replacement box

Every time I think I must have finished weeding the gravel in the turning circle, I spot another square yard I've missed.  Sheeps' sorrel poking up through the tufts of thrift, innocent little strands of wild vetch that look so sweet now but will be lanky, smothering masses come next summer, brown Eleagnus leaves tucked down between the plants, nascent rosettes of dandelion, and clumps of the slender leaved weed grass that plagues the light soil in the back garden but not the heavy soil at the back, they all need clearing away.  The end result is a lot cleaner and fresher but makes it obvious that the gravel needs topping up.

I managed to plant one more Limonium caspium, then side-tracked myself into clearing the dead roots of the waterlogged box out of its planter, and planting the new, replacement box in its place in fresh compost.  I picked up the new box ball at the Clacton branch of Tesco, of all places, where there was a Danish trolley of them outside the front door for ten pounds each.  They looked very healthy and very bushy, and while they were not nearly as large as the one that died I thought that for a tenner I could afford to wait, compared to buying a fully formed specimen for three or four times that amount from a nursery.  Box is not especially slow if treated nicely.

It wasn't obvious when I exhumed the remains of the old box why the container had been failing to drain so badly.  I'd assumed that the drainage holes must have become blocked by roots, but they hadn't been, so far as I could tell.  Box makes a dense and fibrous root system, as you will discover if you ever try to weed next to a box hedge, and I can only assume that the mass of compost and feeding roots had acted like a plug.  Waterlogging was certainly an issue, as after long spells of rain water used to lie on the surface of the compost for hours.  There were only three small holes for drainage, which was probably stingy given the size of the container.  Two were still covered by their crocks when I excavated them, further proof that big roots hadn't grown down through the holes and blocked them completely.  I never found the third crock, but it is probably in the recycling bin by now along with the rest of the old compost.

It was a calculated gamble planting the new box ball directly into its new home.  In theory I ought to pot it up one size of pot at a time, so that it wouldn't sit in excess wet compost and rot.  But I thought I had so many other things to do that I should like to get it planted and be done with it, and if it was planted into an intermediate sized pot it would have to stand on another upturned pot to bring it up to the right height, and then it would keep blowing over.  I have in the past got away with massively over-potting an Acer straight from a two or three litre container into a big fifty centimetre diameter pot, when I wanted to plant something to make the back garden look kempt for a party, and the Acer established itself quite happily with no problems of rotting or anything else.  Perhaps box will be similarly tolerant.  For a tenner I'm prepared to take the risk and find out.

Then gardening came to another premature close because I was booked to go and do a garden talk.  The talk seemed to go reasonably well, though I saw a few heads nodding.  That's the trouble with early afternoon talks, you hit the post-lunch slump.  I mentally marked myself down as having been competent but not electrifying, although trying to electrify a Townswomen's Guild at two o'clock in the afternoon is quite a tall order.