The tulips have gone now, the white petals fluttering away in the windy weather. So I pulled out most of the swathes of forget-me-nots which had mostly gone over.
There is now a big patch of bare earth, full of forget-me-not seeds but I could feel the weeds moving in as I pulled out the plants. It needs filling up with something but before that can happen, it needs feeding. Luckily, I happen to have a very large pile of rotted horse manure to hand and I’m not afraid to use it.
There are four horses in the fields at the back of our house. Every Sunday morning that we are at home, we go round and get a couple of dozen trugfuls. That’s about all our backs can take. Then it gets dumped on the hard standing for easy access.
So that patch of bare ground is now covered with a thick layer of the best possible soil food. Those potatoes I put in the pink border now need earthing up – tip a trug of manure over them. The tulips have gone over but need feeding up for next year – each patch gets a trug of manure. We planted a couple of rhubarb plants (Timperley Early, rescued from the sale bench at Homebase – £1.49 each for big plants) and they got a generous helping.
I trimmed the lonicera nitida Baggensen’s Gold balls and promptly made up for it with a good hearty meal spread around their bases (making the golden topiary stand out even more). Every planting hole gets a shovelful, every newly cultivated bit of ground gets some dug in and a thick layer is added on the top if it’s not going to be planted straightaway.
It doesn’t give instant results, but next year we will reap the benefits. The hornbeam hedge at the front made steady progress but now that each plants gets a trugful dumped on it twice a year, it is racing along, with thickly clothed strong poles turning into a proper hedge rather than a row of baby trees.
People who keep a shovel and container in the car and leap out in country lanes to collect freshly dropped manure should not be mocked. It is worth its weight in Growmore.
Tags: forget-me-nots, hornbeam hedge, lonicera nitida Baggensen's Gold, manure, rotted, tulips
