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Gardening like a Jeweller

© Michael Campbell

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Someone made a comment a few years ago after seeing a picture of my alpine house that I was gardening like a jeweller. Well that comment came to reality this week when I had to spend most of a day with a pair of tweezers removing hairy bitter cress seedling from pots in the bulb frame. Not a very pleasant task I can assure you but one that had to be done without delay, because the bulbs are just coming into full growth and peeping through the grit in the pots.

Another few days and the foliage would have grown to such an extent as to make weeding almost impossible. One more week and the bitter cress would be starting to flower and set seed, having only a 21 day cycle from germination to seed set. Having considered all the options there was nothing for it but to get to work and clean the frame there and then. There was also a lot of liverwort and moss growing on the sand plunge so I took the opportunity to clean the lot and make a fresh start. As each pot was removed the sand was cleared of liverwort and moss and the pot picked over with the tweezers to remove the small seedlings from the grit that was topping each of the pots. As this was proving to be a very onerous task because the seedlings were so small it was almost impossible to catch them with the tweezers, so I decided to tip the grit out of the pot and this left the stems of the seedling weeds exposed and very easy to remove. As the bulbs were well established having been potted for almost a year none of the soil came out of the pots, just the grit topdressing. I suppose that's what makes gardening so interesting; no matter how much you think you know you learn something new every day. Having finished the bulb frame and removed the debris it was time to start re-potting the Lewisia hybrids, as some of them are already in flower and have long since outgrown their accommodation.

An early morning jaunt to the garden centre to secure the necessary ingredients for to make suitable potting compost. Horticulture grit, John Inns potting compost no 2 & 3, Perlite, Vermiculite, 50 five inch and 25 four inch crockery pots and coarse sand completed the order.

Brachycalyx Hyb	Columbiana alba Hyb.	Brachycalyx Hyb	Rediviva x Little Plum	Longipetala X Rediviva
Brachycalyx hyb.

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