Planting, shopping, sprinkling, planting and sowing!
Hello friends!
Hope you enjoy this week's roundup of all the five-minute madness! Happy Sunday xxx
This week's five minute forays
Monday: I finally got my act together and planted up a bare patch of earth that I've been meaning to tackle for well over a year...this is how it goes sometimes, and I'm not going to beat myself up about it (I still have unpacked boxes in the basement from when we moved in here in 2010)... but I digress.... the planting plan for this new patch was a continuation of what is already working really well under my apple tree - I've listed the plants below for you, just incase you ever have a shady area that you want to cover.
Tuesday: I shopped for bulbs online (yes, still gardening). I bought from Avon Bulbs this year (and last) because they stock unusual varieties, but mostly because they pack everything in newspaper - not a single bit of plastic in sight, and I find that SO refreshing. They are not active on instagram but do check them out for your bulbs if you've not yet purchased. I also removed the pondweed from my pool/pond thing. It's a bit of a slimy job but if you can put your geek hat on and watch all the tiny things crawling out of it and back into the pond it can be five minutes of wonder rather than wretchedness.
Wednesday: I sprinkled some old cornflower seed in my path, which I am clearing slowly slowly. If you've been watching my stories you'll know that I have a hoggin path (basically just compacted gravel on top of hardcore. It's cheap to lay and beautiful to look at but oh MY do the weeds just LOVE it. To be honest I was rather naive about the amount of maintenance it would need in terms of plucking out weeds to keep it looking like an actual path, so I think I will probably have to revisit it and possibly pave it over in the future. For now though, the only way is to join the weeds rather than trying to beat them, and encourage beautiful things to put down roots....hence the seed sprinkling, of which more next week.
Thursday: Five glorious moments putting holes in the lawn with my daughter. Aerating the lawn really does make a difference to its appearance. You are basically just making lots of tiny holes in the lawn which allow both oxygen and water to travel to the roots of the grass. The result is always better, stronger, greener grass (sorry, I'm not going to do a 'control patch' to show you the difference, you'll just have to take my word for it). I have a jump-on earth tiller by de Wit that my rotter likes to use for aerating, but actually the four-pronged aerating fork that I use is much easier to handle (for me anyway). You can also get spiky things to attach to your feet which get the job done.
Friday: I yanked out the gone-to-seed remnants of one pot of leaves, levelled the soil and re-sowed with some Sarah Raven 'Winter Hardy' leaves. If you want to grow your own salad right now then this is the way to go, perhaps sow two wide shallow pots a couple of weeks apart and use them for cut and come again leaves (where you just pick the leaves off individually as and when you need them, leaving the main plant to grow on). For me this is very much the easiest way to have salad on the table every day and avoid plastic covered supermarket offerings. I will be sowing more next week on stories but it's easy as pie...just make some drills with your finger and sow thinly into them, cover, water and wait.
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My Plant list for shade
Here, with love, is a plant list for a shady area that will look gorgeous all year round and require very little work on your part.
1. Dryopteris filix mas (male fern),
2. Asplenium scolopendrium (hart's tongue)
3. Polystichum setiferum (soft shield fern)
4. Polypodium vulgar (common polypody).
5. Anemone hupehensis var. japonica 'Pamina'
6. Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata 'Black Barlow'
7. Paeonia (sorry I don't know what it is, but any old peony will do!)
8. Daucus carota (Queen Anne's lace)...which shouldn't been enjoying life under a tree, but seems perfectly happy thank you very much)
These are all planted pretty densely (as you might plant up a show garden), and although this means more of an initial outlay, it's something I'd advise, both from an aesthetic and a maintenance point of view...dense planting means fewer weeds and therefore less work to keep things looking as they should. It also means that things will get congested sooner though, and that some division will be called for which is hardly back-breaking and certainly more fun than constant weeding.
Note. In order to get the planting right up to the base of my tree I actually put a wide ring of everedge (simple bendy metal that is used to edge lawns) around the trunk to protect it, and then raised the soil level. I did this my myself without any expert help - it was really easy, and I wouldn't be able to plant so close to a tree-trunk without it as I'd be digging into the tree's roots. It's a great trick if you have trees you want to underplant.
One more note. This and most other lush plantings like this will need regular watering in their first few months and over the summer. Although shade means there's not so much moisture-wicking sun to dry things out, the roots of the trees will suck moisture out from below, so do be committed to keeping things watered!
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Some five minute things I might do next week:
More salad to see me through winter, (and more pea shoots, as I didn't get around to it this week)
Semi-ripe cuttings of my lemon verbena
Mow my lawn (once I have fixed my broken mower!)
Plant up some hyacinths for indoor winter scent
oh, and sweet peas...I need to sow some sweet peas!
Let me know if you're doing any five minute gardening...just tag your pics with #thefiveminutegarden so I can gawp!
All good things, always
Laetitia xx
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