In the Garden this Weekend
Hello friends, Gary here.
This week I cut the lawn. In November. The mild weather has kept it growing long past the point when I'd normally have cleaned the mower and put it away for the winter. By midweek it had that soft, shaggy look you can see from the kitchen without really looking. So out the mower came, one more time.
The leaves are only now starting to come down. It feels later than usual this year, as though the trees weren't quite ready to let go. They've started now, though. The lawn I've just cut is already disappearing under them again.
Tomorrow night we're going to our local fireworks display, and the children have been looking forward to it all week.
Housekeeping first, because I promised you honesty. The pumpkins are off the doorstep at last: chopped up and on the compost heap, about a week after I told you to do the same. There's no sign of the sweet peas yet. They're somewhere cold, which is where they should be, and they take their time there. And the ground cover for the south-facing bed is still not bought. That's because I've started rethinking the layout of the whole bed. Again.
The weekend looks grey, mild and dry all the way through. Friday and Saturday will be around ten or eleven degrees. Sunday will be a degree or two cooler, with the nights dropping to about four.
I'll have Saturday morning in the garden. On Sunday I'll have a couple of hours at the allotment on my own. I'm not really going for the jobs; I'm going for the quiet. It's the nearest thing I have to switching myself off and on again.
Sunday is also Remembrance Sunday. At eleven o'clock I'll put the fork down and stand for the two minutes. If I'm out on the plot by then, I can't think of a better place to keep a silence than an allotment in November.
So this weekend's jobs are slow ones. Bulbs that have waited for the cold before going in. Glass cleared so the little light there is can get through. Leaves that will take a year to become anything at all.
None of them will hurry you. That's rather the point.
Garden To-Do’s
Lets Get It Done
1. Plant the tulips, now the ground has cooled.
Back in October I told you to leave gaps between the wallflowers for tulips, "which go in next month." This is next month.
Why wait until now? Tulips are prone to tulip fire, a fungal disease that lives in the soil and turns leaves and flowers blotched and twisted in spring. It thrives in warm ground. Planting in November, once the soil has cooled, gives it far less chance to take hold.
Check them first. A good bulb is firm, like a shallot. Throw away anything soft, shrivelled or furred with mould rather than planting it.
Plant deep. Set each bulb two to three times its own height deep, around ten to fifteen centimetres, pointed end up. Leave at least two bulb-widths between them.
On clay, give them a drier seat. Put a handful of grit in the bottom of each hole, so the base of the bulb isn't sitting in wet clay all winter. If your ground stays waterlogged, plant them in pots of peat-free compost mixed with grit instead.
Keep the squirrels off. Lay a piece of chicken wire flat over the planting and pin it down until the shoots come through in spring.
It's a good one for small hands. The bulbs are big, the holes are easy to count, and it's hard to plant one wrong. Pointed end up is the only rule that matters.
The Lesson: Waiting isn't always the same as putting it off. Sometimes the later start is the healthier one.
2. Clean the greenhouse glass. Properly, this time.
Regular readers will know this one has been on my list since September. I've stopped pretending it's about to happen. This weekend it actually has to, because the next six weeks are the darkest of the year and the tender plants inside need every bit of light they can get.
Pick a dry, mild hour. This weekend has plenty. Stand the plants outside for an hour if you can, or push them to one end and cover them with an old sheet.
Warm water and a little washing-up liquid is all you need, with a soft brush or a sponge on a pole for the roof. Skip anything harsh; whatever you use will end up running onto the staging.
Do the overlaps. Where one pane sits over another, a green line of algae builds up in the gap. That's where most of the light goes missing. Slide an old plastic plant label or a bank card along the overlap to push it out, then rinse.
If you painted on shading in the summer, take it off now.
Clean the inside too. Wipe down the glass and the staging, and brush out the corners. Pests and fungal spores spend the winter tucked into exactly those places.
Let it dry before you shut it up. Open the door and vents for an hour afterwards, so you aren't trapping damp in with the plants overnight.
The Lesson: In the darkest months we can't make more light. We can stop blocking what there is.
3. Start this year's leaf mould.
The leaves are late, but they're coming now, and over the next few weekends there will be more than you know what to do with. Leaf mould is the slowest thing in the garden to make, and the easiest. Nearly all of the work is in the gathering.
Let the mower do the raking. If your lawn is dry enough to walk on, set the mower high, with the collection box on, and run it over the leaves. It chops them up and mixes in grass clippings, and together they rot down far faster than whole leaves. It's the one good reason I can find to mow in November.
Don't leave a thick layer on the lawn. Leaves left lying for weeks block the light and leave yellow, sickly patches in the grass underneath. Clear the paths too, because wet leaves on paving are slippery.
If you built a cage in September, this is the weekend it starts to earn its keep. Tip the leaves in and tread them down.
Then leave it alone. In a year it will be good enough to mulch a border; in two, fine enough to mix into potting compost. You don't need to turn it, feed it or check on it.
The Lesson: Some of the best things we make, we make by leaving them alone. Gather them in, put them somewhere dark, and let time do the rest.
In Case You Missed It
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.
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