Spent the best part of the afternoon in the garden. I had a headache before I went outside, and a headache within half an hour of coming inside, but I felt great while I was gardening (hope this doesn't mean our boiler's on the blink and I'm going to drop dead of carbon monoxide poisoning...).
I turned the compost heap for the first time ever. Hubster almost always does it, but I needed to see if I had some good compost to use for potting (I did) and it needed to be turned and mixed up.
Now, the compost bin is one of those lovely green Hounslow Council jobs. And what I didn't realise was that when you lift up the bin, the compost expands to at least three times the volume that it occupied in the bin. My neighbours were horrified at the scenes of carnage, but unbelievably it all went back in with no problems.
There was some absolutely gorgeous compost in there, and I was able to get enough to upgrade the size of Matildus' pot (one of the scariest garden things I've ever done, to repot the Wollemi pine) and put the Metasequoia into Matildus' old pot, which is quite a bit bigger than the one it was in before.
This is apparently the best time of year to repot a Wollemia, at the end of its summer growth but with enough time for the roots to establish themselves before the first frosts. Matildus has a beautiful set of roots if I do say so myself. I hope they are very happy in their new home.
It was also an opportunity to get a few photos of earlier improvements. Bastard II looks very happy in his big outdoor pot:
And indoors check out my awesome electric propagator, which may or may not successfully germinate the cycad seeds:
My upstairs neighbour walked past as I was potting up a couple more swaps from last week, and said if I carried on I'd end up with Kew Gardens outside, and I'd have to charge everyone entry.
And then as I was tidying up all my kit, one of the guys who works for my next-door neighbour came out onto his staircase and commented that it was a "nice little jungle" I had going there. Despite the fact that somewhere in west central Scotland there's a former geography teacher of Hubster screaming at the use of the word "jungle", I have to agree. It is quite the jungle...
I turned the compost heap for the first time ever. Hubster almost always does it, but I needed to see if I had some good compost to use for potting (I did) and it needed to be turned and mixed up.
Now, the compost bin is one of those lovely green Hounslow Council jobs. And what I didn't realise was that when you lift up the bin, the compost expands to at least three times the volume that it occupied in the bin. My neighbours were horrified at the scenes of carnage, but unbelievably it all went back in with no problems.
There was some absolutely gorgeous compost in there, and I was able to get enough to upgrade the size of Matildus' pot (one of the scariest garden things I've ever done, to repot the Wollemi pine) and put the Metasequoia into Matildus' old pot, which is quite a bit bigger than the one it was in before.
This is apparently the best time of year to repot a Wollemia, at the end of its summer growth but with enough time for the roots to establish themselves before the first frosts. Matildus has a beautiful set of roots if I do say so myself. I hope they are very happy in their new home.
It was also an opportunity to get a few photos of earlier improvements. Bastard II looks very happy in his big outdoor pot:
And indoors check out my awesome electric propagator, which may or may not successfully germinate the cycad seeds:
My upstairs neighbour walked past as I was potting up a couple more swaps from last week, and said if I carried on I'd end up with Kew Gardens outside, and I'd have to charge everyone entry.
And then as I was tidying up all my kit, one of the guys who works for my next-door neighbour came out onto his staircase and commented that it was a "nice little jungle" I had going there. Despite the fact that somewhere in west central Scotland there's a former geography teacher of Hubster screaming at the use of the word "jungle", I have to agree. It is quite the jungle...
0 comments:
Post a Comment