I spent the day weeding the herb bed. It was one of those tasks that you start not believing it will take all day, but turns out to take much longer than you hope because it is so fiddly. The main weeds in the herb bed are several sorts of grass, including one with a running rootstock which I have never managed to eradicate because it lurks among the clumps of lemon balm and mint.
The bed is mulched with gravel. That is one disadvantage of gravel as a top dressing, you have to sacrifice it if you want to dig an area over. Though I have never succeeded in eliminating a running grass purely by digging. Part of it has always gone deep, or among the roots of something else you aren't going to dig up. Pull out as much as you can, using a fork where that helps, and hit the regrowth with glyphosate, that's the best way. If you garden entirely organically then I'm afraid you'll just have to live with the grass.
A remarkable quantity of bindweed has appeared as well. I pulled up what I could see, partly as a gesture to tidiness, but again I'll have to spray with weedkiller as it reappears, being careful not to touch its neighbours.
The herb bed is roughly square and six of my paces across. It is diagonally bisected by a path of square slabs laid diamond wise, the triangular gaps between them filled with cobbles. I laid it myself and it is quite a neat piece of work. The path, the front and one side of the bed are edged with chives. I weeded the chives earlier in the year, when it was remarkably difficult to see which strap shaped young leaves were chives and which were grass. The remaining grass is easier to spot now, because it has faded to a duller, less shiny green and the seed heads wave above the level of the chives. I think I should catch most of it before the seed ripens, but it is a slow job pulling grass out of chives. The edging is rather gappy, and I need to shift some chive seedlings about, but not now while it is so dry. Next spring, perhaps. Chives seed themselves generously, so if you once acquire a potful you can soon have lots more.
The back of the herb bed is bounded by the pot shed, which is painted black and looks much smarter since we re-felted the roof. The climbing rose 'Meg' runs along the front of the shed, and by now reaches from one end to the other. 'Meg' is a beauty, whose flowers are semi-double, apricot pink, with a large boss of stamens, bred by Gosset and released in 1954. The Peter Beales website rates it as being suitable for poorer soils and is right on that score, since the soil in the top garden is far too light for most roses, and another disadvantage of using gravel as a mulch is that you can't apply regular doses of compost. A couple of years ago I was weeding around 'Meg' and got one of her thorns buried in my knuckle, which began to look distinctly septic very quickly. I spent a week on antibiotics, so kept that arm but felt terrible for the entire week. This time round I wore my heavy leather gauntlets, and whenever near 'Meg' moved with measured caution.
On either side of the path are four rusted iron tripods with Clematis alpina and Clematis macropetala, chosen because the books said that they could also cope with poorer soil. Clematis generally are gross feeders who like the soil rich and reliably moist. The books have been less accurate on this score than Peter Beales was about 'Meg', or perhaps our soil takes the concept of poorer into a whole new territory which the authors of the books were not anticipating. One is doing well, one OK, and two are very poorly indeed. I cleared away the weed grass from around their feet, and gave the two worst ones a can each of liquid seaweed feed. I'll do the other two the next time I'm gardening, and top dress them with manure, and then mulch them with cobbles, to keep the roots cooler and to remind me where the rootstock is.
A sage bush in the middle of the bed is very happy, so much so that it had grown out to completely block the path, and I had to cut it back. I have shown the Systems Administrator the sage plant, several times, and explained that it is sage, which you can use in cooking. This has not prevented us from acquiring at least two jars of dried sage. Perhaps the SA feels about herbs from the garden much as I do about wild mushrooms. Nice idea, but it's safer to buy what you need in Tesco.
I have a tiny bay tree in a pot which has been growing on from a rooted cutting, incredibly slowly. I don't know why it is so slow, when the willow leaved bay in the ground in the back garden grows like stink, and suspect it is another victim of the useless peat free compost of the year before last. I am going to plant it out, and it will have to take its chances with the chickens. I used to have one in a pot, and it was very happy there, but a cold winter did for it. A bay leaf makes an excellent flavouring for egg custard, or at least I like it very much, though thinking about it none of the friends or relatives I've tried it on have seemed to share my enthusiasm.
I also have a horseradish in a 9 cm pot. I tried growing this once before, in a large clay pot because I was scared of it running everywhere, but it was very unhappy and eventually died. I should like to have fresh horseradish root. It pops up in recipes for relish to go with smoked mackerel, and central European cooking, but I am still nervous of the horseradish running. It is unlikely to escape from the herb bed, which is bounded by the drive, the concrete, the shed and the chicken run, on the other hand I don't want it through the entire herb bed. And digging up the roots to harvest it will make a mess of the gravel topping. I need to read up on the habits of horseradish and exactly how rampant it is. At one time I toyed with the idea of buying a tin bath to grow it in, but the horseradish project began to expand to a point where it would have been cheaper just to have relish delivered from Harrods, supposing the SA were away and I were settling down to a smoked mackerel fest.
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