get out of my garden

Somehow this post got lost in last weekend’s busy-busy-ness. It’s not this sunshiney any more, sadly.

This is my second post joining in with the Grow Write Guild, and this week the theme is ‘You’re outta here!‘ The idea this time is to write about a plant (or an object) that you plan to get rid of your garden, and the reasons why.

In the past I’ve struggled to let go of plants. I felt mean pulling them out by their roots and throwing them away when they were innocently trying to grow. But I watched Alys Fowler (or Alys Flowers, as Fay calls her), who said that she decided how big things got in her garden, and I realised it was silly being a slave to my plants, and that sometimes they just needed to come OUT.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve removed sage, fennel, and a tiny magnolia that was beautiful for one week each February, and uninspiring and in the way for the rest of the year.

I’m very pleased to be able to say that right now, there is no particular plant that I want to get rid of (except the weeds by the back door, which don’t count). Isn’t that exciting?

There are, however, two things (not plants) that I want out of my garden:

(1) pesky slugs

(2) my own neglectful behaviour

Both of these have caused such devastation in my garden over the years. I honestly don’t know which is worse.

I won’t be using slug pellets any time soon – I don’t like the thought of bird casualties, and I remember how ill a neighbour’s dog was when she ate a bagful when I was a child. And I won’t be collecting my slugs in a drain and mashing them with a hoe like my nan used to do. At the minute those I find are relocated to the compost bin (except the one Peter found dying in the house recently, and relocated to my single cabbage ‘because I know slugs really like it’).

I can tolerate some loss, and I’m quite willing to share, but sometimes it’s a bit ridiculous.

Honestly, don’t they understand that if they let the little seedlings grow, there would be more to go around? Clearly not. Pesky beasts.

My own neglectful habits are fortunately easier to deal with, and I have recently been addressing those. I ordered some seeds from the lovely Higgledy Garden, my head filled with visions of flowers in pots all around the patio next year. I ordered a special bundle of ‘seeds to plant in autumn’, and read that the absolute latest you were meant to plant them was mid October.

(Don’t they look like tiny shaving brushes?)

Well, with one thing and another, I only got round to planting mine on last Sunday. I tried, I really did. But I knew it would take ages, and with the weather and running and visitors and whatnot, I just didn’t have a couple of hours to put aside until then. Once I started though, it was good work. I put together my new mini greenhouse, and set to work reusing a load of old yogurt pots (which apparently can’t go in our doorstep recycling box – who knew?).

The weather on Sunday was rather unpredictable, and my seed packets and labels and pots kept blowing away, so I had to relocate to the living room floor.

Still, I eventually managed it, and my seeds are all ready to buttle themselves through the winter. The nice Higgledy man told me off for leaving it so late. He also very kindly offered to replace them if they didn’t grow, which was super-generous of him considering I had not followed his advice at all. But fortunately I have saved plenty of seeds to sow some more in spring, so all is well.

Just need to keep the slugs out of the greenhouse now…

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