it comes to lunch and supper. There's no second choice...manners have to be acceptable etc...but breakfast has me conquered because I need them to eat well, and time is SHORT. Send me your hacks, newsletter friends. Should I give them what they want? Or should I treat breakfast like the other two meals?
Anyway, this is a gardening letter, and today I am out dead-heading because there is a break in the weather and Thursdays are for FUSSING. Cyclamen again...am I boring you yet with the cyclamen? I'm using nail scissors today because it's rather icy cold, and scissors stop my fingers turning blue.
Friday
The shed is on my list today. I make a dash for it, taking some hooks and a drill with me, and quick as a flash, in five minutes I do the thing I've been thinking about doing for the last two years. The hooks are rudimentary, and my goodness, the result is not exactly pinterest-worthy but my GLORY BE it works and I'm thrilled. Each of my small tools now has a hook. I've always coveted a pin-board, but I'm to attached to my wall full of curling, fading plastic labels, so I compromise and put hooks between them. I'm about to do a tool-cleaning fest, with which I will no-doubt regale you lovely people, but basically I'm on a mission to clean and sharpen the underwear off them. Watch this space.
That's it for this week! Here are some blog posts you may like:
Winter gardening container garden tricks to avoid the desolate look!
Armchair gardening: my January plant shopping list.
All the good things, always
And THANK you for coming with me on my weekly gardening journey. I love your messages, and questions, and the general banter... I particularly love those of you who are living on the other side of the world, who bother to read this message and write to me with tales of roses and heat, and general gloriousness...it reminds me that I have all that to come, and I love the circle we live in.
xx Laetitia
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