So what is this project that involves a transparent plastic box, you ask?
Well, it’s the dahlia flower bed, of course! I needed to find a solution for sowing them in the windows in the apartment and then being able to transport the seedlings up to the summer house and the garden – by public transport!
Miniature green houses cost a bundle, and as often as not they seem slightly flimsy and not really up for being transported by metro, train and bus, but these plastic storage boxes are cheap and sturdy, and they’re small (30 * 40 * 12 cm) enough that I can stack them in one of the large IKEA bags and schlep them up to the garden once the seedlings need to go into the ground. (And hopefully they’re JUST high enough that I can put the lids on when I need to transport them, even if I might have to gently bend the little plants if they grow too well…)
But of course growing the seedlings will have to wait for a while, since I can’t realistically plant them out for another 2-2½ months, so I will sow in April and then plant them out when it seems the weather has warmed up enough for the little darlings.
-And before I can plant them out, I also need to execute the other leg of this project; creating the bed they will end up in! It’s currently just a stretch of lawn, and though I’ve already started skimming off the sod the ground is also heavily compacted clay soil and will need to be worked quite a bit to become as I would like it.
-Which is where my husband’s birthday present from his mother comes in… His wish-lists tend to be somewhat unorthodox, and this year she had originally thought she’d buy him a load of firewood for the summer house, but when she called me and asked what I thought we had just ordered a load ourselves, so she jumped to another item on the wish list; soil…
Now, it’s great that she spoke to me about this before ordering anything, because we obviously don’t need soil as such; we’ve got plenty of that, but the issue is that it’s too clay-rich and heavy, so we just need to amend it. So on her behalf I ordered a ton (literally; 1000kg!!!) of fully mature coarse compost… My hope is that this will help make the ground more free-draining and generally lighter to work with and easier for plants to grow in. (And there should be plenty for the new bed as well as some for the Ambitious Border and the raised vegetable beds.)
I look forward to getting on with this project, but of course we will see how the weather behaves.
Tell me, whose birthday was it? My ideal present too!
My husband loves the garden as much as I do; he just can’t be be an active participant in the execution of it since he lives in Scotland right now. -And he probably prefers enjoying the garden, rather than maintaining and developing it, but a lot of my projects are actually based on what he would appreciate to have in the garden. (He says lots of big flowers, I order dahlia seed.) So the garden plan is perhaps my interpretation of his not-so-concrete desires for the garden.
(I think it’s a good match; one husband enjoys seeing beautiful plants and the other husband enjoys growing them. And then he gets a chance to play around with a chain saw every so often, which he also loves, whereas I abhor loud noises.)
Soren, I love the idea of a load of manure as a birthday present! it reminds me of the people who lived next door to us when I was a child and who had a big vegetable garden behind their house. Every year, just in time for mother’s day (celebrated the 2nd Sunday in may in the U.S.), they would have a truckload of manure delivered. 🙂
It’s not manure; merely decomposed organic material, so it will not have that much of a fertilising effect on the soil but it should improve the texture.
It is a good present, though; I think my husband is looking forward to seeing what it will result in. (Hopefully lots and lots of flowers, if the slugs will stay off the dahlias. Sadly slugs seem to love dahlias even more than we do…)
The box is a great idea and what a wonderful present…manure compost…I can’t think of anything better for a gardner with clay soil 🙂
Mature, not manure. 😉 It’s “just” regular park compost with no manure. But yes, the clay will be improved immensely by incorporating a couple of inches of organic matter into it!
Sounds like my kind of birthday present. Good luck with the dahlia project. I sympathise with the seedling transport problem. I lost count of the number of little plants I squished last year when transporting them from my house to the allotment. The allotment is only 10 minutes walk away but trying to carry young plants and everything else I need up with me is always a bit of a challenge.
-Hence the need for sturdy boxes with lids so I can stack them and not be too concerned that they’ll become dahlia pesto en route…
I might do a trial run with some sweet peas; I collected plenty of seeds last year, so there’s room for failure without jeopardising the sweet pea season! (And I also have some perennial sweet peas that will ensure that even if all else fails, there WILL be sweet peas, even if the perennial varieties are less scented than the annual ones.)