Roses

Rose planting is not to be rushed.  I have conceded this after visiting two garden centres with my husband.  I had the idea that we could transform the small patio area behind our forsythia 'hedge' into a rose bed in readiness to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III.  I could visualise us sitting there with our near neighbours, drinking tea and eating cake.  

That was the idea, but the truth is that roses take time.  The only ones available were in pots and seemed to be for special occasions.  The clue was in their names, variations on 'silver years', 'golden years' and 'lovely nannas'.  It so happens that this year for us too is a celebratory one, but that is no excuse for impulse buying.

My husband learned his craft working for a rose grower and nurseryman and he knows that the proper season to plant roses is the autumn.  Roses come 'bare-rooted' which means we should order them from a nursery and they will arrive securely wrapped to help them overcome the strain of being dug up, minus soil, from their native field.  He knows this, because one of his early jobs was digging them up.

So it is October then.  This gives us the rest of the time to enjoy the daffodils and then put them in pots over the summer to die down and then replant; to let the wallflowers flower and then finish; to stop treating this area as an overflow bed where we, actually, I, stick things that I do not want to throw away.  Then it is over to my husband with the digging and enriching of our clay soil with plenty of manure.

Marriage takes time.  Preparation makes it worthwhile.  Impulsive actions rarely work.

Bank Holiday Potatoes

 Rain is steadily falling on the Second Early seed potatoes that we planted over the 2023 Easter Weekend.  It leads me to reflect on gardening at home.  The last time I can remember buying seed potatoes was probably twelve or so years ago, returning from a trip, possibly to Epping Forest.  We stopped off somewhere near Loughton and hastily bought a bag of seed potatoes that was stickered  - they were growing through the plastic mesh of the bag.  I think they were maincrop Rooster, they were definitely red skinned.  We had a bed on the allotment in mind, but it was a rather hasty job as they needed to go in as quickly as possible.  They did well and we got a crop.

What a difference a decade makes.  This time our potatoes had an allocated spot in their own planter constructed by my husband, and there was also overflow space in one of his other planters - one row alongside our overwintering onions.  We both agreed that we would purchase 'Charlotte' and went to our local garden centre for a bag of 25 seed potatoes.  We chitted them in the garage in egg boxes for several weeks until they sprouted, and we also held back half a dozen for R around the corner as experience has taught me that overcrowding limits the fruitfulness of a crop.

When we both considered it was warm enough we put them in, following the instructions on the bag.  My husband made me a measuring stick so I could space them at the correct distance and pulled up the soil into ridges so they could go on top.   Then we covered them.

Now comes the business of waiting for them to grow and earthing them up until it is time to harvest.  The instructions on the bag indicate that this could be between July and September.  I do hope it proves to be July, as we have earmarked one planter for a variety of blue-green pumpkin/winter squash from saved seed via our neighbour's allotment and the other for cucumbers or French Beans when the onions are ready.  

This is gardening intensively, intense cropping, and we hope, intense flavours to follow.