A shift in season. A shift in time.
Hello. How are you? Are you ok? Have you managed to get outside? I have weeded more in a week that I think I did all last year. I have weeded, and hoed and raked and sown and harvested. These times are so strange, that nothing seems to matter except the next moment, the next hour, the next day The uncertainty has rubbed out the future. Instead of plans and commitments, there is a sense of nothingness. There is only now.
The greenhouse is full and getting fuller every day. My germination rate for the sweet peas has been excellent, although my eating beans (borlotti, scarlet emperor, white lady) have not shown a peep. The beans were very old, but I assumed, like magic beans, they would spring to life as soon as I sowed them. Turns out not. It is not yet too late to plant sweet peas, but in the next week or so would be best. I may have to buy in plugs for the eating beans.
I sowed eight different varieties of squash today. A little early, but I couldn’t wait, and it is a biodynamic fruit day. Long Island Cheese. Musque de Provence (which didn’t quite ripen last year, hence me sowing a little earlier), triamble, Marina di Chioggia, Queensland Blue. Extra Potimarron, because the size of them makes them so useful, and they roast like chestnuts.
The greenhouse was, as all the best greenhouses are, second hand. It was dismantled in the garden of the Old Vicarage next door and carried round to the paddock piece by piece. My husband built a concrete base and we used old builders’ trestles to make staging. The first years of using it were great, but a heat mat changed everything. I have so many tomatoes that I do not know what to do with them all, and some cosmos that I am growing for dyeing sprouted in about 20 hours. The greenhouse draws me like a magnet at this time of year anyway, but witnessing the new life feels even more special now.
It has been sunny for a while, but sunny and cold. The last day or so has marked a much more important change; it has become sunny and warm. It is this warmth that the plants respond to with such enthusiasm.
The shift in the season and the growth has been matched with a shift in my business. The demand for seed increased so fast that I sold out all my stock in the space of a week. I have existed in a state of tension since the lockdown started; I truly believe that people turning to growing is a good thing, and that some people who discover gardening now will never lose that love. But what does that mean for me?
However, this is also a time when I have to think about how I want to spend these weeks, maybe months. Some of you may know that my husband became a doctor last week, some months earlier than expected. In the field, it feels like nothing is different, but everything is different. I feel like my contribution, the difference that I can make to you and for you, is through writing and through photography, through sharing knowledge, but also a bit of respite. My outdoor space can somehow by extended to be your outdoor space too. And anyway, I cannot pack any more seeds, because the people that make the envelopes have all gone home, and will be staying at home until this is all over.
So this week, I am going to do an email about each different part of my garden and field. This will include tips and tricks on how to make the most of them.
Tomorrow, the greenhouse. (If you do not have a greenhouse, a sunny windowsill shares many common features.) I will cover watering, heat, leggy seedlings. Some of you will know my secret trick for extra long tulips stems, but if you don’t, that will be in there too.
