My gardening diary
MONDAY Moving a beautiful peony ‘Duchesse de Nemours’, presently sited close to the top of a wall in Alice’s garden, into a better place in the middle of the bed. It has huge, weighty flowers and tends to flop. It’ll have more support from other plants and can be more easily staked if need be. The important point is not to plant it too deeply.
TUESDAY Sowing astrantia seeds. This year’s seed ripened well, and though we sow it now, sprinkling the large seeds sparingly on the surface of half-trays filled with proprietary loam-based compost, it seldom germinates straightaway. If there’s no sign of any green shoots soon the trays will go outside and hopefully get frosted.
WEDNESDAY More leaves to collect. We try to avoid ash leaves for our leaf mould heap, concentrating on the leaves that break down most easily; beech, oak and alder are all good.
THURSDAY It’s a long job to cut all the leaves from our hellebores but it’s well worth doing to ensure against the spread of the fungal disease. It also gives us a chance to look out for black death virus disease (hopefully none) where leaves become stunted and veined in black. Poorly plants need to be burned.
FRIDAY The paperwhites I planted for Christmas are coming into flower now, whereas prepared hyacinths and hippeastrum are barely showing a sign of growth above their compost. Perhaps they didn’t have long enough in the dark.
SATURDAY This year growth was so lush that many plants needed extra support. We’re removing all the bamboo canes and twiggy hazel sticks we used. The hazel will go on the fire whereas bamboos are stored in the shed upside down to stop them rotting. An old chimney pot is the perfect receptacle.
SUNDAY Taking root cuttings of one of the few Papaver orientale that have survived. It seems many varieties have all but died out in gardens across Europe. A ‘pseudo mildew’, probably a type of downy mildew, is cited as the cause. We’ll try to reintroduce plants of our surviving varieties.