A few weeks ago, I wrote about the first ‘Gardening Day’ of the year, where the weather is unseasonably warm and you find yourself pottering around in the borders soaking up some much needed sun and thinking that spring has finally sprung. It kind of has but then there’s always a few more weeks of inclement weather to deal with and so you look longingly at those same borders, perhaps venturing out a few times to check on growth or pick up fallen debris from last night’s storm.
Gardening Day number two can’t wait for the next perfect day. It hopes and wishes for it but eventually it happens in a much more brace the elements kind of way. Thermals back on, thick socks and wellies to deal with the mud, a jumper and a coat, preferably with a hood. If no hood (who has a coat without a hood these days?!) it’s last dance time for the woolly hats so might as well make the most of it.
Still you wait and hope for a sliver of sunshine and then you’re out. Time for some serious prep. Much lugging around of compost bags (especially when the foxes keep unhelpfully ripping them up no matter how hard I try to protect them – obviously a fun game); two rakes, a fork and spade added to the tool arsenal of secateurs and trowel; buckets at the ready for field stones (the ones that rise mysteriously from under the soil during winter due to processes of conducting, freezing, expanding and pushing upwards), the weeds and homemade compost; and a bag for the recurring fox poo (so annoying).
This is the kind of gardening that gives you sciatica or a bad back. It’s urgent and determined and can’t stop/won’t stop until all those preparation jobs are done. It takes a breather when the sun pushes through, leaning on a fork handle, feeling at one with the world. But then it cracks on, especially because there are only so many hours in the day, and gardening is part of your job but you still feel guilty about it and there’s always the looming school run – but also because it’s just so goddam satisfying.
Today I managed to finally sow some seeds indoors in my studio-cum-greenhouse: tomatoes (‘Noire de Crimée’, ‘Gardener’s Delight’, and ‘Sungold F1’ leftover from last year) cucumbers (‘Cornichon de Paris’) and foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea ‘Dalmatian Mixed F1’) in cells; and echinacea (Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’ and ‘Magnus’), coneflower (Rudbeckia ‘Chim Chiminee’), Lindheimer’s Beeblossom (Gaura lindheimeri), Verbena bonariensis, and bergamot (Panorama mixed) in seed trays. I’ll also be sowing some of the seed tray specimens direct outside in April.
After giving them all a fine spray (have resolved to use a spray to water them rather than a watering can this year so not to water-log the soil or damage tender shoots), I headed outside to tidy up the aforementioned commpost wreckage. With a me-against-the-foxes kind of attitude, I scraped up the fallout and placed it on the raised beds, poured a damaged bag into a pot and hid it under some old roof tiles and dragged the only intact bag into my studio but left it tantalisingly by the window so the foxes would know who was boss (so immature).
I then set about removing all the stones and weeds from the raised beds (the dreaded buttercup, so loved in the countryside so battled here – this dichotomy always weirds me out) and gently raking and turning over the top layer of soil to get it seed ready for big Gardening Day number three (hopefully a warm one), which is outdoor sowing day.
We used to have five raised beds but we removed two to make room for a trampoline (the things you do for kids) and a third one went because it was too shady under the magnolia tree and always got covered in leaves. This is now my potting area, and hopefully one day where the greenhouse will stand. The two remaining beds are currently empty apart from 4 crowns of rhubarb, which have just started to emerge.
I initially planted them at the front, in an attempt to create a potager and they really thrived but left a big space in the bed over autumn and winter. I could have planted some bulbs in their wake but decided to move them to the beds so they could be the focal point of the veg beds. The gargantuan size of the rhubarb leaves also forces me to stick to my limited edit of accompanying plants: lettuce, beetroot, kale and edible flowers and herbs such as calendula, cornflower, borage, sweet cicely and viola heartsease. The sweetpeas may or may not rise above it all on a teepee of hazel sticks – we shall see.
After the beds had been tilled, it was onto the general weeding, of pots and borders front and back. The usual culprits: green alkanet (a bugger to get out if you leave too long as the thirsty taproot is massive and pretty as those bright blue flowers are, it self seeds like mad); most of the herb Robert (I leave a bit near walls as I like the red stems and this is actually a herb); bittercress (grows in small rosettes that then have an explosive seeding mechanism if left to mature so get rid quick); red dead nettle (probably brought in from Wanstead Flats); chickweed (although this is also an edible herb); and annual mercury (I actually like this weed just because it’s so easy to pull up); petty spurge (trying to trick me into thinking it’s an ornamental euphorbia – has very persistent seeds, apparently, some germinating after 50-100 years); and yellow sorrel (although I also like this in cracks and the bases of pots, as the bronze three-cornered leaves and yellow flowers are pretty).
After three hours of solid work – also raking the never-ending layer of pine needles from the front beds especially after high winds – it was time to stand back and survey my work (more leaning on a fork Monty Don style). As a final touch I planted some dwarf ‘tete a tete’ daffodils the boys and I bought for Tom\s birthday in in the burgeoning spring bulb area, the perfect sun-catching, pick-me-up highlight next to the crocuses, snowdrops and yellow-tinted Elizabeth Hodgkin irises.
The joy of gardening, right there in a nutshell.