I have finally finished sorting through the collection of pots outside the greenhouse. Many gardeners will have their own collection of pots, and I like to think it is a sign of my increasing gardening maturity that nowadays most of mine are things I've raised myself from seeds or cuttings, rather than impulse purchases brought home with no clear idea of where to put them in any sensible timescale.
As I was weeding and sorting I tipped every plant out of its container to check the roots for vine weevil and root aphid. I didn't find any vine weevil at all, which was a good result. Anything with root aphid was put in the council brown bin, unless it was rare and precious enough to be worth dosing with an insecticidal drench. There wasn't as much root aphid as a couple of years ago, so I hope I am getting on top of the problem.
The tough part of sorting out your stash of plants is psyching yourself up to be ruthless enough about throwing away the ones that are frankly past it. Plants in pots have a limited shelf life, deteriorating with age faster than their compatriots in the open ground even with fairly diligent watering. Plus, if you have propagated more than you need to start with it is only natural to plant out the biggest and best specimens first, so the ones still languishing in their pots by the following season were probably the runts of the litter to start with.
There are several trays of Solidago rigida in one litre pots waiting to go into the meadow. They are from last year, and I was relieved to see how good their roots were looking. If I manage to dig out some of the nettles and brambles this autumn they will still be worth planting. Theoretically they should have gone in last autumn, but I wasn't ready for them. Solidago rigida is a native of the north eastern United States. It is a good insect plant, flowers usefully late in the summer, and is tough. It should be just the thing for a wild place like the meadow, though I would not necessarily put it in a more formal area closer to the house. And it is yellow, which some people would hold against it.
On the other hand last season's Teucrium hirsutum had really not liked spending an extra year in pots, and looking at the small, almost leafless, pathetic stubs of plants I hardened my heart and put them in the bucket destined for the compost bin. As I recall, seed was not very expensive and they germinated easily, so I might as well start again next spring. I managed to plant out a couple of trays of them earlier this year, which look as though they might be reviving now they are in the ground from what I could see in among the rash of annual weeds that have sprung up among them, but the ones I didn't have time to plant before did not look worth spending any time on to plant them now. Not that I could plant them now, since I need to weed the meadow first.
Throwing out the surplus Dianthus carthusianorum was quite painless, as I have planted plenty already in the gravel, and have a couple of trays of the similar Dianthus cruentus coming along this year, which will need finding space in the gravel somewhere.
Some failed experiments in bedding went on the compost heap. The pale yellow flowered Cosmos never grew at all well, and when I tipped them out of their pots I found few roots. I don't know why they didn't take, when the pink ones are so easy, but they didn't. The biggest swizz was the trio of climbing plants supposed to be Ipomoea 'Heavenly Blue', seeds of which came free with a magazine. They did have very interesting, unusual triangular seed leaves when they germinated, and that was the only interesting thing they ever did. Planted into a generous pot they grew up their bamboo tripod, but here we are towards the end of August and they have had no flowers, nor even the merest sniff of a flower bud. The yellow and blue scheme they were supposed to be part of failed anyway, so they went to the compost heap too.
A Plectranthus argenteus that has not been at all happy all year since overwintering in the conservatory was stripped of its shoots to make cuttings. I was surprised on investigating its roots to find that it was not suffering from root aphid, and I don't really have a strong theory as to why it has done so badly this year when it was fine last year. Plectranthus generally seem straightforward from cuttings, otherwise a fresh packet of seed will not be very expensive if I decide I want more. In the meantime I have a dark green and burgundy leaved form grown from cuttings of a lopsided plant that came as a freebie when buying plants at Beth Chatto last year. I can see why they ended up with some odd shaped plants to give away, because the variety barely survives the winter in a frost free greenhouse, and several of mine died or lost several limbs to adopt odd shapes themselves.
Surplus Kalimeris incisa, nameless Kniphofia grown from self sown seedlings dug up while weeding that I could not bear to waste, Physalis, Sempervivum, cottage garden pinks, rather weedy little Aquilegia, this year's sowing of oriental poppies, a stray self sown Correa rescued from another pot in the conservatory, an odd leftover Geranium maderense that was too weedy to offer to the garden society plant stall, all have been scrutinized, weighed up, weeded or junked. Tomorrow I might manage to do some actual gardening.
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