The ducks kept low under blustery weather at the @WWTLondon Wetlands today. Still we enjoyed our walkabout. Incidental sulphur splashes of marsh marigold shivered and rippled, searing the margins of the windswept dark water and the gusts made the catkins dance and daub the grey sky with smears of chrome yellow happiness. We were once again reminded how beautiful our home birds are.
We made the most of the brief sun warming our backs. We mined the compost heap for the dark, sweet, crumbly stuff at the bottom. We spread it out on sheets of plastic, laid dampened newspaper to coax out any worms and centipedes (EEeek!)so that we could return them to the heap.
We left the compost for the better part of the day then rescued any creepy crawlies that had taken shelter under the newspaper before digging the compost into the raised beds.
The self-seeded foxgloves were lifted from the raised beds and transplanted to the shaded side of the garden.
We are going to make a concerted effort this year to transplant or pot on the bounty of volunteer plants we chance upon in the garden. We are also going to try our hand at propagating through division and cuttings, hey ho.
We moved the pea sticks and cucumber trellis on to the next bed for crop rotation. We cut out the dead raspberry canes at ground level and trimmed and tied in the new. We mulched the raspberries with a generous layer of compost.
Sunny side up. It's only at rare moments like this that the pudding reveals her sun-gilded and coppered tum.
Catnapzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Raised beds prepped, we sowed radish, beet, spinach and a row of carrots directly. We were chuffed to discover these beet and radish mixed seeds - perfect for our limited growing space which precludes us from indulging in too many varieties of any particular type of vegetable as we are then left with expensive surplus seed.
Solar batteries recharged, the kitteh resumed her role of supervisor.
We plan to dabble in more general gardening this year and are going to try and keep on top of seasonal jobs. We started to slowly rid the garden of a number of unwanted volunteers such as the invasive Norway Maple (Acer platanoides), blackberry bramble and buddleia.
Truth be told we have thought about growing our own buddleia, it is at the top of the Butterfly Conservation Org's list of plants beneficial to ♥les lepidopterans♥ but we are bordered by gardens where they grow rampant and unchecked by a seasonal chop and we feel under siege.
We thinned the patch snowdrops under the medlar tree and transplanted the thinnings further afield - our snowdrop carpet is now the grand size of a footmat, and threadbare at that.
This we discovered is a fiddly, gloves-off job. Put aside an hour. Take time to ease the bulbs out of the ground gently using a hand fork and to prise the clusters apart without ripping off too many roots.
The blanched leaves indicate how deep you need to rebury the bulbs. Don't firm the bulbs in by compacting the soil, you need to lightly trowel the earth over the bulbs and then water them in. Use a rose on your watering can or hose to ensure an even spray that will force out the air pockets and encourage the soil to settle around the roots of the bulbs.
We made sure we pinched off all the seed heads to ensure that the snowdrop bulbs would put all their energy into re-establishing their roots.
Having listened to inspirational What’cha Growin? Podcast Episode #4 Kelly Gilliam we sowed Zapotec Pink Pleated tomato seed. Gayla puts this tomato in her top five.
So the chilli seed we sowed before going on our trip did not thrive as we could not provide consistent heat and watering. So we decided to make a long-term investment in a heated propagator.
We chose a design where the lid fitted over the tray as we thought that this may be slightly more efficient in trapping and retaining heat than those systems where trays are placed on top of heated bases or blankets. Having said this the plastic lid is single-walled and very thin, we may adapt this in the future when we have a little more time to play.
Our initial attempt at salvaging the paper-potted chillies was disastrous as they were quickly overcome with fungus. We used plastic pots for our second attempt and hedged our success by topping our home mix of 1:1 garden compost and coir with a "sterile" layer of John Innes seed compost. We decided not to waste windowsill space on chillies that we could purchase readily on our grocery shop so sowed Fire Cracker and Peruvian Lemon Drop and an unnamed we got from a seed swap. Fingers crossed.
We are still using paper pots for our peas. The pots are easy enough to turn out while watching our shows on the tellybox and it's good to be able to sow the peas indoors of an evening and then plant them out as modules once they have germinated.
We sowed our 10x British Wonder from the Heritage Seed Library and then a further 20x Kelveden Wonder. We also sowed 10x old fashioned mix sweet peas whilst we were at it.
We picked up this generous pack of seeds from Waltham Forest's Cultivate Festival launch party last night. We spent a pleasant couple of hours nibbling on delicious locavorian canapés by Norman Loves and guffawed at Rob Auton's 'Heaven Food'.
Our swag included perpetual spinach, radish Jolly, beetroot Boltardy, tomato Garden Pearl, cucumber Marketmore, chard Bright Lights, climbing French bean Fasold. We'll definitely be adding these to the mix we're growing this year.
The festival runs from 20-29 March and the programme includes a variety of talks, walks and workshops. A big-up to Artillary and Organiclea.
We say get goin' growin'.
To celebrate World Wildlife Day we are posting this picture of a mischievous orangutan whose antics kept us entertained whilst we waited for the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre of the Malaysian Sabah District of North Borneo to open for the 25/02, 3pm feed. We hope you might be intrigued and encourage you to do something for world wildlife today (go on... adopt a baby orangutan, you know you want to).
We spent two days wandering around the UNESCO world heritage site George Town.
Once again we admired the very diverse and eclectic plant collections and assemblages unique to each of the town's keen gardeners.
We loved the fact that the gardens were both private and public allowing us to admire their plants - we have fallen for the disc-leaved Chinese money plant, Pilea peperomioides.
Pinang Peranakan Mansion - why don't they make pots like these anymore?
We ♥ the shelves, platforms and precious space allocated on the narrow clan jetties for the rows of specimen plants - and the ingenious use of recycled plastic tub formers used to build the concreted reinforced pillar supports.
A gorgeous homecoming greeting - we finally got to see our ♥ Christmas Hippeastrum ♥ in bloom.
Thanks to J for keeping her watered, staked and turned regularly :)
Mission accomplished! We found the orchid pots (and wire hangers) we'd been admiring on our travels available for purchase. Now just to figure out how we're going to lug them back to the UK in one piece.
A big thank you to B for pandering to the madness of a plant besotted tourist.
Sungai Buloh is 15 min drive outside of KL, soon to be made more accessable by the implementation of the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang Line. The garden plant nurseries are legacy of the former self-supporting Sungai Buloh leprosy asylum established in 1930 after the 1926 Leper Enactment Act decreed people suffering from leprosy be quarantined in leprosaria. The disease is contained and now that there is no longer any need for the centre the area is under threat of redevelopment.This is a very special gardener's paradise and a hub of horticultural expertise and commerce that should be supported and cherished by the residents of KL. Oh how lucky, lucky you are.
To drive to the nurseries follow Jalan Hospital and then after passing Sungai Buloh Hospital on your right turn left at the Sungai Chembong, over a small bridge, into Jalan Lembah.
