Spring is here and my growing instincts are surfacing like the sap up the apple tree. There are 4 tomato plants and 2 cucumbers growing in pots on the kitchen window sill and I've planted carrot seeds and seed potatoes in containers in the garden. The potatoes are in a rubble sack, to be honest, and another lot will be planted the same way next month.
The carrots are in a large plastic box that, some years ago, the Council supplied to us to collect newspapers. That recycling scheme eventually died (we now have others) but they never collected the boxes to recycle them. No wonder my Council Tax is so high. There's also perpetual spinach seeds planted in the side garden, opposite the kitchen door. I love spinach.
I'm planning cabbages in between some of the shrubs in the borders and the lettuce seedlings, that are in the grow-house, will be divided up between 3 large old planters, the sort that look like grecian urns - we all had them 20 years ago. These planters have been at the back of the garage for yonks and I nearly threw them away last year but I'm glad, now, that I didn't. I'm on the lookout for pumpkin seeds too. I'm going to try Atlantic Giant this year and I'm still going for the biggy. Pumpkins are great fun to grow and quite attractive when they're in flower.
I've also got one of my "growing projects" on. I try to grow anything and everything from seeds, with some spectacular results and, in one or two cases, some startling ones. I've got 2 little oak trees in the garden that I grew from acorns and I've bonsaid them along with a little beech tree that I grew from a nut. They sit in their little bonsai dishes on the patio and they're beginning to look like mature trees - only tiny.
Anyway, last Autumn, Laura came home from a walk one day with a big bagful of conkers. She didn't play with them - what children do these days? I used to have dozens pickling in vinegar and drying in the oven prior to stringing, when I was her age, but today's kids can't be bothered and anyway H & S would slap an injunction on the parents if they did, in case somebody's eye got knocked out. Why didn't my generation knock anyone's eye out with conkers? So we had these conkers tied up in a plastic bag, all Winter, at the bottom of the little grow house. When I went out to prepare the grow-house for this year's seedlings - there they were - and most of them had sprouted.
First of all we had a walk over the fields opposite our house and chucked a load of sprouting conkers into the hedgerow. I'd done the same with unwanted bluebell bulbs from my garden about 10 years ago. There was a little copse then, self sown, of beech trees and I spread the bulbs, hundreds of them, under the trees and they were starting to get established. Then the farmer had an altercation with the Council over drainage ditches and, in a fit of pique, bulldozed the copse and fenced off the field. His fence has since fallen down and dog-walkers and nature lovers are, once again, wandering over the grass. Sadly the bluebells haven't yet made a reappearance but, hopefully, one day we might have the odd horse chestnut tree competing with the oaks, beech, hawthorn and brambles.
The way a conker germinates is fascinating. The "sprouts" were just a white worm-like tail, like a bean-sprout. I put one conker in a pot of compost and another in a jar of water and put them on the kitchen window sill. Within a few days the sprouts were producing roots so I pushed the one in compost down so the roots were covered. Next, a split appeared in the sprout and another greenish coloured sprout emerged. This pushed up to the light and was, obviously, the business end and it soon had a tiny closed up fist of green leaves. The one in the water did exactly the same but a bit slower.
I had a couple of empty bonsai dishes so I planted the compost conker in one and it now has a crown of leaves. They are true horse chestnut leaves but in a group at the top of the stem so it looks like a miniature palm tree. The water one is still surviving and I will put that in a bonsai dish soon. Hopefully they will both be able to join the other mini trees later this year, while we enjoy our home-grown, organic vegetables.
The carrots are in a large plastic box that, some years ago, the Council supplied to us to collect newspapers. That recycling scheme eventually died (we now have others) but they never collected the boxes to recycle them. No wonder my Council Tax is so high. There's also perpetual spinach seeds planted in the side garden, opposite the kitchen door. I love spinach.
I'm planning cabbages in between some of the shrubs in the borders and the lettuce seedlings, that are in the grow-house, will be divided up between 3 large old planters, the sort that look like grecian urns - we all had them 20 years ago. These planters have been at the back of the garage for yonks and I nearly threw them away last year but I'm glad, now, that I didn't. I'm on the lookout for pumpkin seeds too. I'm going to try Atlantic Giant this year and I'm still going for the biggy. Pumpkins are great fun to grow and quite attractive when they're in flower.
I've also got one of my "growing projects" on. I try to grow anything and everything from seeds, with some spectacular results and, in one or two cases, some startling ones. I've got 2 little oak trees in the garden that I grew from acorns and I've bonsaid them along with a little beech tree that I grew from a nut. They sit in their little bonsai dishes on the patio and they're beginning to look like mature trees - only tiny.
Anyway, last Autumn, Laura came home from a walk one day with a big bagful of conkers. She didn't play with them - what children do these days? I used to have dozens pickling in vinegar and drying in the oven prior to stringing, when I was her age, but today's kids can't be bothered and anyway H & S would slap an injunction on the parents if they did, in case somebody's eye got knocked out. Why didn't my generation knock anyone's eye out with conkers? So we had these conkers tied up in a plastic bag, all Winter, at the bottom of the little grow house. When I went out to prepare the grow-house for this year's seedlings - there they were - and most of them had sprouted.
First of all we had a walk over the fields opposite our house and chucked a load of sprouting conkers into the hedgerow. I'd done the same with unwanted bluebell bulbs from my garden about 10 years ago. There was a little copse then, self sown, of beech trees and I spread the bulbs, hundreds of them, under the trees and they were starting to get established. Then the farmer had an altercation with the Council over drainage ditches and, in a fit of pique, bulldozed the copse and fenced off the field. His fence has since fallen down and dog-walkers and nature lovers are, once again, wandering over the grass. Sadly the bluebells haven't yet made a reappearance but, hopefully, one day we might have the odd horse chestnut tree competing with the oaks, beech, hawthorn and brambles.
The way a conker germinates is fascinating. The "sprouts" were just a white worm-like tail, like a bean-sprout. I put one conker in a pot of compost and another in a jar of water and put them on the kitchen window sill. Within a few days the sprouts were producing roots so I pushed the one in compost down so the roots were covered. Next, a split appeared in the sprout and another greenish coloured sprout emerged. This pushed up to the light and was, obviously, the business end and it soon had a tiny closed up fist of green leaves. The one in the water did exactly the same but a bit slower.
I had a couple of empty bonsai dishes so I planted the compost conker in one and it now has a crown of leaves. They are true horse chestnut leaves but in a group at the top of the stem so it looks like a miniature palm tree. The water one is still surviving and I will put that in a bonsai dish soon. Hopefully they will both be able to join the other mini trees later this year, while we enjoy our home-grown, organic vegetables.