Dear Diary,
It has come to my attention that as I approach my mid fifties, the old grey matter doesn’t seem to file stuff away in the right place anymore…I’m constantly forgetting that I’ve just made a cup of tea…I lose my specs four or five times a day and on the work front I can’t remember what seeds I’ve sown when or indeed where. This is where you come in, dear diary, keeping the records in order and ensuring the old higgledy brain is ship shape and sharp like a steel trap.
The story so far.
We moored up Casper on the banks of the canal and went looking for a friendly hostelry as Flash thought we ought to search out a couple of pints and a couple of packets of cheese and onion. The village that straddled the canal at that point is called Bettisfield. (It will be of no surprise to you that there was once a field here…that belonged to Betty.) We didn’t find a pub…but we’re still here two years later. Flash and myself belong to the ancient tradition of itinerant flower Wombles…planting up flower patches wherever we find we have wombled off to. This year, we seem to have over-egged the old higgledy pudding.
Let’s have a little run down of the flower patches we have agreed to create/manage and what sort of space they cover and therefore how much graft we have in front of us:
The Taraloka Buddhist Retreat Centre.
We knocked on the door early last year and asked if they had a bit of ground we could use. In exchange they could have flowers for their shrines. I don’t know much about the world and less about people but Buddhists seem to be good eggs. These Buddhists are certainly good eggs and they offered us a couple of beds. One is a raised bed of about sixteen square meters and one is smaller and in the ground at about six square meters. This was a great success last season and it is a trouble free patch that shouldn’t be a problem this year. The small bed has a small selection of autumn sown annuals in it already. The raised bed will all be direct sown this year (Apart from sweet peas that I’ve already sown into pots).
Total space. 24 sq meters.
McCallan’s Menagerie.
Horses (of all shapes and sizes), geese, chickens, ducks, tortoises, a rescue barn owl, pack of dogs, shoals of fish and a cat. The menagerie is run by Katie and Guy. I managed to persuade them to have a bed of Higgledy biennials. They were sown into pots last summer and planted out in the garden in early autumn. Thus far they are looking great. The ground is very sandy…biennials tend to like rich, forest edge, soils but they are all looking spinky sponky and I expect them to start flowering shortly. Katie has also kindly taken charge of sweet pea trials. (She even sends spreadsheets…which I pretend to understand.) The sweet peas will all be sown into galvanised buckets, of which I seem to have scores.
Total space. 10 sq meters.
Willow Farm.
Willow Farm has been taken over by husband and wife team, Jane and Paul. I met Jane while she was filming poppies on a field border next to Taraloka. Clearly anyone filming poppies in a field border is a goodun…and she had a dog…we got chatting about flowers and a year later we have started work on a test bed on a disused piece of ground at the farm. It used to be a socking great pit that was filled in with household rubbish back in the 60’s. There is very very little top soil here. Yesterday we made a one meter wide and twenty meter long ‘no dig bed’ using a hoofing load of not very well rotted down cow manure, straw, peat free compost (Wickes), oldish leaves, general farm splodge. Gawd only knows what we may have created with that cocktail…but it made the clouds go funny. The compost will certainly end up being wonderful in time. I am going to take a punt on planting seedlings in it this year…because that’s the maverick kinda chap I am.
I really like the patch of ground and would like to extend the project there but we need to see how the test bed goes first.
Total space. 20 sq meters.
Bettisfield Church.
The church at Bettisfield is an utterly charming place. They had sown up two large twenty meter square beds with a ‘wild flower mix’ which hadn’t worked out as they had hoped. We offered to take them over. It’s a hoofing amount of extra work but it will be a great privilege, and something we are looking forward to getting stuck into. The church is open to all…and thus the flower beds are too.
Total space 40 sq meters.
Whixhall Marina.
The marina has an old dairy field attached to it that is presently unused. It is completely and utterly unsuitable for a flower patch and I’m not sure what was going through my tiny little head when I asked to borrow some of it. The main issue is the fact that it is made up of Couch grass…nemesis of gardening folk. It also has no running water…it’s very exposed…there are signs of rabbits, and Flash says he could smell deer. It’s also huge with terrible access…this is the patch from Hell but I’ve said I’ll do it, so I’ll give it my best shot. Of all the patches, this one genuinely has a chance of not working out. The field is open to the public…parking and a lovely cafe at the marina. Feel free to come and laugh at me.
Total space. c 120 sq meters. (This will probably shrink as I may have bitten off more than I can chew.)
So in conclusion, we have about 220 sq meters of mostly unprepared ground…a spade…a penknife…and the use of a single 8ft by 6ft greenhouse in the shade of an ash tree.
The vast majority of what we will be growing will be annuals but I think we will also get some perennials underway just to make more work for ourselves.
Other than sweet peas, all I have sown are a few pots of Calendula and Cornflowers. I tend to favour sowing my annuals in April…so don’t think if you haven’t sown anything yet that it is too late…there is loads of time.
I will keep you informed with how things are progressing, here on the blog and also on the socials.
Please support us by buying lots of juicy flower seeds from the higgledy shop.
Warm regards
Higgers and Flash.