Wednesday 7 May 2014

sand surivors

I did my random act of kindness today, donating a paper hankie to the stranger in the Waitrose car park who asked me hopefully if I had a tissue on me, love.  He was standing by his car parked next to mine, a frail and elderly man propped on two sticks, and since I had just bought a box of hankies I helpfully rifled through my shopping, found the box, opened it, and gave him a tissue.  He said he only wanted the one.  I expected him to blow his ancient nose or wipe his eyes with it, and the beautiful atmosphere of neighbourly goodwill was rather punctured when he tottered around his car on his sticks, and began to use the tissue to polish the rear bumper of the Mini in the next space along, which I deduced he must have scraped while attempting to park.  I left him to it.

In the garden I am still working my way along the long bed, weeding and mulching, except that I have run out of spent mushroom compost, so today was weeding only.  I have got to one of the most barren spots in the entire property, where the soil is so light, sandy and mere that it's amazing it manages to support any plant life at all.  One species that thrives is a fine leaved annual weedy grass, whose name I do not know except that it is not Poa annua.  It is mainly a weed of light soil, not really bothering me in the back garden where the soil is heavier, and generous lashings of mulch and Strulch reduce it considerably, though of course that technique is no help in the gravel. It seeds itself in among the crowns of other plants, and will pop up through any gaps in the canopy of supposedly ground covering plants.

Verbascum nigrum also seeds itself generously, but as it is a handsome plant and I am very glad for anything ornamental that will volunteer to live in such meagre conditions, I leave the seedlings in peace, apart from pulling out those that have planted themselves right on top of any cherished specimens.  It throws up spikes of deep yellow flowers that are a good pollen and nectar source for insects, and sets lavish seed, which provides food for the birds and lots more mulleins.  Plants may behave as biennials, or short lived perennials, and in fact on our incredibly light soil are not all that short lived.  I recommend it highly to anyone racking their brains for things that will flourish on the lightest sand in a low rainfall area.

Dorycnium hirsutum is another drought resistant self seeder.  This is a small, hairy, silvery shrub, yet another member of the pea family, which bears little pinky pea flowers in the summer.  It used to be called Lotus hirsutus.  Plants are not always the longest lived, and branches on mine have died back during cold winters, for all that Burncoose rate it down to minus 15 C, but there will be more plants coming up somewhere, if it likes you.

The sand has been too much (or rather not enough) for the Sedum I've tried there, and a mixture of poor soil conditions and winter cold has finally seen off a Callistemon salignus.  I levered the remains of the rootball up with a fork, and there wasn't much resistance.  Perovskia isn't coping either.  I was deceived by its grey foliage into thinking that it would be happy in dry places, but have since come to the conclusion that it likes good living.  Certainly there were some huge and fine specimens at Scampston, a Yorkshire garden planted on heavy clay.  Centaurea 'John Coutts' is undecided, even though the RHS website says it prefers poor soil.  I suppose there's poor, and then there's poor.  This knapweed has jolly, mid pink thistle flowers.  My plants got off to a slightly iffy start in that the chickens insisted on dust bathing on them for their first season, but I don't think that's the only reason why they're struggling.

Artemisia ludovicana produces quite attractive upright stems of silvery leaves, but has the twin disadvantages of running at the root fast enough to engulf other things you'd rather it didn't while your back is turned, while not forming a dense enough canopy to suppress weeds.  I suspect it would be better on richer soil, since it possesses the capacity to grow a metre tall, according to Wikipedia, and mine don't make a third of that.

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