in the greenhouse

At last, a day when it was not raining and howling with wind.  When the sun shone, and the breeze had a balmy quality carrying intimations of spring.  When the bees ventured out of their hives, to forage on the hellebores and the remains of the Chaenomeles under the kitchen window (half of it had to be chopped down to give access to the drains, alas).  A nice day.

Let us not try to run before we can walk.  The ground is still absolutely saturated.  Streams of water are running off the fields and across the roads.  The Systems Administrator went for a walk around the farm after lunch, just to get some exercise and enjoy the fresh air, and returned reporting that the footpaths were still every bit as impassable as they were a couple of days ago.  They would be, and will be bad for a while yet.  Still, it is wonderful to get out of the house without being blown into a fluster, and to work outside with no risk of being caught out in a sudden, vicious shower.

It seemed a good day to start sorting out the greenhouse.  I have packets of seed waiting to be sown, a job I normally start around the eighth of the month, and occupying myself usefully in the greenhouse would keep my trampling feet off the borders.  Cleaning out dead leaves and anything infected with mould, finding space on the bench for the propagating cases and washing them, pulling out any weeds and watering anything dry, before getting to the point where I could actually start sowing, were all sensible jobs for a wet soil day, if not wet weather.

I went to the Clacton garden centre to buy fresh seed compost.  Some years I've just used multipurpose, and still would, for big, vigorous seeds like broad beans, but there are some species whose seedlings do not like too many nutrients in the compost when they first germinate, and multipurpose can be too coarse for tiny seeds, if they should land on a great chip of not-quite composted bark.  A trip to Clacton combines usefully with a visit to the tip (sorry, household recycling centre) anyway.

Cheshunt compound has been withdrawn.  I was afraid it had been.  It had been around for donkey's years, bright blue, acrid smelling copper based crystals you dissolved and used to water the seed compost and seeds.  It helped combat the fungal diseases that cause damping off, when your pot of seedlings suddenly collapse.  Copper has been used as a fungicide since the days of phytophera destroying vinyards, and I don't know whether Cheshunt was actually deemed hazardous, or simply an old-fashioned product that the manufacturers didn't deem worthwhile to put through the current approval and registration process for garden chemicals.  After some deliberation I bought an alternative, recently introduced copper based fungicide, which was labelled as suitable for seedlings as well as more mature plants, but since it was packaged in sachets each of which would make three litres of spray, which was not suitable for keeping but had to be used at once, and since I don't need anything like three litres at a time for sowing a few dozen nine centimetre pots of seeds, and don't have a sprayer, I'm not entirely sure how I'll use it.  I got shading paint as well while I was at it, to avoid being caught out in a month or two, when the first hot day threatens to fry any seedlings in the greenhouse.

I did not have much success splitting primroses, in the end.  P. 'Wanda' and the pink form of the common primrose mostly had their roots eaten by vine weevil grubs, and as I suspected, P. poissonii did not like being split at all.  I found no roots in any of the pots, and no weevils either, which makes me think there were never any roots to be eaten.  On the other hand, my botrytis infected Teucrium chamaedrys cuttings had healthy roots below compost level, and looks as though they may sprout again.  Established plants run in the border, and I think it is able to shoot from below ground level.

I never got to the point of making any sowings, by the time I'd pulled dead leaves off the geraniums, investigated various pots of bulbs, moved as many of the rooted Peter Beales iris offer irises out to the cold frame as would fit, and generally fiddled about and titivated.  The first large propagating case is washed and dried, so I should be able to make a start tomorrow.