more watering

The trouble with the weather being warmer and drier than of recent weeks is that we have to do more watering at work.  It took us a good couple of hours this morning.  The fact that the pipes of the automatic irrigation system are broken on a couple of the shrub beds didn't help, but in main it was because we were fiddling around, trying to water the individual pots that were dry, and not those that were already wet enough, if not too wet.  I volunteered to go and water the tunnel and outdoor standing areas on the other side of the car park, where we grow on plants for sale later, as well as storing the extras from large deliveries when there isn't room for them all in the plant centre.  The manager's note of jobs for the weekend said that we could use the overhead irrigation outside if needs be, but NOT inside the tunnel.

I don't like watering over The Other Side.  None of us do, apart from the manager's trusted helper.  It is true that newly potted little roots, which have not yet grown anywhere near big enough to fill their new 2 litre flower pots, are dangerously easy to overwater, and if allowed to sit too wet for any length of time they will rot, so only people who know what they're doing should be allowed near them.  However, other things can go wrong with the growth of potted-up roots besides overwatering.  In sunny weather it can get uncomfortably warm for plants in a large polytunnel, even with the doors open and the plastic sides rolled up to allow air in through the underlying shade netting.  Compost formulations seem to keep changing, presumably partly as manufacturers try to adjust their recipes to use less peat, and some compost I've encountered over recent years seems inimical to plant life.  However, if any plant fails to thrive over The Other Side the manager's instant response is always to blame the staff for getting the watering wrong.  I prefer not to be involved, when I can avoid it, but as today was forecast to be quite warm, and yesterday was warmish, anything that was already dry really was going to need watering.  It took a long time, as I lifted a lot of pots to check the weight, rather than rely on looking at the state of the top layer of compost, and I did the bare minimum, leaving anything I thought would last until tomorrow.  The manager can water it himself, then he will be happy it has been done properly.

In the course of my watering I spotted a couple of varieties that customers have asked me for in recent weeks, but which weren't out for sale in the plant centre.  The general rule of thumb is that anything over The Other Side with a price label on it is ready for sale, so if I'd known we had the plants hidden away behind the scenes then I could have scooted over and fetched them for people.  If the sales force don't know the full range of what's available, they can miss out on sales.  The danger of having us going and finding plants for people from there is that we don't know which things aren't out for sale because nobody has had time to put them out, and which things are actually reserved for some designer or large customer and are never destined to make it to general release in the plant centre.  At the moment there are various caches of plants roped off with stern notices on them saying Suffolk Show Do Not Touch.

A couple of customers commented on the fact that we were still allowed to use hoses, when they weren't, and I explained that we had a borehole and were mostly not using mains water, and that we were a business, and if not allowed to water our stock would be bankrupt inside a fortnight.  I don't know exactly what the exemptions are for horticultural businesses, but I presume there are some.  Anyway, we do have a borehole.

In the afternoon we hosted a meeting of classic cars in the car park, so eight or ten Daimlers and Austin Healeys came and lined up on the grass in front of The Other Side that we use for overflow car parking, where they looked very nice.  The girl who runs the tea room was rather excited at the prospect of a gathering of classic sports car owners, whom she hoped would be rich and glamorous, and I had to break it to her that most of them would be middle aged, if not older.  I was right.  If any of the classic car contingent were still looking forward to their fiftieth birthdays I'd have been quite surprised.

The peahen has made her nest in a raised bed just outside the office.  At first I thought this was an odd place to choose, being very public, but I suppose she knows all of us, and a nest right by the house is probably safer from the fox than one somewhere more secluded.  In the middle of the afternoon she rises off her nest and comes to stretch her legs in the plant centre, where she behaves very oddly, shaking her head and uttering loud hoots and screeches.  At one point she stood on the ridge of the house roof, hooting, and I took the opportunity to look in the nest and see how many eggs.  So far she has two.  They are very large, and a pale mottled brown.  She flew off the house roof, landing rather heavily in the gravel, and I wondered for a moment if she had taken umbrage at my looking at her eggs, and if so what it would be like to be attacked by a peahen, but she contented herself with looking at me and marching about purposefully.  One of my colleagues said she had been rushing at customers, but they must not have looked firm enough.  If you find yourself being approached by a large and possibly insane peafowl then just stand your ground, that's my advice.