Three minute autumn sowing for a bountiful 2019 💚
Hello friends!
I'm actually pretty proud of myself this week. Things have got done, and the children are alive. You really can't ask for more can you?
Here are my five minute gardening forays for this week.
Monday
There is a barrow full of irises that have been languishing, slowly drying up from when I removed them from my flowerbeds last week. To recap, I was sick of them - they bulk up SO fast, and, although I'm a fan of a stroppy leaf, I don't want it falling all over everything else. The flowers area of course, a charm, but a fleeting one. I figure if they are so thuggish then I will try them out in the tiny strip of earth between the garden wall and the path that surrounds the garden. I put them in quickly, water and have done with it. If they don't make it I won't be sad.
Tuesday
There are some moments where finicky fussing and a jolly good meddle is the order of the day. When the urge happens (and it's not often) concentrate on one small area - it could be a pot of house-leeks which need to be freed from random bits of grass, or a perennial which has a mixture of dead and live stems to be sorted. Today it was a flowerbed - one I had recently denuded of its irises (see above) and was crying out for re-organisation. I move a few things into it (alchemilla mollis for edging) and I take some things out of it (a geranium sanguineum that I'm not enamoured with, and then I begin weeding - not my usual type of weeding, but slow, sustained, gentle attack on the couch grass and creeping buttercup that are everywhere. Normally I would randomly remove such things and leave it at that, but today I fiddle with the surface of the soil, getting it all beautiful and dark and crumbly, which pretty much involves removing leaf-matter and stones from the surface. Again, this is not normally something I'd do - leaf mould and decaying plant matter is important to my plants, and the last thing I want to be doing is removing it, but today I want to create the beginnings of a sow-able surface, and that means getting the soil to a point where there are no 'bits'...a bit like making bolognese for children with no discernible carrot, onion, celery, tomato...ANYTHING. You get the gist. I also start planting bulbs. It's a laborious process and I only manage a few, but it's begun, and that's the main thing.
Wednesday
I have a delivery - the result of slightly tipsy late night shopping. I rather relish the surprise when something turns up at the door that you'd totally forgotten buying. Anyway, today it was two hydrangea paniculata, with which I had sensibly (drunkenly) decided to replace the failed asters and echinacea that last year formed the backbone of my planting. This year they have stubbornly refused to play ball, so I am calling it quits and going shrubby. These hydrangea will grow pretty big, and hopefully dominate the space, looking glorious and leaving little room for uninvited guests. That's the plan. I clear away some stuff, and prepare their planting holes with love, and I plant them also with love, and then I water them with a steady, slow trickle from the hose, for at least 30 mins each.
I'll be watering these everyday (rain or shine) until they show a bit of growth.
Thursday
I have to drive to Kent for a meeting today. Kent is quite a long way away. I was a stones throw from Sissinghurst but there was no time to go and see it. No gardening.
Friday
I want to plant more bulbs but my janky back and ankles won't let me (yes, I have become positively geriatric in a VERY short space of time). Thank you all so much for your kind messages about this. I'm beyond grateful, and I feel like I should do a blog post about gardening with janky bodies - the steps we can take to prevent pain and continue gardening despite our bodies giving up on us. But I digress. I can't bend today, so I stand at the potting bench (YES, the one I cleaned last week...*airpunch*) and put some calendula into some compost. It's simple, and calming, and somehow rejuvenating doing this, and for anyone new to sowing seeds, I'm putting a little illustrated how-to down below, along with a gentle plea to have a go if you've not tried this before.
Autumn sown calendula
You can obviously also sow these seeds in-situ (where they are to flower) but I want mine as infill plants that I can dot around wherever there's a gap, so I'm doing them in pots.
1. Mix up some multi-purpose compost with some perlite or grit (about half and half)
2. Fill some pots with this mixture and water them
3. Sow the seeds about 2cm apart. (Once these seedlings have grown enough I'll be removing them from these nursery pots and putting them in their own individual pots.
4. Cover with about a cm more of your compost mixture
5. Water again, very carefully so as not to displace the seeds
5. Put them in a warm sunny spot, on a tray so you can keep them watered. When the weather gets cold I'll be putting them in a cold frame (a mini-greenhouse). You can use a clear plastic storage box for this if you like.
So simple - in fact I would probably let a small child do this if I didn't enjoy it so much myself.
All the good things as always, and please do hit reply if you have any questions or comments
xx Laetitia
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