Sharing

Once again I have plenty of nasturtiums to go around. So this wonderful hairy monster (not really it is only about an inch long) is very welcome to munch on some of the seeds.

Spring has sprung

Spring is slowly thinking of arriving in our garden. It shows its face intermittently between spells of rain and hail and warms the garden when the sun breaks through the clouds. I have been so busy sowing seeds and potting on that I didn’t even have time for a blog update.
But this weekend it was bitterly cold, so I postponed putting on my wellies for a bit before rooting around in the freezing earth to catch up with my blog.

The big garden plan requires quite some new plants, for which I happily spent a good few hours browsing online for the seeds this winter. As it has been so mild the last few months, I optimistically started some of the seeds already in January. In the meanwhile the undergardener made me a big shelf in the shed for my pots and plants acting as a surrogate greenhouse.
I even performed an experiment Monty (Don, from BBC’s Gardener’s World) would be proud of: I started some broadbeans inside and planted half of them outside while the others were potted on and slowly hardened off in the shed. Turns out these little beans are so tough, they don’t seem to mind the cold nights and happily stay outside!

In the meanwhile the shed and the window sills in the whole house start to fill up with seedlings. Time to start planting out?!

Mulch and garden design

Mulch and design are two words not likely to appear often together in one sentence, but they sum up my recent garden-related activities quite nicely. We had bucket and bucket loads of rain until even the grass was sopping wet under my wellies. It just prevented any work in the garden. So, instead I decided to pick up my pencils and work on a garden design for next year. While our garden this year showed all the colours of the rainbow, it will hopefully look a bit more sophisticated next year. Not that it will lack in colour, but it makes life a little easier now I know what colours my seedlings are going to be.

To complete the plan I ordered some seeds from a local shop and although I am still looking for stipa and astrantia seeds (they had sold out) they delivered all the other seeds and my spring bulbs just when we had a break from all the rain. I jumped in my wellies and dug up whatever was left of the dahlias and planted about 200 bulbs (ouch).

Last weekend I bought the biggest bag of mulch ever seen, I hardly got it home! But now at least my dahlia bulbs are snuggled up in their buckets covered in mulch and we applied a nice blanket to the fruit trees and the hibiscuses. Definitely needed the help of the undergardener who lugged the bag of mulch around the garden.

I think we are pretty much ready for winter now, I’ll keep the very last flowers going as long as possible and then bring on the first frost and snow!

Hoarding

Up to now I wouldn’t classify myself as particularly greedy, but things change. Having a garden brought out a monster hoarder in me. Earlier this summer I was collecting all the big seed heads that my nasturtiums produced (and there were hundreds of them). At the same time I became anxious that mice might eat my supply of seeds in the shed, so I bought a nice sturdy plastic box with a lid. And there the thinking process stopped. I put all the seeds that I had collected in a paper bag in the box and left them there until the next gardening session.

Turns out it is probably a good thing that I am not in charge of a national seed bank, because putting green seeds in a container results in a mouldy mess. Lesson learnt and some of my seeds lost, I started all over. Luckily we still have some nice dry and sunny weather, helping the seeds on my windowsill to dry out before I can stow them away for the winter.

The past weeks our sunflowers have been attracting a lot of attention. From dusk till dawn they are visited by huge amounts of bumblebees. And they don’t just come for a snack. They are tiny little hoarders in their own right and a lot better at it than I will ever be. Look at them all covered in yellow pollen, slowly but surely working their way into the centre of the flower. And they don’t waste any time, while they are buzzing in the sunflower queue, any other flowers around will do in the meanwhile.

What am I waiting for, it is still light outside. Perhaps I should go and collect some more of those nasturtium seeds…….