Changeover

After the first frost it was time to bring in the dahlias from the pots and replace them with tulip bulbs for next spring.

A window of dry weather – a couple of days – between the rain and another brief spell of frosty nights allowed me to get outside and do just that.  The dahlias – now that the temperatures have risen and thawed out the compost so that I could lift them – had to be taken into the greenhouse with quite a lot of wet compost round their tubers; it’s easier to clean them when they’re dried off, but it means some fairly large bundles sitting on the floor in the meantime.  With temperatures of down to minus 3C forecast, I protected them with some old compost sacks on top; it dropped to just below zero in the greenhouse, and I hope the sacks will have made a little difference.

Most of the remaining compost was then removed from the pots, replaced with fresh and the tulips planted.  I haven’t bought quite so many bulbs this year, so only the two biggest pots and one smaller one have been planted up, leaving the others for whatever planting I can sort out next year.  For my own records – because I will have forgotten by the time they flower – the big pot on the patio contains pale pink ‘Foxtrot’, mid-pink ‘Margarita’ and purple ‘Ronaldo’, and the pot by the summerhouse is a mix of ‘Queen of Night’, ‘Cairo’, ‘Time Out’, ‘Ridgedale’ and ‘Negrita Parrot’ (Sarah Raven’s Ginger Snap Mix).  And there’s a smaller pot containing just my favourite ‘Doll’s Minuet’.  I hope that the ‘pink pot’ isn’t too pink; on reflection it might be rather bland, but we’ll see.

Felicia in the 'Doll's Minuet' pot

Last year I topped the tulip pots with some self-sown forget-me-nots from the veg patch, and (although I had a few reservations about how they worked with the shorter tulips) I’ve replicated that again this time.  If nothing else it discourages the birds from pecking at the compost and throwing it out of the pots.  I also used some pink-flowered felicia in the Ginger Snap pot and with ‘Doll’s Minuet’.  I got this plant (I think it’s Felicia fascicularis) from the village plant sale and was assured that it was hardy; I used it in the window-box, where it didn’t flower but provided some useful foliage.  When I came to clear the window-box and replant it for winter, I found that the trailing stems had rooted in the compost, so that I now have several plants of it.  Hmm, maybe that’s too much of a good thing.  Some of it was also in the big pot at the bottom of the garden, and it had also multiplied itself quite successfully.  We’ll see how it gets on with the tulips; if it turns out to be too enthusiastic a plant, I shall harden my heart and compost it!

The night after I planted up the tulip pots we had a hard frost; the felicia didn’t seem bothered.

Frosted forget-me-nots

The green woodpecker has been visiting quite regularly, digging into one of the ants’ nests in the lawn.  He has made a good-sized hole in the grass (it’s in the cowslip patch so that doesn’t matter too much) and spends long periods of time stabbing away, and presumably hoovering up lunch.