More about Gardening
Erika in Colorado says:
| scarhandpiper wrote on Fri, 10 October 2008 06:01 | ||
I don’t know how you people do the gardening thing. I have to really work to keep even dandelions alive! |
Well, you just start with something easy like zucchini, follow the directions on the seed packet (at least as far as depth, but I always ignore the “hill” planting), and then water faithfully (soaker hoses save me since I’m so lazy/busy). The rest is just luck and fertilizer.
And I say make it even easier than that: go to a garden centre and buy a plant. Or three. Or twenty-seven. Yes, it’s more expensive than a packet of seeds, but if you’re careful you can fill up a lot of garden space by, for example, judicious use of sales. Six pansies in a tray for 99p, yaay.* And tomato plants and courgette/zucchini the same. Peter stopped growing lettuce from seed this year, and bought trays of seedlings from the local ironmongers.** And a good garden centre will merely have too many of most things; they aren’t necessarily selling off the elderly, undernourished and rootbound. And mail order: mail-order ‘plug’ plants–which are little seedlings that arrive on your doorstep ready to be potted on***–are a great invention. With the exception of things like California poppies which you can just rip open the seed packet and hurl in the general direction of your garden, growing from seed takes a lot of trouble. Admittedly I started at the sharp end by growing roses from seed, but the principle of fussing† remains.
Drummerwench: I do a bit of gardening–thankfully, my partner does more, and is way more knowledgable. We are challenged by a mostly shady, cool yard, with rather acid soil–decades worth of cypress tree duff.
Shady! Acid! You can grow camellias!†† You lucky person! I was just thinking about camellias from the depths of my general Autumn Plant Order Craze. ††† I bought several camellias last year in a brash and irresponsible way and while watering all this stuff in pots bores me rigid I’m kind of getting the hang of plants in pots and I’m dangerous when I start getting the hang of something. I was also trying to widen my camellia horizons last year and not order only formal doubles . . . with the result that I’m now longing for more formal doubles/rose form‡, sigh. Alba Plena, Ave Maria, Les Jury, Cheryll Lynn, Dahlohnega, Elizabeth Weaver . . . maybe Gloire de Nantes just because it flowers for three or four months although it’s not a formal double . . . and maybe Mignonne, which is semi-hardy and flowers in the autumn, not the standard camellia season of spring, but I can put it next to the house wall with the patio-sized peach tree I’m also thinking about‡‡. . . .
* * *
* One of my neighbours was out messing in the dirt this morning when the hellhounds and I were leaving for our hurtle. When we got back I noticed that she’d refilled the big pot by her gate . . . with as many little plug-sized pansies as she could wedge in. It’s going to be blood and circuses in there in a few weeks as they duke it out.
** Sic. Our ironmongers’^ is keeping alive the concept of the old-fashioned general store. Except I don’t think they call them general stores over here. Last century, when I was young, we still had general stores in America. Maine, and possibly other states where the back of beyond still exists, I assume does even now: Axe handles, chainsaws, milk, gas, newspapers, pizza, ice cream, video hire, and little trays of baby plants out front in the spring.
^ Hardware store, for the modern and/or American
*** They will probably arrive, unfortunately, over ready to be potted on, but things like pansies and petunias and marigolds will take a deep breath and grow anyway. And primulas, like yesterday’s entries’ confused live plants.
† People who are better at it than I am will call it being organised.
†† And rhododendrons, Japanese maples, heathers, most trilliums, some gentians, some magnolias, and blueberries, which are pretty much the limit of my acid-loving/lime-hating plant knowledge, since I do not have acid soil and have to grow anything really strict about being lime-hating in pots. And hydrangeas if you want them blue. But plants don’t always behave according to the directions on the packet. Liquidambar is supposed to prefer acid soil, for example, but it grows great for us, as does witch hazel and, rather more surprisingly, exochorda x macrantha The Bride.
††† I’ll buy–and have bought–my camellias here: http://www.trehanenursery.co.uk/index.php I recommend them to anyone in England; they aren’t the cheapest but the plants are superb.
‡ http://www.camellia-ics.org/_ics/home.htm
‡‡ http://www.kenmuir.co.uk/shopFrame.htm
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