A room with a view

view potting shed 1Tidy now. It took hours.   Of all the things I should have been doing this morning, cleaning my room wasn’t one of them.   But the potting shed was such a tip, and I had to find space for all my floragard potting mix I had bought and just stacked against a wall, and try and re-arrange the propagation plants.

I am in a major propagation cycle now. Lots of santolina, lavender, red currants, black currants, jostaberries and assorted cuttings from the Filippi plants.   I’m concerned it’s too hot in my shed for them.   So I have placed them in shelving (courtesy of Ikea tables) underneath the potting bench.   I’ll keep an eye on them and inspect for signs of deterioration. view potting shed

reorganised potting shedThe tricky bit is I usually cover the cuttings in pots with a plastic bag to keep in the moisture.   But that has meant that things are rotting under the hothouse conditions.   So I’m experimenting with half under plastic and half without.

I did make time to just sit in my chaise longue and admire the flowers on the bank outside my shed: calamagrostis Karl Foerster grasses golden in the sunshine.   And the agastache still going strong.

I have just a small collection of plants up here now. The fennel can’t be planted out right now as we are having a heat wave and they would shrivel up and die in hours. So I have to baby them along. last plants potting shed

And my cut and come again mixed lettuce leaves are fun: I just pop up here before lunch and pick spicy leaves to add to the little gem leaves from the lower vegetable garden.

lemon verbena door stopAnd I replaced my doorstop. I’ve been using a dull old brick to keep the French windows open: now it’s a lemon verbena plant. Much swankier.

Did I leave the shed at all? Well it is too hot to stay anywhere for long. pruned lavender

But Leslie reminded me I should cut back all my lavender plants to make sure they keep a round and handsome shape.   So I trundled round the garden hunting out lavenders and adding a huge load of beautiful scent to the trug.

vb hedge potagerThe heat sent me indoors for lunch – and people are talking canicule (heat wave) here. So I did the perfect French thing. I had a siesta. So refreshing. It gave me enough energy in the afternoon to do all sorts of fun indoor tasks (jam labelling) and even sneak out and photograph my burgeoning verbena bonariensis hedge.

This is actually going to be replaced this autumn with hornbeam if I can get organised. The flowers are lovely, but not substantial enough to mark a barrier between the vegetable garden and the lawn.   But for now I’ll admire the flowers. vb hedge detail