You will laugh, and hopefully empathise.
Here is my greenhouse.
I swore to myself that when I got a greenhouse, I would buy or build one which was fit for purpose. What does a greenhouse need?
To stand up to the elements
To last more than one season (!)
To effectively hold multiple trays of plants
To have some amount of temperature control/venting
To, I don’t know, not bend and become damaged in the process of being put together! Jerk greenhouse.
But as we can all see from the picture, of course I decided I must have a greenhouse now, and I bought a crappy $35 greenhouse from The Warehouse over the weekend. Put it together, put in my brand spanking new tray of seeds and BAM, four days later it tripped and fell down the stairs… just like the last 3.
And now all of my seeds, and also my enormous choko vine (that I planted far too early and had climbing the walls in the lounge), and a few illegal copyrighted plants (sue me) that I propagated from seeds taken from fruits I purchased… are all mixed all together in this crashed greenhouse.
I am going to scoop up all of the soil and any germinating seeds and put it in trays, labelled “pick n mix,” because I do not have the capacity to pick through and work out what is what!
In other news, 5 days growth on my seeds I’m raising indoors-
This leads me to think about something that the ever-knowledgeable Melody told me once,
We buy lemon trees to kill them, don’t we? That’s just a thing we do,
And my daughter has been pushing the view that,
The outcome of any action will always be random, so there is not necessarily a ‘right’ thing to do.
I strongly believe in one of these great Philosophers, and that is Melody. We just keep doing the things that have predictable outcomes. I keep raising seeds, thinking that using a heat mat is a great idea because it speeds up germination, and refusing to keep in mind that I always kill my seedlings in the second month, before it is warm enough to plant them- I let them dry out too much and they shrivel to a crisp.
Melody keeps buying lemon trees, and for the life of me I can’t get one to stick around at her house (extremely windy, with extremely dry clay soil and no watering system).
People keep putting ‘compostable packaging’ in their compost bin and refusing to acknowledge that their compost bin is now completely clogged with ‘biodegradable plastic.’
So, it is now Spring, and in Spring I feel a sense of intense foreboding, because in Spring we must seize the day! In Spring, everything grows like it is on steroids, so any project that I might want to undertake will occur at great speed in comparison to any other time of year. In Spring, I have seeds germinating within 5 days, and Summer is spreading out in front of us, unfurling like a fern frond, so those seeds have time to grow into lush, enormous, successful plants.
In the weekend (not this weekend, but another weekend, really soon, I swear), I will have the time to do the things that I have thought about doing, and I won’t cram them into 45 minutes between 3:30 and 5pm somehow when no one needs me for a hot minute, and they won’t feel hideously poorly done or undercooked, because I will have taken my time and done them properly. Right? Right?
Spring is a time of absolute madness. In Spring, we go outside in tiny Summer clothes without a jacket and we expect to stay warm for our entire day. In Spring, it is freezing cold in the morning and blisteringly hot in the afternoon, staccato’ed by periods of cold, windy rain. In Spring, we feel like anything could happen because we have so much time ahead of us.
Please try to do it all in Spring. Some seeds will germinate and die, and some will grow you enormous watermelons (or not). I don’t know. I think that Spring is giving you the chance, to give your gardening a shot.
Some things I would recommend this week
Buy some potted colour, or a nice flowering plant you like. If it dies, it will probably set seed all over your garden first. If it survives, woohoo!
Think about a place in your garden to keep floral, and sheltered, and cool, because bumblebees are in decline, and it has been linked to a lack of ability to chill out (literally) during the sunnier season.
Some seeds that you can just throw at your garden-
Flower seeds generally
Leafy greens
Herb seeds, although a dry spot is a bit better than a dark damp spot
Some seeds or plants that you could keep on a sunny windowsill for another month-
Tomatoes
Basil
Eggplant
Curcubits (cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin)
Beans (except broad beans, chuck them in now)
Some fun things you could consider doing-
Buy a fruit tree- nice time to plant them
Go and find a michelia, magnolia or camellia, as they are in flower and looking fantastic
Cut back any ivy or vines that you need to keep under control, because cutting them in Spring will stunt their growth, which is helpful to slow their growth for the rest of the season.
Have a great week everyone. Tell me all about the same mistake you keep making, if you can, and help me to feel a bit better.