London Road Station Partnership Blog

Garden sundries? Perhaps the boring side of gardening, unless you see the parallel between growing things and cooking things, in which case garden sundries are the exciting things in your store cupboard, the array of esoteric ingredients which make things happen, the baking powder and the soy sauce.

Neighbours David and Karen have just cleared out a garage and donated to LRSP a treasure haul of garden sundries: sacks of compost, plastic bags of Growmore granules, netting and chicken wire. We can store some of the haul – the bags of compost, for instance – in the lesser gated plot at London Road Station, while the rest will await dryer days in my garage. So what’s in the haul? Here’s a summary of the highlights.

Growing media: We’ve now got two sacks of sustainably-managed peat, a bag of seed compost and a bag of ericaceous compost for acid-loving plants. The ericaceous could be particularly useful if we decide to grow some fruit bushes in pots. Blueberries need acid soil, and many other fruits prefer it.

We’ve also got bags of mineral stuff for ‘cutting’ seed soil and potting compost. Horticultural sand and grit can be added to the soil to improve drainage and aeration, while perlite and vermiculite improve aeration and water retention. They look synthetic, rather like polystyrene, but they are both derived from natural minerals: perlite is siliceous rock while vermiculite is laminar magnesium-aluminum-ironsilicate – so now you know…

These granules absorb water, which prevents water-logged or compacted soil, but also ensures the growing medium doesn’t dry out. What’s more, grit, sand, perlite and vermiculite aren’t too comfortable for snails and slugs to slide over, so these minerals can be piled around seedlings to protect them.

Fertilisers: Fertilisers typically supplement the key macro-nutrients required by plants: nitrogen – for all-round vigorous growth; phosphorous – for root growth; and potassium (potash) for flowers and fruit.

We’re aiming to keep to principles of organic gardening and build up the nutrients in the soil first through organic manure and compost, and only then by using organic fertilisers and finally inorganic fertilisers. But vegetables require high levels of nutrients, so when we were growing vegetables in containers last season, we were feeding the plants regularly. This year, we hope to build up good fertility in our raised beds through the manure and compost we have added in the last few weeks. Nevertheless organic and inorganic fertilisers will be useful, though we’ll hope to use them sparingly.

In our haul, there are bags of bone meal and Hoof and Horn (wonderful name). Yes, these organic fertilisers are what they say on the bag: ground up animal bone, which plants love. Hoof and Horn provides slow-release nitrogen, while bone meal has a high proportion of phosphorous. Both are useful mixed into the base of planting holes. While we’re on the wierd preferences of plants, they also love human hair … well, more precisely, the chemical components of hair (51% carbon, 17% nitrogen) which will break down slowly if the hair is buried in the compost heap. So take a plastic bag with you when you next go to the hair-dresser (tip from the Whitehawk Community Food Project gardeners).

We’ve also got several bags of the all-round inorganic fertiliser Growmore. These granules provide equal levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and can be mixed in the soil or compost at planting as they are designed to release the nutrients slowly. We worked Growmore into the soil at the shady triangle before we planted in June and then again in September, before we put down wood chip mulch. When an organic mulch breaks down, it can leach nitrogen from the soil, so the Growmore should in principle right the balance.

And finally, there’s Garotta. Sounds like something from the nastier days of the French Revolution? Er … actually it’s freeze dried compost fungi and ammonium salts – lovely –I think it counts as organic. It a compost-accelerating powder which helps break down kitchen waste particularly in the winter when it’s not so warm. You just add a sprinkling to each new layer. We’ve now got a big container of it, placed next to our new compost bins – there are more precise instructions for use on the container.

So we now have a well-stocked store cupboard ready for seed sowing and planting in the spring – a big thank-you to Karen and David.

I can’t even remember when it started …  At the Ditchling Rise Area Street Party in September, Jo from Shaftesbury Road and I were discussing how good the cut-price onion sets from Lidl had been, and Jo said they now had packs of bulbs. Magically, medium-sized daffodil bulbs then appeared next to the water butt. Diane, Daphne and Mark planted them in the centre of the shady triangle.

Then on a visit to The Garden Centre at the end of September, I picked up a good deal on 50 Narcissus Canaliculatus and 25 Narcissus Tête à Tête –miniature daffodils no more than 15cm high – and Yolande and Marlene planted these along the sloping edge of the garden and among the ferns.

Marlene came back a couple of weeks later with a pack of Iris reticulata bulbs, which we’ve planted at the apex of the triangle, and then Mark and Daphne arrived with a small sack of medium-height daffodils. In the fading light of early November, we planted those along the back wall, by the log.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, when I went to see Bridgette of The Garden House, just along the street from London Road Station, she contributed a bag full of mixed daffodil bulbs. These are now planted along the side of the triangle nearest the water butt.

The shady triangle is admittedly looking a  bit denuded now that the ferns, foxgloves and alchemilla mollis have died down, and the pansies are getting straggly.

The Mahonia japonica is flowering but it’s still small. Miraculously the bargain-shelf fuchsias from May are still in flower and the heucheras I propagated in early spring are a mixture of bronze, green and pink. We can think of adding this year’s cuttings from Heuchera ‘Licorice’ alongside next spring and hopefully, the cuttings we made from the fuchsias will also root well.

But it’s the bulbs that now intrigue me … because they have turned out to be the truest ‘community’ plantings so far, contributed by different neighbours over the last couple of months. And because of the suspense: will they come up? what will they look like? will the squirrels get to them first? We must have planted around a hundred and twenty … perhaps then we can afford to be magnanimous in sharing them with the wider – wilder – community.

What’s happening? The water butt in our shady garden is a mystery. We installed it in July this year. Even after a solid downpour, it appeared to be empty after a few days. We checked for leaks but found none.

It filled up again after further rain. We didn’t use the water very much over our ‘summer’, as the shady plot stayed fairly moist. The water turned brown and rather smelly, but no leaks.

Now in the autumn, we haven’t had heavy rain for some time. We’ve emptied the water butt over the shady plot, now looking very dry. Last week, we cleaned and refilled it, using tap water. It’s supposed to take 250 litres. But by yesterday there was no water!

My usual gardener’s reflex is to blame seagulls, squirrels, next door’s cats, slugs and snails. True, Brighton seagulls are highly skilled at manipulating plastic rubbish bags, so pushing a small tap should be no problem, but surely even these devious creatures are not that interested in bathing in tap water?

What is going on? The mystery continues … Watch this space for updates. Meanwhile, autumn sunshine is all very well, but if things continue like this, we’ll be spending next Tuesday afternoon dancing for rain in our yellow jackets.