Sunday 13 April 2014

titivating the ditch bed

This morning I finally planted out a tray of Anemone nemorosa which have been sitting in little pots in the greenhouse for about two years.  You may find plants of named forms of A. nemorosa on sale in the sorts of  nurseries that go for slightly more unusual woodland stuff, especially in the spring, pink and mauve and double ones at around four quid a pop.  The wild white single form is extremely pretty, and available in autumn from some specialist bulb merchants as bags of roots, which come in at a lot less than four pounds a plant.  They don't look like much on arrival, dark brown and faintly shrivelled, and you may feel you would have been safer with a nice plant growing in a pot, but roots are the way to go if you want lots of plants.

I bought a bag of fifty, potted them up individually in three inch pots, and stood them in the greenhouse.  The following spring I was left with twenty or so pots that never grew any leaves.  I planted out the ones that had, wondered whether to blame the bulb supplier or the compost for the others given that I had a dud run of compost around that time, and investigated the contents of the remaining pots.  The roots were still there, now fat and shiny with bulges on them that looked like buds of some sort.  I repotted them in fresh compost, and put them down on a low shelf in the greenhouse to get on with it.  This spring most came into leaf and this was the second batch I've planted.  I have read that Anemone nemorosa is not the easiest thing to establish in a garden, and that one's best bet is to start with a growing plant.  Certainly anything that lurks around underground for a year before showing any visible signs of life must be at risk of having something else planted on top of it in the meantime.

I weeded the ditch bed while I was down there.  Some of the weeds were obvious, especially the goose grass, but there were some just at the first true leaf stage, that looked as though they might have been violets.  I gave them the benefit of the doubt, since I'd like more violets.  Likewise I have to be careful not to scratch up all the primrose seedlings at this time of year.  They have typical wrinkly primrose leaves when they are still very small, so are reasonably easy to identify, but start off awfully tiny, so you have to peer closely.  I think there might be a few bog primula seedlings in the bog bed as well, which would be nice since I never got round to collecting seed from the apricot coloured P. bulleyana, but it will be a faff weeding round them.

The pulmonaria in the ditch bed were starting to flag, and I spent an hour and a half of the evening giving it a good soak, the first time I've got the hose out this year.  It has been a dry few weeks.  I try not to water the garden, except for the pots and recently planted things that haven't had time to get their roots out, but this is the ditch bed's peak season and I'd like to enjoy it.  Come the summer and the pulmonarias can look as tatty as they like, as long as I don't think they're actually dying.  You might not think that something called a ditch bed would need watering at the first dry spell, but while ours is called that because it runs parallel to the ditch along the bottom of the garden, it is about three feet above the level of the water, and not especially damp.

I was pleased to see the lily-of-the-valley has now popped up, and is beginning to run about in proper Convallaria fashion.  I couldn't remember when it normally showed, in this strange spring when things have been so early, and was starting to have tremors of doubt in case the roots had been eaten by some wretched animal.  The Solomon's Seal is coming up as well, its sturdy stems held well apart.  They are now big enough to see, which makes life easier, since it is always disheartening to take a step in the border, and then discover you have snapped the emerging shoots of some precious plant.

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