Bunching Onions and Lettuce Seeds sown today..Bed for lettuce and scallions…Shallots beginning to out-grow the cloches
And so we’ve reached the milestone of Green-fingers Day.
Today we sowed Roja de Niort onions, Deep Purple and Dutch Blood Reds and White Lisbon onions, and a lettuce leaf seed mix which we also sowed last year and proved itself very successful. We also sowed coriander seed…it was a wet, cool, miserable April day, devoid of showers..When it rains incessantly there are no showers, but at least we’ve managed to get all the raised bedded areas sown on cue; alas, no available space for a late arriving Goldilocks…
Today being the last day of March means there are now only two days remaining till we celebrate the 1st ever International Greenfingers Day (Gardeners in their Garden Day).
It will be a day for celebrating gardeners in their gardens, everywhere; in every town and county of every country and continent. Gardeners are those who toil tirelessly at greening our world and filling our lives with seasonal colour, and though there are many great gardening shows and festivals celebrated across the globe each year, there was no one day set aside to acknowledge and celebrate those who actually work throughout the year at providing the splendour we all admire.
It’s not meant to be a day for big token displays. Here in the northern hemisphere it is being celebrated right at the beginning of things, while gardeners are busy with the day to day hands-on of spring sowing, and as such won’t mind getting hands dirty.
In southern climes it is falling at harvest, a time to perhaps to reflect on the garden’s bounty and also on what has been achieved in the last year, but here also some bulbs for next year’s blooms can be planted simply to mark the occasion of the day.
What is suggested is that all gardeners everywhere sow and/or plant some small token of trust in nature on this day, the first Saturday of April each year ( this year being Saturday 2nd April 2016) except when that day falls on April 1st, and then it will be celebrated on the 2nd Saturday of that year and on all such years when April 1st happens on a Saturday .
Perhaps you could buy yourself, or the gardener in your life a small packet of seed to sow on the day; then take a picture, a sowing selfie so to speak, and when nature has played her part and your hope blooms and the promise is fit to harvest in a number of months, take another picture, for posterity if nothing else.
It’s not a day for extravagant power tools and sit-on gifts. It’s not a day for new sheds, new BBQ’s and outdoor summer furniture settings. It’s a day to be marked by some form of sowing and planting on a personal scale: a day to plant a rose bush, or a potted fruit bush; a day to sow some summer salad leaves; a day for beetroot and summer turnip seeds, for cosmos and zinnia seeds, for sunflower and cornflower seeds, a day to sow some seed in the trust that nature will play her part so long as you play yours; a day to buy a small gift of seed to yourself or for someone else and perhaps help get them to grow their own; a day to celebrate all that gardeners do best in their gardens…
If you wish post a comment here on monster in the corner, or a copy of a picture so we may all share in your effort on instagram #internationalgreenfingersday
Trust me; the only way to develop the skills of a gardener is to get out in the garden, and garden.
Read all the horticultural books and manuals you can lay your hands on; renew monthly subscriptions to your favourite magazines and periodicals if you so wish; plough that daily furrow across the World Wide Web as you Google endlessly in the hope of unearthing some old (or new) wisdom that will enable you become a better gardener, but it is worth considering that nothing will be more formative in your quest than to feel the soil in your hands and the air in your face as you cultivate the dream in your head.
Trust in Nature and your part in its scheme. Trust March to be March, and trust April’s showers. Trust summer’s sun and trust winter’s snow. Trust all that you know, and that you don’t know. Trust the instructions on the packet and what it says on the tin. Trust in past experiences and future dreams. Trust old wives tales and harsh realities. Trust that the seeds you sow will grow. Trust all the mistakes you’re likely to make, and learn to return the trust which fashions us out of the universe’s dust, and trust me, the only way to become a better gardener is to get out into your garden and learn to trust yourself.
the world is made of faith and trust and pixie dust…J.M. BarriePeter Pan
The Shallot cloche hotel… picture courtesy of Janette
As any truly experienced gardener may tell you, the gardening year officially begins on 1st January and officially ends on 31st December. There is always something to do in the garden or on the allotment, regardless of the day, week, month or season.
The days and weeks of early spring are the heart and hub of all frenetic gardening and allotment activity. It is the time of year when the vast bulk of the allotment’s groundwork and preparation is established. All the crop planting and rotation schemes are sketched out; the early seeds are sown; the flower beds and vegetable drills are prepared; the new stock is bought, as are the stakes, supports, nettings and just about anything else which didn’t makes it through the winter months or has become so tatty and time worn as to need replacement anyway. The summer days and months are filled with the aftercare and attention necessary to the spring’s efforts with day after day of weeding and watering and hoeing, thinning out and filling gaps, dead-heading and truss-nipping and pest controlling and, if you’re lucky, hopefully enjoying the sun on your back and breeze on your face while you reap the early benefits of your effort: the strawberries, the early beetroots, the summer turnips, the goose-gob jam making to stave-off potential gluts, the lettuce leaves and the early cabbages with some Sweet Willies, early Zinnias and Lupins to add a splash of early colour to the plot and vase; and not forgetting the daily routines of watering and ventilating, and ventilating and watering in the polytunnel or glasshouse.
The autumn days are busy days, each one filled with its own fruitful promise, and each day seeming to add something new to the larder; all the onions and garlic need to be dug and cured; the tomatoes to be ripened quickly, the pumpkins needing to be turned and the late courgettes to be thinned, with the excess beets to be preserved and the winter kale and cabbages to be netted; the Swedes and Parsnips can be tested and the chutney is to be mixed as the days draw-in and the year’s span foreshortens and if you are fortunate enough to have them perhaps some apples and pears! Autumn is the time of year when every thing in the garden and on the allotment seems to come together and all the effort expended finally pays a dividend; food aplenty and a glorious show of rudbeckias, cosmos, sedums, dahlias and that every allotment must have, towering sunflowers.
Winter arrives and (contrary to misconception) there is still just as much as ever to do on the allotment and in the garden; crops planned to be left subterranean will need plenty of care if they are to survive the deteriorating days; the autumn remnants will need tidying as a matter of urgency to prevent diseases from taking hold in the spring; growing areas and raised beds need to be cleared and more and most importantly have plenty of organic matter added to them or laid on as a mulch, and all beds where practical should be covered with a heavy duty tarpaulin or plastic to prevent too much leach and damage to the soil over the winter months.
Of course every year there is that period, right in the depths of mid winter when the weather, the festivities or the gardener’s bio dynamic says “not today”, and it is easier to remain indoors than to have to venture out into the harsh elements. The trick here is to view this as a passive gardening activity, the gardener actively deciding to allow the garden to rest and the allotment to sleep while nature performs its secret winter ministry. Such days must also be considered gardening days, winter days when you learn to reflect on the garden while happy to indulge the senses in the tastes and scents of the hoarded harvest; days when you are content to simply think about gardening and being thankful for the soil’s bounty; days when the seed of re-imagining is sown in your thinking; days of thought filled germinations which help recharge the spirit before you once more set out to fulfil all the promises of the garden in the New Year.
There are as many differing and diverging ideas on what a garden is and how to garden as there are gardeners who garden, but the one thing they’ll agree on is that the summer’s show and the autumn’s harvest are only ever made possible by the grubbing of hands. With the clocks going forward this weekend the final nail in hammered into the box of winter of 2015-2016.
It’s time to get a move-on: it’s time to take summer out of the packet and sow it in the pots, and it’s time to plant the harvest in the gardens and the plots…
1st ever International Greenfingers Day Saturday 2nd April…
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