The air had lost its raw edge today, and I was able to get out into the garden, though the rain at lunchtime was a disappointment. The compost in one of my bins is ready to use, which is handy as I need to mulch the long border in the front garden and had run out of space in the bins, with bags of shredded Eleagnus prunings and the cut-down tops of last year's herbaceous plants waiting to go on the heaps. I am a big fan of home made compost. It seems to have a more enlivening effect on the soil than the spent mushroom compost I would have to buy otherwise, quite apart from the fact that I do not have to drive four miles up the road to collect it or pay £1.75 a bag for it after shoveling it odiferously into my own bags. Although now that I come to think of it, I worked out last year that after the garden centre pushed the price of the mushroom compost up it was actually cheaper per litre to get bales of B&Q multipurpose. And the pre-packed bales are faster and cleaner to load into the car, so they are a tempting thought when the home made runs out, a shame when using mushroom compost recycles a byproduct of the food industry, and every B&Q bale generates a new plastic bag.
The next bin along has the contents of last year's tomato growing bags plus the compost from the pots of bulbs and Cosmos, and looks almost ready to spread on the borders. I don't suppose it contains much in the way of nutrients, but it will serve to raise the organic content of the top few inches of soil, improving the soil structure and ability to retain water. A bit. There is not all that much you can do with a very sandy soil, except grow plants that enjoy the keen drainage and aren't too bothered about nutrients. One long standing inhabitants of the bed is a Grevillea rosemarinifolia that has to be the largest I have ever seen. It is a member of the Protea family, and knowing that actual Protea are adapted to poor soil to the point where fertiliser containing phosphates kills them, I have never dared feed the Grevillea.
The leaves of the Gladiolus tristis in the gravel garden in the middle of the turning circle have come through the icy winds and the snow apparently unscathed. I am surprised, and delighted, since it is a South African species and only borderline hardy in Britain. It isn't due to produce its elegant, pale yellow flowers for another month or two yet, and it may be that the extreme cold spell has put paid to them for this year, but at least I still have the plant. It was bought originally as one experimental bulb, that lived for its first year in the greenhouse before being cast out into the gravel to see how it did, and last year was the first time that it flowered. It is bulking up well enough to make me think that perhaps I should invest in a second bulb. The leaves of its fellow South Africans the Watsonia are looking rather the worse for wear, pale and mottled, and I don't think they liked being snowed on at all, though I hope they will shoot again from the base.
Euphorbia x pasteurii 'John Phillips' is not looking great either, though I think it will pull round. This is a large, woody spurge, with a branching habit. One of its parents is Euphorbia mellifera, originally from Madeira, and the other Euphorbia stygiana, from the Azores, not a combination designed for days of snow and a wind chill factor down into negative double digits. Poor old 'John Phillips' was planted in the gravel garden in May 2011, so I think the recent cold spell was the worst it has had to endure so far. Specialist nurseryman and lover of the exotic Nick Macer at Pan-Global Plants describes it as 'very tough but safest in a sheltered spot'. The front garden did not look at all sheltered ten days ago, as the Beast from the East ripped through and over the hedge as though it wasn't there.
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