SPRING BLOG, SORT OF

For many years I have regarded the first day of spring as the one on which the propagation tunnel thermometer hits 100F for the first time, The combination of hot days and cold nights seems to jolt most seeds specially  the Umbellifers into life. The 100 mark was duly hit long before February had finished. (Wish I had kept a permanent record of date every year) However, as we say every year “it’s been a funny spring, this year”. The Umbellifers have done their bit, a splendid crop of Opopanax within a few weeks of sowing instead of the usual year long wait, but the Good King Henry has taken an age to come through. And now we have discovered we are in the hurricane belt; we normally expect a bit of trouble with equinoctial wind but not sustained over such a long period as the current “blow” so what with that and the two bucks sitting immediately outside my window guzzling every unprotected green leaf on the place, the nursery is looking even sadder than usual for March. At least there is the consolation that when the buck does get himself popped in the freezer, his diet of sage plants should make him taste nice, the other one will survive, provided the poachers don’t get him. I feel that if we must have the wretched animals trying to destroy our livelihoods, it’s as well to have a magnificent buck wandering around rather than a mean little prickety creature. I suppose now I will receive a torrent of abuse from the bunny-huggers about “playing God” which will at least prove that people read these bloggy things sometimes.

Potting is now in full swing, if we potted everything that needed it, there would be no where to put it, deer or no deer and so it’s a question of prioritising (obscene Americanisation, but convenient) what we think the punters are going to ask for in this year of the credit crunch. A bit tricky given that we grow more than 900 taxa on the place. Common Thyme and Tarragon are always a good bet, the public can be relied upon to allow them get too wet in winter and let them rot, but we have already been cleared out of virtually every Black Cohosh on the place. Extraordinary!

OFFER

Stuck it in a paragraph of its own just to emphasise the point

I have just potted up so much Baptisia australis (aka “False indigo”, the leguminous plant with amazing blue flowers the same colour as Salvia patens) that I put two babies in the same litre pot, so as the supermarkets say “Buy one, get one free”

Jenny too has been potting frantically. I only know this from when the potting sheets come back to the office for entering in the computer. Otherwise, since she can’t stand wittering on about plants, she disappears down to the other end of the nursery and hides in her own potting tunnel, accessible only by walkie-talkie when I can prevail on her to risk radiation poisoning (or something) and carry it. She says that she gets fed up with clearing up the same boring plants year in and year out, but as I mentioned above, we have to guess what the public are going to want and very often a species which has languished here for five or more years unloved and unwanted by the customers will all go at once, A couple of seasons ago we had three different people buying Podophyllum peltatum. Fortunately (?), we hadn’t sold one in the previous five years so we had plenty of propagation material

Last month we were invited to tender for a large wild flower project and so I threw in loads of seed. Predictably we never heard from the clients again  (having gone bust once already and normally dealing in yukky factory produced “garden centre” plants, they are reluctant to pay more than a few pennies per plant, so they only buy from us when in extremis) We couldn’t sell them plants we hadn’t got and it doesn’t cost much to sow seeds, - it’s the potting, ie labour, plastic, compost etc, that’s the financial killer, so if anyone wants a lot of wild flowers, now’s the time to ask before the seedlings end up as deer fodder.

Someone from a university asked blatantly the other day what is going to happen to the living collection when I am dead. In my modest way, I should point out that the Arne Herbs medicinal collection is probably one of the finest non-institutional assemblies of such plants in the world, particularly since it is supported by my library. The kids have more sense than to touch it, too much like hard work and for too little money and worse, would necessitate living in Britain, so no foisting it on to them. In fact, I had already offered it to the university concerned but they turned it down. Like most of academia, they would rather eat an aconite salad than associate with an outsider. I have a couple of ideas of where to dump it, but if anyone has suggestions, please pass them on.

As respite from the grind of growing and writing about plants, the Radio 3 message board has proven to be an excellent source of relaxation.One of the current amusements amongst its posters is putting the boot into Margaret Hodge for saying the “Proms are too white” This should be irrelevant to producing herbs, but of course inanely shooting one’s mouth off is a characteristic which pervades the entire government and their hypocritical, not to mention imbecilic, attitude to “Green” issues (eg London airport) is something that affects us all.

And on London, socialists and hypocrisy, is not charging for the loos on bus stations and the tube, a vicious tax on the elderly and infirm? I’m not sure what sort of “ism” it is but I am sure other more strident bloggers have already thought of the term. No trouble though in thinking up adjectives to describe both Hodge and Livingstone. Mildly better I suppose than the city of Florence which has apparently got rid of  its conveniences (not so much conveniences as wholly essentials) altogether  

The “Sunday Times” suggested that joining something called “Facebook” is a means of stimulating trade. I may be too old to understand the advantages, but for the life of me I can’t see how associating with a load of apparently drunken adolescents (see ghastly photos on the web site) whose language I am unable to understand can boost the sales of plants.