UP THE GARDEN PATH
Louise Tomlin takes a look at garden related topics. This time she’s been getting involved with lockdown gardening and doing her best to be resourceful…
It’s been a strange time over the last couple of months to say the least. I know I’m not alone in wondering where this is all heading and what the ‘new normal’ will look like for all of us.
By the time you are reading this we may have had a lessening of the restrictions that have meant that some of the things we all take for granted, like simply going out and buying things, will have eased a bit.
For me being stuck at home didn’t immediately present many difficulties, as I saw it as an opportunity to get stuck in to gardening. With the prospect of no long holidays I saw this as an opportunity to grow things that I wouldn’t usually, because I would actually be here to look after them. In recent years I’ve taken the approach that it’s enough for my friend to just keep my cats alive for a few weeks without burdening her with feeding and watering seedlings, and the extra hassle of high maintenance veg growing.
My plan was to start growing some useful plants that we can eat, not just pretty ones. What I’d usually do would be to make a list of what I needed and then take a trip out to the garden centre… hmmm not possible they are all closed. So try buying online then, well you know the answer to that, we are experiencing unprecedented demand, there may be delays…yada yada… Yes you’ve probably all been something like number 14,003 in an online queue, so I won’t go on.
Not to be deterred I started thinking about what I could do with what I had available. A rummage produced surprisingly good results, I’m not quite what I’d call a hoarder, but I do hate waste, so I found packets of seeds I’d salted away, probably out of date, hmmn yes definitely out of date, but I could give them ago.
Old planters and containers that had fallen out of favour now came in to their own. I’m so glad I didn’t chuck those out a couple of years ago. Bags of compost had been tucked away in the waterproof garden storage box. No seed trays for sowing in, but a search through the recycling that hadn’t been collected for a few weeks turned up trumps. I was particularly pleased with a new method I devised using a cardboard egg carton filled with compost and which neatly fitted into a plastic tray on the windowsill. I sowed a tomato seed in each cell of the egg carton, once they had germinated I cut the cardboard to produce a little plug that went directly into a bigger container, cardboard and all, which just breaks down in the soil and means you don’t risk damaging the seedlings.
These methods produced good results and took care of the edible crops. So far I have 4 different types of tomatos, runner and French beans, courgettes, spinach, chard, various lettuces and I have to admit defeat – I failed miserably on the cucumbers, I guess you can’t win them all.
However I still wanted some pretty plants. So I looked at what I had already got and realising some geraniums had survived over wintering in my window box, I took cuttings. It’s a great way of getting plants for free. I did this as well with other plants that were just beginning to make their new spring growth like, dianthus lavender and salvias. I noticed some sunflower seedlings had appeared underneath my birdtable, so I dug them up and potted them up too.
Keen to avoid making all these efforts just to have young plants gobbled up by slugs and snails before they had a chance to mature, I cut large plastic water bottles in half and covered the plants in mini greenhouses or cloches. This was a double whammy as it also protected them from cold nights and stopped them drying out in the sun.
They say necessity is the mother of invention and I think these trying times have taught me to be inventive and resourceful. I truly hope the scientists that are working on a vaccine for COVID-19 have masses of success with their inventiveness. I wish you well in the coming months, take care and keep safe everyone.
