A New View

I did a big old garden clear-up yesterday and ripped out the sweetpeas

They had had their moment

...and served their purpose, which was to act as a temporary hedge until October when I planned to plant a proper one....the idea was to have the bottom of the garden all secret... I was about to put in my order for several yew plants... but now I'm not so sure... ...all of a sudden the view is clear, and I'm loving it

Of course, this could have something to do with the sweetpeas which had gone all crispy and mildew-ey...i still got a bunch of flowers every day, but I wasn't looking after them like I should. Picking my last posy wasn't at all sad...I've had enough (there, I've said it).

So, should I keep going with this hedge idea? It would obscure the main part of the garden from view initially...but the surprise element would be gorgeous. What think you?

Love you so much....

Note to self....

Have more of these next year...

(pssst! - it's no accident that they're all late summer bloomers)

Diascia - Its gone on and on and on (with a haircut half-way through).  I bought this as bedding in those polystyrene cells and it's been one of my favourite things this year, blooming in a huge urn.  Next year I'm going to need five times more of this to keep me happy.  I could take softwood cuttings now but bought plants end up being such great value I'm not bothering.

Erysimum - Still going strong after all this time...I love it so much I might go to the trouble of sowing some seeds ...you never know.

Crocosmia - fiery finery...need more of this.  I have only one plant (silly, silly me) and will have to wait a couple more years before I can divide it, so it's off to the garden centre with me.

Gaura - do you pronounce it with an 'Ow' or the same way as you'd say 'Laura'..not sure, but I AM sure that I need more.  Will be dividing my two plants and taking cuttings next spring.

Anemone - I realise I completely forgot to dig up my 'Honorine Joberts' when I left my old back yard...I only have this pink one and I'm still hooked on the white...must buy one plant to divide.

Gladiolus callianthus - I was late buying bulbs and there was only one packet left, so I only have one pot this year and I'm used to having at least five...back to normality next year

Chutney stuff and nonsense

I've been having a chutney-making fest - it's my first time (don't know what took me so long) - and I realise that all this time I've had this weird prejudice, putting home-made chutney together in my head with people like this this -very odd really, because I've always devoured it...

There's a generosity about making chutney that I love.  The whole point of preserving is anything is to avoid wasting anything...it usually comes from having a glut of something - You don't make something like this in small quantities, so there's always a bounty of it.  It begs to be shared and given away.

I had a big pile of un-ripe tomatoes and more jalapeno chillis than even I could handle.  The chillis were bothering me badly and I briefly flirted with this idea of salsa and stuffed peppers, but In the end I got predictably lazy and decided to combine the tomatoes and the chillis so I went browsing to find out chutney secrets.  I found this wonderful recipe on the sumptuous and stylish website that is Fennel and Fern and adapted it to include my piles of jalapenos.

It couldn't be easier:

Jalapeno and green tomato chutney

Green tomatoes (6 or 7 big ones or lots of small ones), roughly chopped

Jalapenos or mild-ish chillis (I used about 12 big ones), roughly chopped

4 red onions, sliced

4 apples, cubed

450g muscovado sugar, (I didn't have enough so I used half muscovado and half demerara)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

sultanas - a couple of handfuls

400ml cheap malt vinegar

2 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar

A knob of butter

Method

Heat the butter over a medium heat and add the sugar and sliced onions.  Cook them until they're golden and soft.  Now add everything else except the vinegar and cook it for a few minutes, just to soften, stirring occasionally.  Add the malt vinegar and simmer for half an hour.  Then add the balsamic and cook some more until the mixture is soft and thick and gloopy.  Taste and adjust, leave to cool and then put your chutney into sterilised jars.

And on the subject of jars

I bought these glass lever-arm preserving jars (rather expensively) because I fell in love with them.  Problem is I want to give away the chutney but keep the jars - such a quandry darling, but as always, there is someone out there who has blogged about it, so here, if you are agonising about such things (which I'm certain you ARE) is canning queen Marisa's take on preserving jar ettiquete...i do so love the world wide web don't you?

Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you....it's DELICIOUS!

A september offering

Sorry there was no August pot....I was too busy doing nothing.  To compensate, here's two for the price of one:

It's all rather bulbous - but if you like gardening, then that's what autumn's all about.

This pot doesn't look like a huge amount of anything on top - in fact, what you see above is just an afterthought really.  I had a pelargonium left over from loads of cuttings I took last year and thought I'd give it a chance to shine.  What's really going on here is the bulbs...and for them, you'll have to wait.  I utterly promise you, it'll be worth it.  In addition to the scented leaved pelargonium, you're going to get a crop of delicious Mizuna leaves, then a March-April flowering of little daffodils, followed by an April-May flowering of delicate yellow and white dutch iris.

For this pot you will need:

A pack of dwarf daffodils (I used Narcissi 'Minnow')

A pack of Dwarf irises (my pack says 'Dutch Iris...no idea about them but they were on special offer)

A packet of Mizuna seeds (or any other oriental salad leaves that like to be sown in the late summer)

A small scented leaved pelargonium (You can find these languishing in dark corners of good garden centres at this time of year).  This is really just to give you something to look at for now - if you can't find pelargoniums, then just substitute with a smattering of pansies, or anything else that looks good right now.  Don't plant too densely though...you want to leave space for those bulbs to push through.

A large-ish pot - mine is 50 cm across at the top.

Multi-purpose compost

Method:

Fill the pot with compost until there's 10cm left to the top of the pot.  Now put in your daffodil bulbs - quite close together but not touching.

Now cover the bulbs with another 5 cm of compost, shove in your chosen 'see me now' plant, and surround it with your iris bulbs.

Fill in all the rest of the space and water well but gently, with the fine rose of a watering can, until you're sure the water's coming out of the bottom of the pot.

Now sow your mizuna seed - thinly and carefully around your pelargonium, covering the seeds with a smattering of compost and patting down comfortingly, to make sure the seeds are in contact with the compost.

Keep it watered, and protected from naughty squirrels and this pot will give you delicious winter leaves, as well as joy well into summertime next year.

P.S. There are so many other bulbs out there - here's another pot I've done with dwarf tulips and muscari (and mizuna too)...take a look at your garden centre, note the flowering time and double, or triple up accordingly xx

Things to do in September

....should you be so inclined:

1. If you have a lawn, then scarify it. This is like brushing you hair when you've been a bit slutty and it's got all matted (i.e. it's a bit painful but thoroughly satisfying). When you've done that, you can aerate it, either by inviting all your friends round for a party in their stilettos (fun) or a garden fork (not such fun).

2. If you have new lavender (see below) and want it to be bodacious then cut it back really quite hard by the end of this month. This way it will sprout from near the base rather than getting all woody and ugly.

3. Tidy up you lazy thing! - it's september and that means out with anything that looks tatty, and in with your bulbs (well, all your bulbs except for tulips, which should wait till November for planting)

Lemon Verbena Ice-Cream

A bowlful of summer...

I've been growing lemon verbena in pots from my very first year of gardening.  I love it, mostly just to brush past, having as it does the most lemony of lemon scents that exist in all the whole wide world.

It's wonderfully obliging as a plant - you just put it in a pot and leave it alone.  Cut it down when the leaves turn brown and keep it frost-free and it will come back again in the spring.  I grow pots of it along with scented leaved pelargoniums and bring the whole thing indoors over the winter so I always have something to look at.  You can find out lots more in my book, where I extol its virtues as a herbal infusion...but now it's September and I'm aware that change is in the air.  There's a new, brisk freshness on the breeze, and the mornings are darker.  Consequently...

I have the urge to preserve.

Ice-cream isn't exactly cozy, but put this with a hot fruit crumble and you've got the definition of comforting cut through with that amazing flavour of last summer.

I don't bother with ice-cream makers, or eggs, or churning, or anything like that.  Instead I adapt the recipe for lemon ice-cream from the fabulous Nigella Lawson's 'How to Eat' and keep the ice-cream in small-ish quantities (the sort of quantities that will never make it back into the freezer).  I also make sure I soften it inside the fridge rather than outside of it, as lack of churning etc makes it less obliging in terms of keeping its texture during harsh changes in temperature....In other words, if you want it silky-soft (which you DO) then defrost in the fridge for a good hour.

Lemon Verbena Ice-Cream

You need:

1 loosely packed cup of lemon verbena leaves (or more if you want it extra-lemon verbena-esque)

The juice of one lemon

170g icing sugar

420ml double cream (yup, you read that right)

Method:

Put the leaves, lemon juice and sugar in a food processor and wizz up until they are chopped very finely.  Leave this mixture alone for half an hour or so for the flavours to deepen.

Now whip the cream with 3 tablespoons of icy water until you get sumptuous soft peaks.  Add in the lemon verbena mixture and whisk it in.

Then just turn the whole lot into a suitable piece of tupperware.  I find that these, 1.1l boxes, very satisfyingly, are the perfect size (with enough left over in the bowl, of course, for lickage) - and just bung it in the freezer.  That is literally it.  I have scattered some lemon verbena leaves, and pelargonium petals on top to make it gorgeous-er.

Babies update

The dream?

The dream is to have THIS all over my house....for precisely ZERO quid.

Back in the beginning of June I did a post on taking leaf cuttings from my most favourite star-like white and blue streptocarpus plant.   You can find the whole post here, but here's a quick recap:

Now, a few months later.....,

and the babies are forming well, and I could have left them happily growing there for a bit longer but today I peered at the soil and saw several fungus gnat larvae squiggling about.  They're basically harmless, but in numbers, they eat fine roots.  They are there because I overwatered the cuttings before I went on holiday.  Fungus gnat larvae can't get a foothold if you let the compost dry out completely between waterings.

I don't dig wiggly things inside my house, so it's time to pot up the babies.

To do this I use a two-thirds/one third mixture of seed compost and vermiculite or pearlite.  I then tease the cutting very gently apart.  It feels a bit brutal, because you have to tug a bit, and it feels like you've broken the leaf, but don't worry, as long as the little baby comes away with some roots, then it'll be okay.

The most important bit is to keep everything scrupulously clean, fill some small pots with the compost mixture and then carefully bury the roots in it, so that the little baby is put to bed at EXACTLY the same level that it was when it was attached to it's mummy.  This will seem really shallow, but as long as you firmly and gently bury the roots, making sure there are no air pockets around them, the new leaf will stand up on its own.

Put all your babies in a tray of water and wait until you can see that the compost in your pots has turned dark with moisture.  I don't water from the top - the babes are too delicate.  If I had a greenhouse these would go straight in there....but I don't so they go inside my kitchen window.

A notebook on a wall...

Hello from Label Land!

I've been thinking about what to do with my pile of plastic plant labels....

I've been thinking about it for far too long...they've just been sitting and sitting and sitting, waiting in that limbo between a good idea and the dustbin.

Sometimes, just sometimes the planets align and the something gets done.  In this case, the Babety slept longer than usual, I had found a particularly lovely builders merchant who could cut bits of plywood to size for me, and I had run out of Curb Your Enthusiasms to watch....So I got off my bottom and collected a hammer and some pins

Attached some plywood to the side of my shed:

...and started banging in labels.

It's a can of worms, you understand, because the ply is forgiving in some places, and hard as nails in others.  I ended up using drawing pins but it's still a nightmare.  Of course, I should start again, using pin-board and finish the thing in half an hour, but I'm desperate to have it outside, and pin-board would rot most horridly...so I shall carry on.

What do you do with your plant labels?

Do you make umbrellas out of them?

Or perhaps jewellery?

Or are you a non-hectic, well balanced person who throws them in the bin?

x

This is just to say...

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast.

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

William Carlos Williams

We have an embarrassment of plums.

They are juicy and sweet...

and after eating far too many, I immediately wanted more, but baked, and with custard...Here's a clafoutis, together with instructions if you fancy it.

Scald some 150ml milk and 150ml whipping cream with a vanilla pod and leave to infuse.

Whisk up four eggs with five tbsp of sugar until paleNow add the infused creamy milk as you whisk

...straining out the vanilla pod

Preheat the oven to 150 and butter an oven-proof dish very generously, sprinkling it with sugar too

Tumble in your plums (I don't bother to take the stones out...too lazy) - and pour over your frothy custard

Put it in the oven for about half an hour (or until it's stopped being wobbly (you want the custard to set)...and you'll get this gorgeousness:

I think this would be good with some ground almonds added to the custard too.

In terms of growing plums - I'm reading up on it now - my tree is VAST, and I quite fancy experimenting with getting a different variety (I don't know what my plum is) and fan-training it against a wall to see if you can grow them in a much smaller space...more of this soon.

Stuff to do in July...

...should you be so inclined (which, frankly, I am NOT) Look, it's summer time capisce? ...and that means: a. SUNBATHING b. PICNICS c. DAYDREAMING WHILST BEES BUZZ

The very most you should be doing is the lovely job of picking yourself a posy every day (and see above)... But if you've got itchy feet, or if the day is dull and you're feeling energetic, here are some July-ish jobs to be getting on with:

1. Mow the lawn, but only if your sward is your pride and joy 2. Sow some biennials to avoid haemorrhaging money on them next year 3. Pull the odd weed (pesky, aren't they?) 4. Water at dusk, when the nicotiana and other evening scented stuff is doing its thing. It's a good idea to have someone nearby who will kiss you (romantically and at regular intervals) during this process.

Look, I'm not sure who stole June....

...but can someone please give it back? I've learned such a lot this month...the most important thing being that it's the unexpected stuff that charms you the most, like the dandelions...

...and the poppies that turned out bright red instead of plum, and next door's doves basking...

I've done absolutely nothing in the garden this month except for pull a few weeds and watch all my un-staked perennials fall over majestically. I have stopped mowing the lawn because I love my dandelions too much to see them go, and I am idly watching the bindweed wend its merry way up anything vertical, turning the other cheek as day after glorious day it continues to be 'far too hot to garden'.

I have done a bit of bulb-shopping, (smugly clicking 'proceed to checkout' as I'm thinking ahead for once) - but that's not gardening is it...that's shopping. I've also been picking posies every day, and flowers for my salad in the same way that I've been grazing on fresh peas (my first!) and raspberries and strawberries, so I'm not going to call that gardening either.

I would like to tell you that the Babety is walking, but she seems to be taking it as easy as me. Here are my first new potatoes with a few chubby digits

Apart from setting aside a couple of hours to get on top of my dastardly (but rather beautiful) bindweed, I seriously plan on continuing this odyssey of laziness. I did work hard to get here, but that feels like a long time ago. Summer is for listening to the bees and breathing heady scent and walking out into the warm air at dusk...that's it.

Rosy Corner

Pure self-indulgence...my favourite roses right now:

I wasn't going to buy this because the name is so unromantic (yes, I'm a sucker for lovely names...and see below)...but the lady who sold it to me was right - this is an unbelievably brilliant rose.  It has more blooms on it than all the others and the most wonderful scent.  A gorgeous creamy white on a compact shrub.

Here is Darcey Bussell.  If you follow me on Twitter you'll know that I've been raving about the fact that Darcey never has any aphids on her.  She's gorgeous, a typical David Austin rose with that lovely shallow 'champagne cup' bowl-shape and the most fabulous velvety deep red with yummy scent to boot.  I only have one of these...wish I had more.

Here is the delectable Mme Pierre Oger. She is a sport of Rosa Reine Victoria (a Bourbon rose), and actually more beautiful if that were possible. She has papery thin, almost translucent petals of pink, tipped with crimson. She flowers in clusters and repeats until late autumn. She is delicate in the extreme though, very prone to mildew and blackspot, - a bit like one of those unfortunate consumptive beauties in operas... so not one I am prepared to take on. This plant belongs to my mother and I have always loved and revered it since I was a child

This oh-so-gorgeous thing has an amazingly strong, sweet scent and repeats as if there were no tomorrow. I love the noisette flower form, like a very sexy person's un-made bed... and the pink within the folds....beautiful.

If this rose weren't so beautiful, the first thing you'd be asking would be 'where is Blairii No.1?' - instead, this is the second thing you ask, after 'Where can I get one'. I want this rose and I want it badly, so it's on my list for this autumn. Mr Blair was an amateur breeder who lived in 'the London suburbs' (whatever that means). He did raise a number 1, and a number 3. Apparently though, number 3 is lost and number 1, though reputedly better than Number 2, is very rare. Someone should go on a mission to find it I think. Anyway it's gorgeous isn't it, with it's slightly grey, moody tinge.

La Malmaison was the Empress Josephine's country house. Lovely, heady, fruity scent - sublime. This plant is in my mother's garden, and it has never ever opened properly. We love it anyway because the 'buds' are so beautiful, but I think actually it may have some sort of disease, especially when I look at the picture with the green stem-like bits in the centre of the bud...any ideas anyone?

I'm captivated with this lovely thing...every petal is different and the scent is out of this world.

I love the way this rose starts off looking like a Hybrid Tea and then opens up to look like a floribunda with these beautiful stamens in the middle. I've got two of these, and apparently they grow over two metres high...don't care in the least. The scent, by the way, is exquisitely sweet.

Look how yummy! - this is Eglantyne - a David Austin cracker of a rose that has just started coming out. I'm in love...seriously. Amazing scent, and I love the way it opens out in two different forms.

My first favourite rose. I had one of these around my front door at my last house. Lovely tea scent and gorgeous old fashioned looks.

And the best for last - Cecile Brunner - A polyantha rose and fondly referred to as 'The Sweetheart Rose' Masses and masses of flowers which, in bud are the sweetest things imaginable - like miniature hybrid teas, and then open up to become these beauteous little button-eye things. It's almost thornless and vigorous too. This one here, from my mother's garden, is the climbing form. It flowers continuously throughout the season. I WANT ONE....LIKE, NOW.

Good Edgers

Last week I tweeted excitedly that I was 'having my lawn edged' and suddenly realised that people might have thought I was getting a bikini wax.  I wasn't ...I was actually having my lawn edged.  This is something I should have done right at the beginning, when we first cut the new beds.  Back then it was hard to imagine that the grass would creep as fast as it did, - everything looked so tidy and straight and neat.  But that grass really has been testing me.  It comes back in the middle do of the beds, from tiny morsels that have been left there as we dug over the soil, but it also did this sort of inward creep, threatening to obliterate everything altogether.

Actually, I didn't mind it very much, because it made the garden look full, and bedded in, and sort of comfy - there were no bare patches of earth.  The problem was when I wielded the mower, and several times almost mowed over something precious like my erigeron or alchemilla - originally put there as edging, but which had sort of begun to 'mix' with the grass.

I started researching lawn edging, thinking I'd get someone to come and look after the babety and I'd ask the Hunk to help me one weekend...but soon realised that time was running away and I had to do something fast, so I called up my twitter friend Rob, who said he'd come and save the day by edging the lawn for me.  I am SO glad I didn't try to do it myself because it ended up taking much longer than anticipated.  The delightful Steve and Charlie from Rob's team worked like dawgs and just managed to get it done by working the whole day.

Now that my lawn has a wooden edging, it will be much easier to keep the creeping grass under control because there'll be a sort of 'no grow zone between the edge of the border and the grass...most excellent. Thank you Steve* and Charlie** - you were brilliant.

*Steve is originally from Australia but came over here to be near his daughter and grandchildren.  He used to play tennis pretty seriously, and recommends Rosa 'Radio Times'

**Charlie is also from Australia.  He likes coffee rather than tea (sorry, I'll remember that next time)

Things to do in June

....should you be so inclined:

1. Support all the plants that are about to fall over with pea sticks.  If you don't have pea sticks then consider letting them flop - it creates a certain, rather fabulous nonchalance that denotes you are uniquely cool....or you could do as I do and just gather them up to display indoors.

2. Water in the evening or early morning to conserve moisture and be efficient.  If you've got pots, then you're going to need to water twice a day if it's baking hot.

3. Order your tulips for planting in the autumn.  It seems ridiculous to be so organised, but if you want what you want, then you have to beat the rush.

4. Do some hoeing, with your sexy little hand hoe

5. If it's sunny, then be sure to laze around a lot.  The weather might turn any second, so drop everything and enjoy it

x

Nosy Corner...a family garden and something understood

Yesterday was a beautiful day.

Yesterday The Babety woke at 6.30am rather than 5am.

Yesterday I was not giving a 'talk'.*

Yesterday my Rosa 'Scentimental' came out.

Yesterday I went to this seriously yummy NGS garden opening.

I'm going to declare and interest here.  Jenny and Ricky Raworth's garden is one of my favourite gardens in the whole wide world.  This couple are totally nuts about their beautiful garden, but not to the exclusion of everything else (there are lovely daughters and grandchildren etc to be bonkers about too)...anyway, they always give superb garden opening.  Not only is the garden always spectacular, but both are always there to answer questions and show you round, and generally be seriously charming...oh, and there's another reason.  It begins with 'CA' and ends in 'KE'.

There are so many elements to this haven - a spectacular sunken area at the front, with masses of stone troughs planted up with alpines and semps, a conservatory packed full of Pelargoniums, the most sumptuous, deep beautiful borders bursting with scented loveliness, including massed Crambe cordifolia (of which I am hideously jealous), fantastic clipped hedges and a knot parterre.  They also have the MOST perfect lawn EVER.

Jenny says she never fed her Irises (here, Iris Jane Phillips), until this year, thinking they'd hate it, coming as they do from dry rocky 'bakey' type places.  But they've tripled in volume since she did...so feed away everybody.

Don't you just love the box cones - they look just perfect for leaning against with a morning paper.

Here is an extraordinary geranium.  It's called G. x oxianum 'Thurstoniuanum' and the petals are all rolled up - a bit like Tulipa acuminata

Here is a spectacular Datura with some of Jenny's much loved Plectranthus and a lovely small person

Here, above is Jenny's favourite Poppy - it's deeper red than 'Pattie's Plum' and it's called 'Medallion'

...Here is Jenny, with a background of gorgeous R. 'Constance Spry'

And here is the Babety in one of my old dresses, made by my granny.

Every time I visit, it's thrilling because there's always something new, but more than that, there's this lovely feeling of happiness and family which you can't learn, or buy or fake.  Yes, I'll take that Papaver, and the room full of pelargoniums, and that passion for plectranthus and the perfect lawn, and that extraordinary geranium, and the massive crambe but more than that, I want the feeling....  Trust me to want to copy something indescernible rather than an actual thing....typical.

Apart from urging you to visit Jenny and Ricky's garden, which you can do in July (see here for details) here's a plug for Jenny's garden days which are brilliant.

*I've been having a sheet-eating moment...you know, the kind of awful feeling when you've either done something really horribly stupid or you've embarrassed yourself beyond what is normally laid to rest with a glass of wine and a cuddle from someone lovely who will pat you kindly and tell you it's not that bad.  Sheet-eating is what happens when the magnitude of the hideousness means that you wake up the next morning and IT is the first thing you think about, and IT is so stomach-knottingly sickening that you want to scream, but that would wake everyone up, so you bite down on the nearest thing to you, which is usually a sheet of some description.  Then all through the next day, and the next, you keep thinking about it and each time it happens you feel like you're about to be a bit sick in your mouth...

The source of my pain was a 'talk' I was very sweetly asked to give at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival with the brilliant Richard Reynolds.  I'd never done anything like that before, so I was 'healthily' nervous, but nothing out of the ordinary.  And then about five minutes in, this small voice said very clearly

"Why are you here? - can't you see they're all laughing at you?'.

It got louder and louder and, well, I totally dried up...no no no, I actually want to emphasise this so it's clear: I LOST COMMAND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - literally nothing would come out...noTHING.  I started sweating profusely, managed to mumble something that sounded like an end, and sat down.  What I wanted to do was run, scoop up the Babety and The Hunk and run out of there, and be violently sick, and just basically DIE on the spot.

It's all a bit puzzling really, because I usually tell that sort of voice to shut up.  Why, at this moment I let it gag me is a mystery - (did I hear someone titter?...I think I did...) - anyway, it makes my throat ache rather, because it takes me back to another time, and a twelve-year-old me, and a crippling shyness that had me muzzled, shackled, practically unable to breathe for a good few years until the sudden, (miraculous) realisation that I actually had a choice meant that finally I was able to set myself free.  I don't know what on earth made me feel so twisted up at that time, but I do know that I want to make it so my daughter never ever has to feel that way.  This re-visit to those days has made me realise how little control I will have over her future happiness.  All I can hope for is that she will be more intelligent (or perhaps that she will be slightly stupider than me) and consequently either know that paralysis from shyness is get-out-able-of-able or that she is a perfect, gorgeous person, who feels entitled to happiness no matter what.

Ach, I know I know...it'll fade....I know it doesn't really matter what thirty strangers think of me...I know all that....and yes, I'm painfully aware that this whole silly rant could be summed up with a #highclassproblem hashtag....And yet..and yet...

Bleurgh, shut up.

x

Free babies

If you follow me on Twitter (or run a nursery) you'll know that I like to shop for plants, often entering the shop (on-line or otherwise) fully believing that I'm only after one thing, and then 'accidentally' ending up with a bulging basket.

I was about to have one of my legendary accidents at Dibleys, who sell, amongst other things, one of my favourite plants, Streptocarpus (Cape Primrose).  They are truly exquisite plants, perfect for indoors, that come in a myriad of colours and sizes and seem to flower for ever and ever on these lovely boingy thin stems that shoot up out of a thicket of thick hairy leaves.  I can't resist buying them whenever I see them, simply because there are so many different ones and I like to collect.  Here's one I picked up on a trip to the garden centre the other day.  Sorry, can't remember its name and the label soon disappeared into my label bag (more of which one day soon).  Anyhow, I was about to have this massive accident but was cruelly stopped in my tracks by horrid old paypal who think i don't have enough money...(they are right, I don't)....I was about to turn to The Hunk with pleading eyes and then decided to be sensible and thrifty AND have fun all at the same time and take some leaf cuttings, for FREE plants and a sense of achievement all at the same time.

All you need to take leaf cuttings of streptocarpus are:

1. A sharp knife (I use my incredibly chic Leatherman Tool)

2. A clean board

3. Some cuttings compost (I use seed compost mixed with a handful of horticultural grit or, if I have it, pearlite.

4. A seed tray

5. Some sort of covering (I use a plastic seed tray lid, but a plastic bag or piece of glass is fine)

Method:

Fill your seed tray almost to the top, and firm down the contents gently.  Then Choose a nice, healthy leaf and cut it off the plant at the base.  Lay it up-side down on your board and cut along the central vein on either side.  the idea is you want to cut through all the veins that come from the central one.  Out of these, will miraculously appear new plants...amazing.

When you've done your cutting, this is what you should be left with:

Discard that central vein and now place your leaf halves, cut side down, into two little trenches in your seed tray.  Firm the compost around the leaf cuttings so that those cut veins are sure to be in contact with the growing medium.  Depth-wise, I put my leaf cuttings in so they're only just buried....I'm not sure how the experts do it.

Now put the whole thing in the sink in a sort of 'bain marie' and leave it so that it can suck up some water.  Frightfully important not to let it get completely saturated though, otherwise your babies will rot.

And now all that's left is to cover it with your plastic or glass to keep the moisture from evaporating, and put it somewhere near a window, out of the way.  You'll need to be patient, and keep checking to make sure it doesn't get too dry.  I also take the cover off once a day to get the air circulating.  You should have some babies within a couple of months.  wait till they're about 5 cm long before you remove them from their mother.