Dig this?

Covering our plots with Compost

One of the interesting challenges of the RHS Level 2 Practical is, in theory at least, carrying out a range of cultivation tasks on a plot of ground 4m x 3m allocated to each of us.  Blessed with a bright autumn, last year's group were allegedly well into double-digging and even planting before now, but we've had no such luck.



Harry Delany inspects the massed wheelbarrows of his Womens' Land Army

  Apart from one dry morning in mid October when we were introduced to our mini-allotments and instructed by tutor Harry Delany to wheel over four barrows of compost each... actually, let's make that six... in fact, the soil's so poor and clayey, it had better be eight!  Many pairs of boots squelched back and forth from the compost stack; even then it was pretty claggy underfoot.  It's done little but rain since, so there's been no chance to follow up the application of compost with digging it in or any other work for that matter.

Instead, we've been happily vandalising the grounds lifting all manner of perennials for propagation material; dividing some, lopping root cuttings off of others, potting up the offshoots and cuttings in the relative warmth of our shed-like classroom and then transporting the results across the yard to the hanger-sized polytunnels before cleaning up at the end of the day.

Not exactly a racing broom...

I've joked in the past about Reaseheath being like Hogwarts, but we really do seem to spend quite a lot of time using brooms.  I'm not sure any of them are really suitable for a game of Quidditch, though!

A small perk is that any surplus propagation material can be taken home if so desired, enabling us to practise our newly-acquired skills and add to our own stock of plants.  I was busy doing horizontal root cuttings from fibrous rooted perennials yesterday morning, working outdoors in the sunshine for about the fourth time this whole year.  My greenhouse is now home to a nice stash of Primula Denticulata, along with some Helleniums and an Ophiopogon or two from divisions. 

I resisted taking home spare bits of variegated Aegopodium podagraria; it may look pretty in the dappled shade of a woodland setting, but unmasked of its botanical alias, it's Ground Elder.  That's right, we were actually propagating one of the top three or four  most invasive perennial weeds you don't ever want to find growing in you garden!  Last year's 'propagules' were flourishing in the polytunnels and, when we lifted their trays to take them out for planting in the woods around the lake, we found masses of root sticking out of the bottom of their pots and right through the weed-suppressant membrane on the polytunnel floor into the soil beneath!

Apparently, it was introduced by the Romans as a food crop, but to coin a phrase, 'What have the Romans ever done for us?'