In the Garden this Weekend
Hello friends, Gary here.
This is the first week of the dark teatimes. The clocks went back on Sunday, and since then the garden has gone out at about five o'clock. By the time I get to the bi-folds after work there's nothing much to see in the glass except my own reflection and the kitchen behind me.
Half term has filled that kitchen all week. Both children are home, and the Halloween list gets longer every time Cody remembers something. The pumpkins are waiting by the back door. By Saturday night they'll be the only light in the garden.
Housekeeping first, because I promised you honesty. On Monday I said I'd stand in the south-facing bed moving the new ground cover around in its pots before I dug a single hole. I haven't bought it yet. Not one plant. The soil stays warm well into November, so there's still time. But it won't be this weekend. This weekend belongs to the children.
For once the weather is on our side. Friday and Saturday look dry and mild, around fifteen degrees. Sunday is cooler, around twelve, and still dry. Saturday night is Halloween, and next Thursday is Bonfire Night.
So this week's jobs are small ones, and none of them are just for me. They're about what goes on in the garden after we've gone in for the night: what is sleeping out there, what we leave on the doorstep, and what we start on a cold windowsill for a summer that feels a very long way off.
Garden To-Do’s
Lets Get It Done
1. Before Bonfire Night, check the piles for hedgehogs.
Somewhere near you this week, a hedgehog is looking for a dry heap to spend the winter in. A pile of prunings that has been building up since September, waiting for the fifth, looks to a hedgehog like the perfect place.
Build the bonfire on the day if you can. If you've been stacking it for weeks, move the whole lot by hand to a fresh spot just before you light it. That way you're lighting a heap nothing has had time to move into.
If you can't move it, check it. Take a torch, and gently lift the base of the pile from the edges with a broom handle or a rake. Then stop and listen; a disturbed hedgehog will often hiss or snuffle. Never push a fork into the pile.
Light it from one side only. That leaves anything still inside a clear way out.
Leave one heap that never gets lit. Logs, leaves, a few prunings in a corner you don't need to tidy. That's a hibernation spot ready-made, and it costs you nothing but a bit of untidiness.
Make a hedgehog highway. A hole about 13cm square at the bottom of a fence lets them move between gardens, and they need to roam to find food and somewhere to nest. It's a good job to do with a child and a saw.
If you find one, leave it be. Cover it back over and build your fire somewhere else. If it's out and about in daylight, or looks very small, ring a local hedgehog rescue.
The Lesson: The tidiest garden is often the emptiest. Some of the most useful ground we have is the ground we leave alone.
2. After Halloween, deal with the pumpkins properly.
On Sunday morning the pumpkins will be sitting on the step, a bit soft round the mouth, and smelling faintly of candle.
Don't put them out for the wildlife. For years the advice was to leave old pumpkins out for the hedgehogs. Hedgehog charities now ask us not to, because pumpkin flesh can upset their stomachs, and a hedgehog about to hibernate can't afford to be ill.
Take the wax out first. Tealights and wax drips won't break down in the compost.
Chop them before composting. A whole pumpkin will sit in a cold heap until spring. Cut into chunks and mixed in with dry brown leaves or torn cardboard, it'll rot down in a few weeks.
Save the seeds. Wash them, dry them, and either roast them plain for the family or put a handful out, unsalted and unseasoned, on the bird table.
If the children want to grow their own, keep a few back and dry them on a sheet of kitchen roll. Most carving pumpkins are hybrids, so whatever grows from their seed next summer won't quite match its parent. To a six-year-old that is a feature, not a flaw.
The Lesson: What's left after a celebration still has a use. Nothing in a garden is really finished; it goes back into the ground and comes round again.
3. Sow sweet peas in loo-roll tubes.
This is the one I'm most looking forward to. Sweet peas sown now, in late autumn, spend the winter putting down roots instead of leaves. By spring they're sturdier than anything sown in March, and they flower weeks earlier.
Why loo rolls? A sweet pea sends a long root straight down almost as soon as it germinates. A cardboard tube is deep and narrow, which is just what that root wants. In spring the whole thing goes into the ground, cardboard and all, so the root is never disturbed.
Pack them tight. Stand the tubes upright in a seed tray or an old ice cream tub, squeezed close so they hold each other up. Fill them with peat-free multipurpose compost, firm it gently, and water them, then let them drain before you sow.
Two seeds per tube, about a centimetre or two deep. The seeds are big and easy to handle, which makes this a good job for small fingers. Some people soak the seeds overnight first; I don't bother.
Keep them cold, not warm. A cold greenhouse, a cold frame or an unheated porch is ideal. On a warm windowsill they grow leggy, which means tall, thin and pale, all stem and no strength, from reaching too fast for light they haven't got. And watch out for mice, which love the seeds, so keep the tray up off the floor.
Later, once each seedling has three or four pairs of leaves, pinch out the growing tip. It'll branch and bush out instead of shooting upwards. They go out into the garden in April.
The Lesson: Some of what we plant is for a part of the year we can't see yet. June's flowers get started on a kitchen table, in the dark, at the very end of October.
Gary Stewart writes twice a week from a small garden on Norfolk clay.
Mondays are for what the garden has already done. Thursdays are shorter, because the weekend is the point and the reading is not.
Written quickly, for once, because Saturday will not wait.
Please share if you know someone who will benefit from this Newsletter - Lets Grow!
Copy & Paste link
www.embracegardening.co.uk