Can we smell Spring from here?

A generally mild Winter has confused the crap out of the plants. Some early germinators have already been kiaboshed by a recent sharp frost. Will Feburary slap more over-keen upstarts in the chops?

The usual suspects

Hellebores in pink...

...and white

 

Mini iris is more of a surprise

Nice to see last year's multi layer bulb pot still has some go in it.

 

&... erm... a dead mole

This wee one didn't make it :(

Multi-layered bulb pot

Last Autumn on Gardeners' World, Monty looked at getting a succession of flowers in a container by planting multiple layers of different bulbs. Seemed like a great plan to me. We inherited a few weedy pots with the house & the largest of these would be ideal for experimenting with this technique.

Then, I just happened to be mooching around a local supermarket when I spotted some Spring bulb offers. Little boxes of all sorts of things. I checked the flowering dates on the packets & picked 4 that would flower in sequence, if all went to plan.

2 for £5? I'll take 4 :D

*Edit* An eagle-eyed reader has pointed out that I haven't explained the planting arrangement. Sorry.

I thought I'd taken photos of the planting up but no. I may've hallucinated that bit. Deffo losing the plot.

Anyhoo: the bulbs' boxes suggested different planting depths. IIRC I put them in 3 layers: tulips on the bottom; then a middle layer of 2 types & a top layer of 1. I tried to place the bulbs so they weren't directly over each other, so the stems of the lower ones wouldn't displace the higher ones. As they were all due to flower separately, I placed them evenly around the pot, so it didn't look lopsided.

Sprout!

They're ALIVE!

Cut to... Spring & from the kitchen window we can see some shoots. Yay! They haven't all died horribly due to overcrowding. A good start.

First flowers up were the mini Iris:

Little irises...irii?

What absolute gems.

They all came out blue, not mixed as it said on the box, but I'm not complaining - they were beautiful.

The daffs also made a show but I forgot to take a photo. Sorry. The box says miniature, but that must refer to the flower head as these had long long necks. A nice surprise was that they were double headed, a bit like the Tete a tetes I bought the other year.

At the mo, these gorgeous tulips have just done over:

Golden globes

They should call this one Fruit Salad

I've not seen this type before, with circle after circle of petals. Stunning.

& we still have the honeybells to go. No sign of their flower heads just yet but the box says May-June so it may be Midsummer before we see them up here.

Thus far it's been a great show in front of the kitchen window, so I'm declaring the multi-bulb pot experiment a success :)

The Great British Garden Revival

I'm in my element this week with some proper armchair plant porn:

The BBC's new series of The Great British Garden Revival kicked off this week, along with a bunch of other gardening shows (Big Allotment Challenge, also on the Beeb; Titchmarsh gadding about in ITV). I guess this glut is as we look forward to warmer times, just like the traditional New Year holiday adverts. Gotta say tho', everyone on Allotment Challenge looks very weird on my TV with their sunburn whilst it tries to snow outside my window.

Perfect format

Garden Revival is just the right mix of horti-TV for me: educational, inspirational & rallying. Each show gives us to 2 gardening 'faces'. Each has 30 minutes to exhort us to make space in our hearts for some old but unfashionable stallwarts that are at risk of extinction.

They give us some history on the plants, visit gardens with amazing collections, address the brutal truth of why we've stopped buying these plants, show us how we can overcome those hurdles, & then light a fire under our arses to get out there & save them.

Your country need you!

Each segment is a rallying cry. During episode 1, I was so buoyed up from Rachel de Thame's campaign for old roses, that when Joe Swift did his intro & asked us to make space for climbers & creepers is was shouting "Ok, Joe!" at the screen... I felt like Po in Kung Fu Panda at the Pool Of Sacred Tears (Go watch it. Not to understand this reference, just go watch it). James' Wong's section on Rhododendrons in episode 3 was a revelation - the invasiveness of ONE hybrid has poisoned our view of a whole species.

Series 2 episodes

There's 10 shows in this series, some of which are already on iPlayer. There really is something for everyone:

1. Roses - Rachel de Thame
   Climbers & creepers - Joe Swift
2. Daffodils - Carol Klein
   Blossom trees & shrubs - Chris Beardshaw
3. Rhododendrons - James Wong
   Carnations - Christen Walkden
4. Scented gardens - Toby Buckland
   Tulips - Tom Hart Dyke
5. Lavender - Diarmund Gavin
   Knot gardens - Alys Fowler
6. Irises - Rachel de Thame
   Ornamental grasses - Toby Buckland
7. Conifers - Carol Klein
   Pelargoniums - Tom Hart Dyke
8. Lilies - James Wong
   Woodland gardens - Christen Walkden
9. Bog gardens - Joe Swift
   Soft fruit - Alys Fowler
10. Wildlife gardens - Diarmund Gavin
    Peonies - Charlie Dimmock

Now, to see if I can convert this inspiration & enthusiasm into motivation... & a plan.

Tackling the Lawns

Small, or far away...?

This time of year, you really can watch the grass grow... You can almost see it heave itself upwards before your very eyes.

Hubby's done all the mowing since the move - a Herculean effort of one man & a flymo against the marching sward. Mind, this early Summer cycle of sun & showers means that keeping on top of it has more than a whiff of Sisyphus about it.

It's time I went to mow.

The South Lawn

Done & dusted on Wednesday evening. Yay!

It's about the size of the old lawn but the terrain is a tad more challenging. New house is on top of a small hill, & the land falls away quite rapidly on most sides. We're not talking cliff-side gardening here, but it's no snooker table either.

The South Lawn has 2 key obstacles: The sharp drop to the Big Beech Hedge; & the loop around the Laburnum.

On a slope & heavily shaded, neither spot is ever going to be lush & verdant lawn, but at the mo we're happy with bramble-&-nettle-free.

Even with these tricky bits, I guess it took less than an hour. Most doable on a sunny weekday evening. Marvellous.

The North Lawn

I didn't bother timing this task, largely cos I didn't want to rush myself. Getting it done Saturday morning before the rain arrived was going to be a close call, but let's not go mental & be exhausted by Noon, eh?

The North Lawn is an isosceles triangle to the West of the drive. A 20m run up by the side of the gravel, then 15m in front of the house, then back along the boundary hedge. It slopes mostly North West, is pretty damp, & is balding in many places due to mature trees past & present.

Not as flat as it looks...

Hubby gave it a weed n feed a few weeks ago & that's done wonders, but in some areas the measures may need to be more drastic - there's a row of Leylandii by the road & they are big. The heavy shade from them stops anything growing underneath - not even brambles or ivy dare to tread.

We already know our Westerly neighbours are not fans of the Leylandii, but they're also not 100% sure who they belong to. We'll need to have a sleuth around before getting the chainsaw out...

The North Lawn is also home to a smattering of daffs. They made us feel very welcome as we moved in during April. Their dying back leaves make mowing a bit of a slalom though, so I used Mum's old technique of tidying them up. The theory says the longer the leaves are photosynthesising, the stronger the bulb next year.

Use an old flower stem as the tie - they're stronger than the leaves

Not that Mum uses this technique anymore. I'm not surprised - it's a bit of a chew on! But to me they look like little haystacks & I'm enjoying that :)

With a little help from Hubby, who mowed while I tied, we were done just as the first spots started to hit. Timing!

The Alliums popped!

Aren't they just gorrrrrrrgeous?

Baby, you're a star

I just love the über geometric nature of Allium flowers - big pom poms on sticks. Every time I look out into the garden or the yard, I see one of these purple starburst globes. Just beautiful.

Reality check

Allium bulbs are always quite pricey so with 3 flowers up I assumed I'd only bought 3, & was well chuffed with what looked like a 100% outcome. However, part of the point of this blog was to keep a record of what I'd actually done rather than rely on my flaky memory. A quick skip back to the post about planting up the Spring bulbs shows I actually bought 6 bulbs... That seems about right - a 50% success rate is much more normal for me ;)

I wonder what happened to the others? I wasn't going to go to the faff of emptying out the pots, drying the bulbs, potting them back up again in Autumn - it's what's usually recommended but frankly it sounds like work creation to me. However, once everything has died back I might get my CSI on & try to solve the Mystery of the Non-Exploding Alliums.

 

And what of next year? All the Allium bulbs I've had in the past have flowered for 1 year only, unlike the Daffs & Tulips which (mostly) come back & back & back. As much as I love the result, I'm too tight to contemplate splurging a wad of cash on loads of Allium bulbs every Autumn. 

I wonder how hard it is to grow them from seed? Hmm... a little bit of online digging unearths Monty's Gardening From Berryfields book, & page 101 suggests dividing bulb nodes in Autumn. Cool. I can do than. The RHS Allium page backs this up, & goes further to suggest that seed propagation is a bit trixy, & should be done the same year, if at all. Food for thought.

New tech toy

To change the mood a little: Regular readers might spot that the split screen photo at the top of the post is a new development. 

I've wanted to do some composite pictures for a while, after my mate over at the Oakwood Soaperie had posted some lovely examples as part of her Christmas promotional run.

So I had a look for a photo collage app (which is made trickier as I always always read collage as college) but all the examples seemed as tacky as hell. I really should've paid attention when she told me which app she used...

But yesterday's Allium photos were just begging for split screen treatment so I thought I'd have another look - 6 months is an Ice Age in App-land.

After a bit of rootling around the AppStore, I plumped for the well rated Framatic Pro (which I keep reading as Fragmatic - what is wrong with my eyeballs atm?!!). It was on offer... for free.

The app is a bit pop-up-happy at the mo, plugging its many many in-app purchases, & the tasteless framing options are all still there, but if I keep it simple I can avoid their worst excesses. 

The downside is that if I want to do photo tweaks, such as centre focus, I have to do them in Snapseed first. So there's a real danger I'll spend far too much time photo editing & not enough writing. Need to keep an eye on myself there or I'll end up in the no-post hole again.

Maybe 49%

But enough of the tech, let's get back to the stars of the moment - the Alliums.

 

50% success is not entirely accurate as there has been one small glitch. For some reason, one of the flowers broke its neck:

Oopsie...

I've no idea what happened here. The stem looks withered, so I suspect lack of water rather than external damage - outside force would've snapped it, surely...? But then the reading I've just done about propagation says they hate to be waterlogged, & there's a distinct risk I've over-watered - I always struggle to get that right.

Gotta say though, I'm impressed with how this flower is hanging on in there. The head went over at the start of the week, but the little flowers that make up the bigger globe are still maturing. Good effort that man! Still doing the business when critically injured. What a trooper.

A glamourpuss that keeps on delivering in a crisis? My kind of plant.

Catch-up part 2

Not sure why I didn't post an overview photo when I did the end of April catch-up, so here's one now, on this beautiful sunny Saturday (as opposed to the freezing, hail & sleet of Thursday - climate change deniers need to look out the feckin window more often).

Look at that! Your genu-iiiine sunshiiiine.

 

This image was taken with Photosynth, so is several overlapping pics stitched together, hence the rather odd window frame sculpture.

Comparing with last year's pic, I realise these pics aren't very good at all! Hmm... I'll work on that.

 

The main difference between this year & last, not that you can see it very well here, is the fencing Hubby finished last week. A nice bit of horizontal structure, repeated in 4 locations:

• 2 panels at the far end of the garden increase the privacy without making us feel boxed in, & give us some extra support for climbers.
• 2 panels nearer the house, to reinforce the paving/lawn break, & help to break up the rather monolithic pizza oven/BBQ construction.

It was so sunny out there today that breakfast was taken on the bench under the living room window. The view was sausagey:

Cumberland sausages from Moorhouse Farm Shop. Mmm... tasty.

The pots around the bench are doing grand & the alliums (last of the Spring bulbs) are about to pop. Not all have fired, & we're light years away from Warmenhoven's award winning Pavilion display (as stalked by Alan Titchmarsh all this week on the BBC's Chelsea coverage) but it looks like we'll get at least 3 big glamorous flowers.

Pop goes the allium

This one & its companion are in a pot right under the living room window, so we'll be ringside when the blooms finally burst. Should be quite a show.

End of April catch up

Crikey, nearly a month since my last post. Is it because I've been too busy doing actual gardening? Of course not.

But that doesn't matter as it's been a fairly sunny round here this April. Admittedly some of the showers have been a tad, erm, white & lumpy, & the temperature has been up & down like the Assyrian Empire. But the garden has clearly decided Spring is here & is just getting on with it. That's the spirit!

So how's everything getting along while I've been maximising my quality sofa time?

Bay cuttings

When I pruned the bay last year, I had a go at taking cuttings from the trimmings.

2 pots, 3 stems per pot, over-Wintered in the greenhouse & they seemed to be going well. But I've been as slow to get started as Spring has & the other week Hubby spotted the cuttings were wilting. With the weather heating up (a bit) they weren't getting enough water. So I've moved them outside & given them saucers, to help them keep some of the rain they catch.

Some green left on the Autumn's Bay cuttings

As you might be able to spot in the pic, at least 2 of the 6 cuttings still have green in their leaves, so hopefully they'll strengthen as Spring progresses.

Magnolia flowers

The week before I put the stairs into Stinky Dog Corner, I bought a couple of trees: a Himalayan Birch, for the top of those steps; & a Magnolia for The White Corner, bottom right of the garden. To be honest I didn't think the Magnolia's flower buds would survive a March planting, but 3 or 4 look like they might just hang on in there. Yay!

New tree: Magnolia Manchu Fan

Old bulbs

In The White Corner, the Magnolia joins some other white plants put in previously. A few years ago I started thinking about playing with some colour theory to make the garden feel a bit longer: strong colours nearer the house; paler ones further away.

So a few years ago, I declared (in my mind) the bottom right end of the garden The White Corner, & I put in some white tulips & pale daffs.

Tulips & daffs in The White Corner

I love the pale green on these tulips, & the flowers are huge.

So, normal sized daffs, fairly large tulips, large tulip-shaped magnolia flowers... yep I've just realised that my colour/distance illusion is going to be shattered cos it's not accompanied by an illusion of scale: large flowers in strong colours nearer the house; small flowers in paler colours further away. Doh!

Hellebore

Also new to The White Corner this Spring, planted underneath the Magnolia, is a white Hellebore... Well it was white when the flowers were new. I didn't realise the flowers would change colour as they aged & set seed.

White (& pink & gold) Hellebore flowers

Bonus!

Dwarf narcissus

Dwarf Narcissus in the Eye bed

The bulbs I planted late last year are going great guns & have brought much joy between the snow showers. The daffs were 1st up & have put on a beautiful show regardless of what the weather has thrown at them. Fair play.

New tulips

2 sorts of tulips went in at the same time as the dwarf daffs. The orange Shakespeares have come & gone & to be honest I was a little disappointed - their colour wasn't as punchy as I'd hoped. Hopefully the Synaedas will be more zesty when they make an appearance... & that should be an "if" cos none of the tulips currently maturing are orange... they're all purple:

The Queen Of Night tulips are starting to colour up

Wow! Looks like these Queens are going to be suitably regal. The purple edges look very much like the dupion silk of my wedding dress.

New Alliums

Last of the new bulbs are the Alliums. I've had them before but they don't seem to stick around in the beds, so this time they're all in pots so I can keep a good eye on them.

The first Allium flower head makes an appearance

The leaves are suitably & noticeably oniony, which I really like. Hopefully when the flowers explode, this tall slender pot won't get toppled.

Onions

I planted them! I found a little time a couple of weeks ago to get them in the ground:

They're alive! The shallots are sprouting! Yay!!!

I've got 2 of these module trays, plus I planted 10 out in the central Twisty Hazel bed. Most of them have started to sprout, one so vigorously it was pushing itself out of the ground... I maybe shouldn't firm down the soil in the seed tray so enthusiastically...

Salads

Hubby's done a great job of keeping an eye on the Greenhouse Gutterbeds:

Lower pipe: over-Wintered coriander & parsley.
Upper pipe: this Spring's mixed salad.

The parsley & coriander in the lowest row have struggled through the Winter - not really vigorous enough to harvest, but hanging on in there. I guess if we plant them out into the main greenhouse bed they might make for a good early crop.

I'm really good at buying seeds I never plant, so this time Hubby's stepped in & put some Spring salads in the middle gutter. A mixed leaf selection closest to us, some little gem lettuce in the middle & some flat leaf parsley at the far end. Hopefully we won't have to wait so many months to harvest these.

Weeds

& of course the early weeds are making a Spring dash too, but I did manage to get in some mid-week weeding recently. My compost bin's never hot enough to properly deal with serious weeds like dandelion & burdock, so I usually put them into my Council garden waste bin. But this time I thought I'd give Alys Fowler's soggy rotten bucket suggestion a go.

Bad-asses in the bucket

But Hubby came in this afternoon & cheerily announced:

"Whatever's in the bucket is sprouting nicely..."

The leggy buttercupy things are loving it in there. I've given them another mushing but if by next week the bucket looks more like a pond, into the Garden waste they go.

Hopefully, at some point soon, I'll get out there & sow some more seeds, & fill the gaps the weeds have left.

Can I keep on top of the weeds this year? Only time will tell.
Let battle commence!

First hack n slash of the year

Last time I said the next few post would be about the Japan trip. This isn't one of them. I'm having a spot of bother coralling that content so instead I'll tell you what we've been up to today.

When it comes to weeding, hubby tends to favour a scorched earth policy. It ain't subtle, but by god it gets the job done. It's efficient at bringing a weed-donimated border to order, but it does also tend to involve colloteral damage: the blitzing of innocents.

Potato plot

Yesterday, hubby floated the idea of spending some of Sunday planting out the potatoes that are currently sprouting on the kitchen window sill. Hmm... this means clearing some space for them.

The best spot I think is the big bed at the bottom right of the garden, but there are some items of value already in there.

Won't somebody save the children?!

So, who needs protecting from the marauding ground clearance squad?

• Cyclmen: A few years ago, this preminiscient specimen thankfully had the foresight to emigrate from a bed that no longer exists (lost to the pizza oven project). & very happy it is in its new home too.
• Primrose: Also evacuees from the defunct pizza bed, these sorry survivors may not last much longer. Sadly these poor buggers seem to get smaller, not bigger.
• Ferns: Most of them have survived last year's reshuffle in the corner of this bed, I think... most of them...
• Anemone: Planted when the ferns were shuffled, but it has had a terrible winter - we came back from our holidays to find it fair flattened by a slab of sandstone from the boundary wall. Oops :/ I hope it recovers cos its late Autumn white blooms were just lovely.
• Snowdrops: We appear to be massively down on snowdrops this year. Dunno what that's all about - we usually can't move for them. Maybe they've paid the price for last year's restructuring.
• Daffs & tulips: Bought in a giddy moment at the garden centre & planted along to boundary wall for no good reason. But at least I know where they are...
• Clematis: In another giddy moment last year, this time at Asda, I bought 4 climbers for a tenner. Just too good a bargain to miss, only I wasn't really sure where to put them. So I've procrastinated - they're in pots in various locations "to see how they work". Fair play to the one by the yard door as it's showing green shoots already. On the upside, by having it still in its pot, the one by the boundary wall is real easy to shift out of the way of today's groundworks.
• Horseradish: Very little of it above the ground at the mo, but I did mark it out during last year's labelling frenzy. Man, I'm loving those labels right now - they're telling me it's the dwarf narcissus bulbs that are poking their heads through; & this one's telling me not to flatten the horseradish.
  
  & finally, & most importantly
• Nameless plant from a friend: Bunged into this bed for "safe keeping" during the restructuring & then lost under the rampaging burdock that lept the wall. This is the most precious to me cos its not one I've bought. Donated plants seem that bit more special. They're not my plants; they're their plant in our garden. & I always refer to them that way: Richard's raspberries or Anna's purple ground cover plant.
  
  Problem is, I'm not exactly sure what this plant looks like, which is going to make saving it a little trickier. Pants.

Division of labour

So, as I said up top, when it comes to ground clearance, hubby is very enthusiastic. And I am glad for that: it was hearing him battering through the swollen garage door & out into the garden this lunchtime that spurred me off the sofa & into action, to channel his energy.

We established our goals:

1. Don't flatten the valuables.
2. Evict the weeds.
3. Create a potato patch alongside the path.
4. Find the lost plant if poss.

It's good to have a plan.

The bed's a quarter circle easily big enough for us to work in without tripping over each other.

Hubby was on potato plot duty: clearing the strip closest to the path but being careful of the cyclamen, the clematis & the bulbs. He knows some of our regular plants, so he can spot an aquilegia & they can all come out of this bed today cos we've got loads elsewhere.

For myself, I'm hunting the missing plant whilst also clearing the marauding burdock & ivy from the lea of the boundary wall. The burdock didn't go down without a fight:

Burdock burrs: nature's Velcro

Don't I know you?

There were loads of green leaves underneath last year's dead but still bolshy burdock stem, so I'd assumed they were either new leaves of this year's burdock, or new baby burdocks. But as I put the big fork in & lifted the 1st clump, I spotted flowers amongst the foliage. Hang on... this isn't burdock then... Looking over the rest of the leaves I found more little flowers. Ace! I've found the missing plant! It was right in front of me all the time... I'm an idiot.

It's been busy while I've been ignoring it & had fended well amongst our usual bullies. So I lifted a big chunk of it, dumped it into a bucket of water so it didn't dry out while I dug over the rest of the bed... I say I dug over the rest of the bed, hubby volunteered to do it. As I said, he does like a bit of slash & burn, & Sunday is usually an exercise day for him... I'm sounding pathetic so I'll shut up & get busy with the coffee machine...

All done

Bed turned, weeds expunged, potatoes planted, friend's plant re-homed, garden waste wheelie bin filled & 2 bags over. Now to do the washing up.

Gardening has helped me get into the zen of the clean up. Every job creates mess & you could view the tidying as a bit of a chore (OK, to be honest, when tackling the hedge from hell, it is). But I've found I really like cleaning the mud off the tools & putting them away on the rack. Does that make me sound like James May arranging his spanners? Don't care, cos I like an ordered socket set too so nur!

However I always forget to clean my boots. They may be on my my feet but they're just not on my radar. I use these very same boots when I ride my bike, & that usually means I realise they're still caked in half the garden just as I'm pulling them on before heading out to work.

But today was different cos hubby was gardening too, & his boots were the 1st, nay the only thing he cleaned. He hates cleaning up after a job, but he does look after his boots, & so following his good lead my boots actually got a timely scrub today too. I might even polish them once they're dry. Maybe.

Tomorrow morning I'll not only have clean boots, but I'll open the curtains & see a corner of order amongst the chaos. A good start to the coming gardening year.

Spring bulbs in... at the 11th hour

Big frost today. A bright & sunny morning, but definitely white & crisp out there. But the bulbs I bought nearly 2 months ago are still not planted. Pants. Gardeners' World had it as jobs to do for the weekend, but to me the look on Monty's face really saying "This should already be done, numbnuts". I might be projecting...

But as luck would have it I've got a free Sunday, & the sun is shining so it's Go! Go! Go!

Pots of pots

I'm planning on doing some more structural work this winter, so the plan is to put the new bulbs into pots. That way I can get them in soil right now & then position them out in the garden once all the heavy shifting is done. I've got some other bulbs that live in pots all the time, so fingers crossed these guys will be ok for now.

New bulbs on the block

So, who are the new recruits? Ladies & gentleman, may I present...

Dwarf Narcissus

I've never been 100% sure about dwarf daffs but I saw some at Alnwick Garden in early Spring this year & they looked very jolly.



So during my recent bulb binge, I picked up 3 x Silver Chimes, 5 x Tête À Tête & 5 x Minnow.

I'm afraid I forgot to take a picture of the Minnow card when I was in the garden centre, plus the Minnow & Tête bulbs were mixed up in the same bag to snaffle more variety for the bulk discount, so I've no idea what i've really got. I'll just have to wait until they flower & play spot the difference.

For mini flowers, these bulbs are huge! I'm surprised cos we've got lots of snowdrops & croci & they've got titchy bulbs. But no, these are all just as big as the tulip bulbs. I wonder if this means loads of flowers? Again, only time will tell...

Dwarf daffs from huge bulbs...

Tulips

We already have some tulips, but let's face it they're great so there's always room for some more.



So we have 3 x Queen Of The Night, 3 x Synaeda Orange & 10 x Shakespeare.

I thought I'd bought some white ones... I certainly spent a lot of time umming & ahhing over some, but if I remember correctly we already have 2 varieties in the garden - some traditional shaped ones, like white versions of the Queen Of The Night, plus some long thin ones, like the Synaeda.

Looking at this now though, I have no idea what possessed me to buy all those Shakespeares. What on earth was I planning to do with so many early, orange tulips? Tra la, I'm sure they'll be pretty enough.

Alliums

3 x Purple Sensation & 3 x Christophii. Again, they're in the same bag so I now don't know which is which.

I've had a Christophii before & it was amazing, but it only lasted 1 year. Bit of a shame. Is that cos they're bred to be sterile? Or did I plant it too shallow, as I've heard bulbs have to be planted really deep to last several Springs. I'll have to do some more research.

Let's pot them up

Gathering kit

Compost - check
Pots - check
Bulbs - check, check, check!

I bought some new pots earlier year. They were meant for other things, but I'm commandeering them for this now. I'll buy some more later. I've also got a few other large pots kicking about so out they come too.

I noticed the other week that the local farmshop does bags of peat-free compost - ace! The last time I went looking for peat-free multi-purpose at the local garden centre, it took ages. There were loads of different compost types & manufacturers, but I had to check each bag carefully to ensure peat-freeness. Even the Jamie Oliver brand growbags (Jamie Oliver?!) had peat in their mix. As gardening still accounts for the vast majority of peat use, & peat bog degredation is still an issue, I like to use peat-free if possible. Besides, my methods are so random that peatiness is unlikely to make much of a difference to my success rate.

Drainage

The pots all have drainage holes in the bottom, but if you just bang compost straight in the plant can end up waterlogged - the mass of roots & soil just won't drain efficiently. So to improve the drainage, first into the pot is some masonry.

Crocks for drainage

Crocks is a general term for any bit of broken pot or stone you have kicking about. Any stones I find when I'm digging the beds go into my crock pot. Broken vases, roof tile shards & bits of brick end up in there too.

Covering the crocks with gravel

The handful of crocks is covered with some pea gravel from the area in front of the house. This drives hubby mental as the gravel level slowly drops over time. But it's no biggie as we can always top it up if need be with another dumpy bag of shingle. Plus it means that I don't have to have a special store of gravel cluttering up the place just for this kind of job. This is multitasking gravel.

Again, the gravel improves the drainage by stopping the compost & roots getting all the way to the bottom of the pot.

You might think I'm labouring the drainage point here, but bulbs are prone to rotting if they get too wet. I've even seen advice about planting them on a layer of sand just to ensure they don't get soggy bottoms. I'll save the sand for when they go out into the beds, but for now the crocks & gravel combo should be fine.

Planting & positioning

Firm down a shallow layer of compost over the gravel & it's time to pop the bulbs in.

Cover the drainage with a layer of compost

Thankfully with most bulbs it's really easy to tell which is the right way up. Todays are nicely teardropped shaped, so it's pointy bit up to the sky, & sit them on their rooty flat bottoms, pressing down a little into the compost.

I've kept the bulbs away from the edge of the pot as I think I've heard they can be prone to frost damage, so they need to be kept snug in a compost blanket.

6 tulips with an allium in the middle

Now, when I planted these I was still labouring under the misapprehension that the Shakespeares flowered white, so in this pot we've got them alternating around the outside with the 3 Synaeda, & then a mystery Allium in the middle. So orange with orange & a bit of purple. But no worries - it just means I'll have an extended orange tulip season. Yay!

Other pot combos today include:

• 3 Queens, 3 Shakespeare & an Allium, which will be a heady orange & purple mix.
• 4 Shakespeare & an Allium, again, rocking opposite ends of the colour wheel.
• 3 Alliums, in the tallest, thinnest pot.... might be a bit prone to blowing over in the wind when in bloom that one...
• 3 Tête/Minnow.
• 2 Tête/Minnow but these were actually single bulbs at that Siamese twin stage, just ready to separate, so 4 bulbs for the price of 2 really. Bonus!
• 3 Silver Chimes. These guys were in their own bag so this should be a single colour pot.
• I put the remaining Chimes out at the end of the Alpine bed.

I'm actually quite excited about those orange & purple combos now. Admittedly I was expecting white in there, which would've been a bit classier, but this mix-up should yield striking results :)

Topping off

Once the bulbs were all in position, I carefully added the rest of the compost, gently around the bulbs first to keep them in position, & then on top. I press the compost down & top it up again a few times until there's about an inch left to the top of the pot.

Finally I topped them off with some more of the gravel.

Topping off with gravel & labelling up

The gravel is great at suppressing weeds & retaining moisture. Plus it gives a nice colour contrast against the plants, showing them off they nicely.

Finally the labels. I've been crap with labels in the past, but I'm trying to be more diligent cos I keep losing things. This time, some of the labels will need modifying later when I unravel the Tête/Minnow & Allium mix-ups.

A little bit of water over the top & we're done. I've put some pots the yard & some in the garden by the bench under the window. If they don't get clobbered when the snow falls off the roof this Winter, it should be a very bonny Spring.

Apathy in the face of cold, hard logic

What a beautiful day. Big blue skies all day long. A welcome respite from this year's seemingly endless rain.

I've got the whole day free & I've got things to do. Top of the list is to plant out the bulbs I bought over a month ago... I do this all the time - get over-excited at the garden centre & then neglect my purchases as soon as I get them home. Such a stoopid waste.

A bag of these beauties lie neglected in a corner of the garage...

So the bulbs need planting out sharpish, but it's not as simple as getting out there & bashing them in. I'm planning on doing some more structural work this Winter so I don't want plant the bulbs now only to end up scything through them all when I'm in demoliton mode.

The plan

Plant the bulbs in pots instead. Then in the Spring I can place them out when all the heavy work is over.
Great.
Only, the are 2 slight problems:

1. I don't have enough pots.
2. I don't have enough compost.

No biggie. Easily solved by a quick trip to the garden centre.

Only...

I can't quite summon the motivation to get out of the door.

A leisurely lie-in with coffee & biscuits. Then a bit of Facebookage whilst watching the final of The Great British Bake Off; straight into MotoGP; then the last race in World Triathlon Series, Women's & Men's in New Zealand, watching Jonny Brownlee become world champ; now the British Touring Cars at a sopping wet Brands Hatch... I've only moved from the sofa for coffee refuels & a bacon sarnie.

& the most stupid, most infuriating thing is that this is my last free weekend til December, & I still can't stick a boot in my sorry ass to get out there. Yay for an exciting social diary, but the garden pays the price.

It's a done deal now - the shops will be shut & it's getting dark.

I need another plan...