In my salad days

Today:

• Do I have too many hobbies, or just too many books?

• How I prepare my pots for a new season

• New plants I couldn’t resist

• My favourite salvias

• What I’m sowing in October

Hobbies

I haven’t been able to write during the last three weeks or so, nor have I been able to do much else. But suddenly my mind feels clearer again, my arms and hands feel strong enough, and I’ve tried a few paragraphs. Strenuous, but I could do it.

I’d been writing almost daily up until that point. I’ve really missed compiling sentences and searching for words. I've always liked language. I recently got a box with my childhood diaries from my parents (because they’re fed up with storing all of me and my sister’s stuff) which contains some of my many novels, which often count a grand total of two pages after which I’d given up. I was also confronted with the fact that my writing style wasn’t that different when I was ten (there was a lot of bracketing of sarcastic remarks).

I’ve now bought several books on how to write (‘Elements Of Style,’ ‘On Writing Well’ and ‘The Art of Fiction’), even though I’m having a lot of trouble reading at the moment, or as my boyfriend would say ‘you pick up another hobby, buy too many supplies, and then let it all rot.’ I beg to differ: my painting (although I’ve had to resort to iPad painting à la David Hockney for limited mobility reasons, so my supplies are stacked away in a sad cupboard), gardening (a.k.a. the love of my life), photography (evidence in this post) and baking hobbies are still very much alive and I practice them whenever I’m able. So I trust my gut that this is another Big One. I will just read them very slowly (like all the other books on my long, long list).

Autumn plans

There’s a lot to do in the garden. Salad leaves need to be harvested. Bok choy and Italian cabbage are starting to look like real plants and need to be potted on soon.

Autumn is a great time to move plants around, but it’s best not to wait until it’s freezing. Let’s hope I’ll make it. I’m moving all my blue coloured plants to the ‘middle part’ of the garden: the agapanthus, echinops ritro ‘Veitch’s Blue’ and veronica longifolia. I’m very proud of the veronica, a native flower I sowed last year which is flowering in electric blue. So on my 9 m2, I have a ‘left side,’ a ‘right side’ and soon there will also be a ‘middle part.’ These sides and parts will all have their own colour schemes, and these colour schemes will match (I hope).

I will then have space to plant spring bulbs. I don’t want to buy a whole new collection of bulbs every year. I’ve kept all of my bulbs from last year. I’m adding bulbs where they aren’t any yet so the display is spread out over all the pots (I laid out my plan in this post). New will be a late flowering, bright pink tulip ‘Tineke van der Meer,’ a very early muscari (possibly February!) and ten drumstick alliums. My balcony will look like a tiny passageway lined with flowers and wispy green leaves.

I’ll dig out the top layer of soil (well, my partner will) and cover everything with a layer of Bokashi and bought (vermi)compost to feed the tulips and perennials. I’d planned to do all this last spring, but by then the bulbs were already up and there was no space left to dig out any compost. So don’t wait too long to refresh your pots, especially the small bulbs are already growing! Because I’m leaving the bulk of spent compost in the big containers, I’ll also add some slow release pellets of natural origin.

I couldn’t resist the nursery’s autumn selection

Part of what I know about perennials comes from countless nights of reading descriptions of the roughly 800 plants in my favourite organic nursery’s webshop Bastin.1 I once bought a pelargonium fragrans purely because the grower said it was his first love and that he didn’t want to say much more about it, and ended with the words ‘Wild romance.’ Who could resist?!2

I frequently visit their website, and problematically, they add new plants all the time, so I have to scroll through everything to discover what's new. It’s a game. I love sowing my own, but I buy some plants too every now and then because some perennials are hard to find or sow, or take a long time to grow.

I was planning to order in spring but suddenly there were just too many gems in there and my plant greed got the better of me. I’d like to think I’m immune to trends but clearly not, because I too am stepping onto the verbascum train. Two verbascum ‘Clementine’ are getting a spot next to the purple loosestrife (lythrum salicaria, it’s native and a wonderful pollinator plant here, do not worry). A warm and possibly peachy yellow with cool pink. It could be good, if it all fits.

The other plant that was begging to be bought was wallflower ‘Constant Cheer.’ What a fitting name. It has up to four different colours, hopefully marrying everything together in my pink-orange-purple-and-perhaps-peach colour scheme. Then there’s digitalis Goldcrest ‘Waldigone,' a small foxglove which looks magical with its warm yellow flowers with pink icing on top and rusty speckles inside. Apparently the breeder called it his ‘little rust pipe’ but I’m glad they went with a different name (I doubt that would’ve been available).

Obviously I couldn’t not order salvia’s, because nursery Bastin has over 80 (!) varieties. I love them and they’re ideal for pots in the sun. I’ve got a couple already: my absolute favourite is the dark, atmospheric ‘Nachtvlinder,’ which is always the culprit when people ask me what smells so nice in the garden. Also ‘Love & Wishes,’ ‘Amante,’ (in full flower now and WOW! what a depth of colour, but it needs a gigantic pot) ‘Pink Amistad’ and ‘Cerro Potosi’ (hot pink and marvelous). And some salvia nemorosa self-seeders that pop up every now and then.

So you can see I’m a bit addicted. And now I’ve got a new, small pink one with dark red flower bracts called ‘Flamingo Lake’ and the classic (you’ll have guessed it because it’s everywhere) salvia ‘Caradonna.’ I have looked for less obvious dark salvias. I’ve considered ‘Schwellenburg’ as a more original alternative, with more of a dark plum colour and fluffy flowers that fan out. Or salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’ with yet another shape and more purple than the others. But they’re not as dark and I wanted something deep and contrasting to go with the pink lythrum salicaria and warm yellow verbascum ‘Clementine.’

In the end, it was once again the webshop that convinced me: ‘Salvia ‘Caradonna.’ The most beautiful salvia nemorosa ever. Mainly because of the contrasting dark, almost black stems with dark purple-blue flowers. Perfectly hardy. (…) I would never pass this one up. But it’s your choice.’3 Perhaps it’s a bit passive aggressive, but oh god, how could I not?

What I’m sowing in October

Flowers:

• Jewels of Opar: after the success of panicum ‘Frosted Explosion’ this year (wafty sparkly things!) I want more fizzy flowers next year. This one produces heaps of tiny pink flowers followed by red miniature beads.

• Wall germander: a rare native tiny shrub with small, pink flowers that smell like honey. Good for dry pots in the sun, probably evergreen here. It’ll go into my hanging planters, where I plant mostly native flowers, and which are in desperate need of pink.

• I found out that I can already start with Californian poppies! I want loads of them next year because they’re really pretty and quite drought tolerant. Direct sow if you can because they don’t love moving (quite a few of mine died this way).

Vegetables:

• As an experiment I’m thinking of sowing sugarsnap ‘Dwarf Sweet Green’ to grow in the cold mini greenhouse, because the last winters haven’t been so cold. This could mean a super early harvest.

• I might do another round of winter salads, such as Marvel of Four Seasons, which does quite well in the cold.

Next time…

…I hope to present to you a blog about colour, in paintings and in the garden. I’ve been working on it for a while and I love the subject so much that I’ve now got a couple of books about it… Luckily with lots of pictures.