New Year jobs

 

Frost on Viburnum davidii

New Year, and still so much to do.  There has been a further dusting of snow and the temperature has barely risen above freezing, so outdoors has been too frosty and icy to do much.  The greenhouse still hasn’t been cleared out and washed down, so it remains un-insulated despite the cold; several nights have been a few degrees below zero and the temperature in the greenhouse has fallen to just above freezing, but I’m trying to resist turning on the heater unless absolutely necessary.  Nothing seems to be suffering too much in there at the moment.

A priority job has been to get the last dahlia tubers out of their pots – one had been sitting, pot and all, in the greenhouse, and two more out in the cold – and replaced with the last few tulip bulbs.  My good intention had been to give all the potted bulbs fresh compost, but given the renewed lockdown and last year’s compost shortage I’m concerned about not having enough, so they have got a layer of new stuff above and below them, with old compost at the top (some 6X fertiliser mixed in if they were lucky).  The two very big pots have mixed tulips: the one by the summerhouse has the doubles ‘Angelique’, ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘Black Hero’, and the one on the patio has ‘Ballerina’, ‘Antraciet’ and a purple tulip whose name I’ve forgotten (!).  The other tulips are planted one variety only in each pot, with no other accompanying bulbs or plants; this should mean that I can discard them (at least, those that don’t flower a second year) as soon as they’ve finished flowering, without having to wait for other plants to go over.  I’ve even planted the crocuses separately in little pots; this seemed a good idea at the time, but I now realise that this leaves them vulnerable to being dug up and eaten by mice (as has happened).  In the big pots, above the tulips, they’re safe; the mice can’t climb so high!  Some of the crocus pots are now in the greenhouse and some in the cold frame, but even there they’re not completely safe.  Something has been digging into the snowdrop pots in the cold frame, and it looks like mouse work - although I can't see how the mouse would get in there.

I have spent some time clearing soil off the dahlia tubers.  Those that were in the ground had been dug up in wet conditions and had a lot of claggy soil stuck to them; this has mostly dried now and is easier to remove.  There was some microlife and the odd worm in the soil; I dumped it outside on one of the borders, to the great delight of the robin and the sparrows, the latter using it as a dust-bath when the birdbaths were frozen.

Another job has been to shell the beans that I hung up in the greenhouse to dry off, in the hope of getting beans to sow this summer.  I had been afraid that the greenhouse was too damp for this (the roof leaks in heavy rain), and I was also concerned that I wouldn’t be able to tell one variety from another; I hadn’t labelled them, failing to realise that the pods wouldn’t be easily distinguishable once they had dried and shrivelled.  I needn’t have worried.  There was a decent number of good-quality beans from each set, and they were easily identifiable: the haricot-like ones were from the runner bean (variety unknown) given to me last summer by a neighbour; the brown mottled ones were borlotti beans; and the handsome black-and-pink ones were the climbing purple French bean ‘Blauhilde’.  More than enough to sow.

Beans, top - runners; middle - Blauhilde; bottom: borlottis

 

Today the thaw has started; temperatures will rise this week and it will rain.  I took the opportunity of making a start on pruning the roses; still several of the big ones to do!

The snow prevented me from doing a New Year’s Day tally of plant varieties in flower in the garden.  Early the following week, when the snow had fallen off most of the plants and I could see what was and what wasn’t flowering, I managed a total of ten.  The usual winter shrubs, of course: winter honeysuckle, winter jasmine, Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ and two viburnums (which only count as one variety); the big hellebore in the front garden was starting to bloom (the others still in bud); and the toughies: one flower on the Centaurea montana, one Allium triquetrum, some alpine strawberries and meadow grass.  And the first snowdrops of the year, the Galanthus elwesii near the pond – the first real sign of spring in the garden!