In the Garden this Weekend
Hello friends, Gary here.
The wind has started. It isn't much yet, just a restless push against the back of the house. It's enough to set the pale grasses at the end of the garden leaning one way and then the other in the last of the light. A storm is due overnight. By the time most of you read this, it will be crossing the country towards us.
Olivia is at her school disco tonight, and half term began the moment the bell went this afternoon. The house has that end-of-term feeling to it: book bags dropped where they landed, and a week ahead with no alarms in it.
Housekeeping first, because I promised you honesty. Last Sunday I did what I said I would, and the tender pots are in the greenhouse. This week the strip under the yew finally has something in it: epimedium, and a few small plants of Geranium macrorrhizum, watered in and mulched. They have barely started to root, and their first real test is a storm.
Last Thursday I wrote that this Saturday was one of the last two with a proper afternoon in it before the clocks go back. The weather has other ideas. Friday is blustery, around thirteen degrees, with showers and a yellow wind warning across the East. Saturday is the wet one. Sunday turns dry and calmer, around twelve degrees. Overnight the clocks go back, so we gain an hour in the morning and lose it again at teatime.
So nothing on this weekend's list will grow anything. The jobs are about holding on: tying down what the wind will find, catching what the rain brings, and walking round afterwards to see what held.
Garden To-Do’s
Lets Get It Done
1. Tie down what the wind will find.
Go round with a ball of soft twine, but don't go out in the worst of it; nothing in the garden is worth a branch to the head.
Climbers and roses. Tie in the long whips that have been waving about since summer. A stem that thrashes against a wall all night bruises itself, and the bruises let disease in.
Stakes and ties. Check the stakes on young trees and tall perennials. While you're there, loosen any tie that has started cutting into the bark.
Anything light. Lids on compost bins and water butts, loose trellis, the children's things left on the lawn: weigh them down, tie them, or bring them in.
The greenhouse. It matters more now it's holding the tender plants. Shut the vents and the door, and wedge the door so it can't rattle. Press back any pane that has slipped in its clips, because a loose pane in a gale can fly.
Allotment fences. I have two old ones I don't trust, and I'm not going to try to fix them in a storm. I'll take off anything fixed to them that catches the wind like a sail, prop the worst panel if I can do it safely, and leave the rest until it's calm.
Fleece and mesh over crops. Weigh the edges down with bricks along their whole length, or take them off for the night. Fleece that comes loose wraps itself round the very plants it was there to protect.
The Lesson: A storm doesn't make anything loose. It finds what already was, so the time to look is before it hits.
2. Get the water butts ready before Saturday's rain.
I have two. In August both were empty, and I was carrying cans back and forth from the outside tap. Saturday's rain could fill them both in an afternoon, as long as nothing is blocking the way in.
Clear the diverter filter. Autumn is when leaves clog the filter on the downpipe diverter. Take the cover off and clear it. Then check the water is actually going into the butt, not straight past it and down the drain.
Check where the overflow goes. Make sure it runs somewhere useful, such as onto a border or into a second butt. Don't let it pool at the base: on clay, that pool sits against the house wall and stays there.
Link the two if you can. If one butt fills long before the other, a cheap connector kit between them lets the second fill from the first.
Check the lids. Make sure they're on firmly. With the children home all week, that matters as much as the water does.
Keep what you catch. Whatever goes in this weekend can sit there until it's needed, and next summer it will be.
The Lesson: What arrives in abundance in October is exactly what we'll be short of in July. The time to catch it is when there's too much.
3. On Sunday, walk round and see what held.
Sunday should be dry, and the clocks give us an extra hour in the morning. Use it, because by five o'clock the light will be going.
Start with anything planted this autumn. Wind can rock a young plant back and forth until it wears a funnel-shaped hollow around the base of its stem; gardeners call it wind rock. On clay that hollow fills with water and the roots sit in it. If a frost follows, the water freezes around the collar of the plant. Firm everything back in, with your heel for shrubs and your fingertips for small things. The epimediums and geraniums under the yew will be my first stop.
Check the ties again. A storm loosens some and pulls others tight.
Look over the greenhouse. Check the panes and the door.
Allotment fences. Look at them in daylight and make a note of what needs replacing over the winter. That's a job for another weekend, not for Sunday afternoon.
Keep off the beds. After Saturday the clay will be saturated, and standing on it squeezes the air out of the soil for months. If you have to step onto a bed, lay a plank down first and stand on that; it spreads your weight.
The Lesson: A storm is an honest inventory. Afterwards you know exactly what held, and what needs a little more help before the winter.
In Case You Missed It
Previous Newsletters
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.
P.S. You may have noticed the new logo at the top of this email. It's a G with a leaf across its middle, the name, and two words beneath: Get Grounded. The old logo was a template I picked up when I started and never got round to replacing. This one says what I've been trying to say from the beginning. You don't need a big garden or a free afternoon. A little time outside with your hands in the soil, even in a small, muddy family garden, brings you back down to earth. That feels about right for a weekend when a storm is passing over.
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