My gardening diary
MONDAY
After what has been an especially wet winter, a mossy covering has become a feature on almost all our beds and borders. Mosses love acid conditions and damp soil and that’s what they’ve got here. No wonder they’re thriving. These areas need to be clear before a final mulch goes on.
TUESDAY
Most of our home-made compost has gone. There’s never enough but we’re plundering our big tree pots for some extra. It’s good stuff and at the bottom of each pot is old manure, ideal to put around perennials.
WEDNESDAY
Winter pruning our ‘Discovery’ apple tree. Taking about a third off some of its longest stems, cutting our old spurs but encouraging new fruiting spurs by cutting back vigorous laterals to two or three buds.
THURSDAY
The hardneck garlic we grew last year was delicious but much too small. It went in too late so we’re determined to give this year’s crop a fair crack of the whip. Although each clove gets its own compartment in a module tray in the greenhouse, as soon as growth starts the tray will go outside. Garlic needs a spell of cold.
FRIDAY
Gradually daylight length is growing. When you’re forced indoors because you can no longer see what you’re doing, you realise you’ve had half an hour more than you had a few weeks ago.
SATURDAY
The central feature in one of the beds just before you get to the oak fence that separates the bottom of the garden from the top is a bonny Physocarpus
opulifolius ‘Diabolo’. When clearing away leaves from its base, I noticed funghi growing from its wood. From the colour and shape, I think it’s honey fungus!
SUNDAY
Transplanting woodruff from a bed at the side of the track to another under an enkianthus where the ground is bare apart from a few hellebores. It’s not a job that requires much finesse, simply lifting shallow spades full and literally laying it on the soil and firming it in with your boot.