The wind dropped overnight, and I ventured back into the garden. I managed to stick to my self-imposed plan for most of the day, to finish one bed before starting on the next, and spread the contents of several bags of mushroom compost around the areas I'd weeded. The final stage of weeding takes some time, fishing among the stems of the asters to pull out the last grass seedlings, which are tiny now and if overlooked will develop into monstrous clumps. I crumbled and splodged lumps of compost around the aster stalks as well. I hope they appreciate that, as I think they don't appreciate having their dormant buds covered over in winter, but the lumps will have largely broken down before then, and the soil is so mere, I feel they could do with the nutrition.
I reduced a large patch of Phlomis russeliana while I was at it, partly because it had got too big for the bed, out of scale with its surroundings, and I didn't want to look at that much of it, and partly because it was infested with wild yarrow, and I wanted to dig the worst bits of that out. It is an obliging, drought tolerant, evergreen herbaceous plant, very useful in dry gardens, with tall flower stems carrying a series of yellow bobbles, which I like myself, but know that some garden writers dismiss as muddy in colour. The bobbles dry to architectural seed heads, which I tend to leave through the winter, the downside being that the seeds spread like the very devil, germinating freely in the rest of the bed, and the lawn. I feel a sort of grim amusement that at work we sell plants for £3.75 a pop, when in my garden it is to all intents and purposes a weed.
Late in the afternoon I got bored of picking tiny weeds out of the asters, and fed up with mushroom compost, and decided to ignore my own work plan and start weeding the sloping bed opposite the island bed. There was some justification for this, in that it too contains clumps of weed grasses, which have set seed but not yet ripened it, and they need to come out urgently before they can scatter the beginnings of next year's crop of weeds. Also I want to plant the B&Q pink and yellow polyanthus in that bed, that are still in the ancestral pot by the front door, which I need to replant with the B&Q blue nemesias that are still in their multipack in the greenhouse.
The primrose and polyanthus display in the front of that bed is honestly rather a jumble. Some I bought, some I raised from seed and they came out much larger and pinker than I was expecting from the catalogue, and some have self sown. There is no colour theme, just a cheerful muddle of pinks, yellows, purples, deep magentas, burnt oranges and most of the other colours that hybrid primroses come in. I like it, because it reminds me of the flowers of my childhood, when I played for hours with plastic horses in the narrow borders of the front garden, before graduating to gardening. And I like a splash of bright colour in the spring. Most of the garden is in impeccable, albeit exuberant, high taste, but you don't want to overdo that, and the Systems Administrator likes colour. In my Peter Nyssen bulb order I included several different varieties of miniature daffodil, which I'll pot up in groups of three or five, and plant in among the primroses next spring, when I can see what other bulbs are coming up.
It's a nuisance that a willowherb with a running root has taken up residence in that bed. It has found a stronghold around the base of an extremely prickly Chaenomeles, where it is difficult to get in to weed thoroughly without being poked in the eye, and in any case the roots of the weed are entwined with those of the shrub. I hit its new growth with glyphosate back in the spring, but it survived that, as it always does, and is now growing away merrily. I am pulling out as many pieces of root as I can find and get at, while trying very hard not to scratch my eyes on the shrub, and will treat the regrowth with yet another dose of glyphosate, but I have no expectation that that will be the end of it.
The surface of this bed is darkened from the last application of mushroom compost, but already moss is growing on it in places, and some of the plants look hungry. It is terrifying how quickly light soil absorbs and loses whatever nutrients you give it, and like Oliver Twist is telling you that it wants some more. Still, to my great relief and joy the SA yesterday volunteered to go and get some more mushroom compost sometime soon. I know the poor SA loathes the task, but the compost is so useful, and so cheap compared to buying smart bagged stuff in a garden centre.
No comments:
Post a Comment