Woo! Spring!
It’s taken me years. I have tried, often. I was a little successful, once, a long time ago, but then they all just stopped growing…
I turned to Glenda, one of our green fingered clients, the other day and asked her how on earth she successfully grows basil from seed.
“It’s easy,” she said. “I just put the seeds in the soil and leave it in the glasshouse. Water it when it’s dry. They just grow.”
They just grow, eh? Well, it’s never worked for me. But I figured maybe this time, with such in depth tips, I should try again.
And…
I immediately sent a photo to Melissa, someone who also chronically cannot grow basil, and we did a little dance together. Alchemy!
Wooooooo! What did I do differently? I thought a bit about Glenda’s seed mix and knew that it is made up from her own soil, so it is never bone dry. I made up some seed mix with my compost, some pumice and made sure the whole thing was damp before I added the seeds. Then, because I have a huge bag I am trying to finish, I sprinkled vermiculite on top (it keeps things damp) and I did not water it.
Tune in for the next blog when they just stop growing…
Weekly focus: Mowing, the right way.
Our weekly focus was making sure we mow correctly, which is such a dull thing to talk about but so important!
Highlights: how important it is to go to ‘the edges’ when you mow, and we talked about how many lawn contractors seem to mow smaller and smaller patches every time because they don’t edge their lawns properly. Last week I spent ages removing obstacles (old stumps, wood, toys) from one of our ‘big mow’ properties, which felt like a waste of time, but will save us about 30-40 minutes every visit hence. Making sure every task is as easy as possible is so important! Think about simplifying things, eg mulching under trees and plants in the lawn so you don’t have to weedeat around them but can just mow past, &c.
Lowlights: The old Stihl mowers are fantastic, they will chop through anything. The new ones are twice as heavy and clog if they even consider longer grass. Both of our older mowers were down this week. If your mower is clogging a bit, remove the catcher and jam the hatch half open so it fires grass out the back. If your mower is clogging a lot, mow on the highest setting first, then go down later. If your mower is STILL clogging consider weedeating the lawn first.
Some garden tasks for this week in Spring
It is sooty mould season and it is likely back with vengeance. We spray ours with seaweed and a bit of horticultural soap, which seems to work twice as well as normal dishsoap. For the life of me, I can’t find the link to where I got mine so you may need to hunt around your local garden shops. It’s not expensive stuff and only 1 tablespoon per 2L sprayer, so it lasts ages. Good luck hunting it out!
It’s really important to keep an eye on pest issues and fungal issues NOW, before they get out of hand. You want to be preventatively spraying all of your sensitive plants that end up with aphids or thrip, just with seaweed solution. Plants that are regularly bug infected are better off with broad spectrum fertilisers and not nitrogen rich ones, because insects love the new growth, so if you feed them lots of nitrogen they will grow quickly and not have the strength to back it up. Feeding them really broad fertilisers with lots of nutrients will have them growing in a sustainable way.
Have a fantastic week everyone. I hope that the days you are outside are the sunny ones, and not the apocalyptic rainstorm ones!
What I'm obsessing over this week
Despite all of the basil success, I am having a massive off week and feeling pretty bleak, rubbing neem oil in my eye by accident didn’t help. This book has been an absolutely delightful bright spot.
Andrew O’Brien has the most reassuring, lovely attitude and he talks a lot about how plants grow, how soil works, and how to work out what you garden really wants to do. He talks about how it’s cold in Winter, and how joyful gardening is in the cold, and how one of our big jobs in Winter is to rug up and look after ourselves. This book is like a warm hug. It’s just lovely. Every time I put it down I feel like I’ve just returned from a holiday. 10/10 read this book!