A Sore Bum and a Garden Revelation
Bent backs, muddy hands, and the first proper spring tidy-up. Among the blossom, ladybirds, and aching muscles, I finally realise what my troublesome Cottage Garden has been telling me all along
Gosh! My bum is going to be sore in the morning.
I’ll be hobbling horribly tomorrow. I don’t know about you, but I always feel it in my bum. I’ve been bent over for hours, cutting down last year’s growth, weeding, and generally faffing. The lower back and hamstrings are shouting too. There’s no quick fix for the aches. You simply keep doing it until the body remembers what to do. One of the great bugbears of gardening, I suppose. Nobody likes a sore back (or bum).
Over the years, mine has mostly grown used to it, but always in late winter or early spring, when I’m back at it, I always go through those familiar pains. If you’re just starting down your own gardening journey, trust me, it does get easier, just as long as you keep at it. That’s the trick. Do little and often rather than a massive weekender.
The problem is that we amateur gardeners generally do very little from November to March. Then, with the arrival of the first warmish sunny day, we go and get all over-excited, with wall-to-wall gardening for hours on end, only to spend the rest of the week in regret as our collective backs, bums, and legs scream at us.
(I’m wondering if you can buy Voltarol in gallon drums for bathing?)
The gym has definitely helped me and I strongly recommend it to anyone. Honestly. When I first hit the gym in ’22, my goal was very simple: to reach every spring stronger than the spring before. Jacq says my back is now “muscly”. Ah. smug mode. Of course, being a classically uptight Englishman, I feigned an air of nonchalance.
A consistent programme of deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, rows, and shrugs has shored up the creaking middle-aged fuselage. My back is far stronger than it used to be (not hard, as it was once like a brittle twig). It’s really just the specificity of gardening that catches you out. Holding a bent-over position for hours. It’s not natural really, is it?
OK, aches and pains (and sore bums) aside…
I am very glad to be back in the garden and firing on all cylinders. Yes, the gardening machine is back in gear! The Flower Garden has been razed to the ground and weeded, with a thousand ladybirds gently rehoused. Plants that needed (re)moving have been. The only thing left is to mulch, mulch, mulch.
So my attention will now turn briefly to the Kitchen Garden, where I have one bay of glorious homemade compost to spread over the beds… Left to mature for over a year, it’s transformed garden waste into gorgeously dark and crumbly compost, for free. If you’d like to learn more about making your own compost, have a read of this post, or bookmark it for later.
Mulching the beds is a job and a half. Not one of my favourites, usually induces a back spasm or two, but so worth the effort. After spreading I’ll treat it with a dose of nematodes, just to be on the safe side, before planting out my precious veggies.
Then it’s the dreaded Cottage Garden. Yes, dreaded. I’ll be perfectly frank… Although the Cottage Garden was my first garden, it’s my least favourite. It’s frustrated me repeatedly. I’ve never quite nailed it with the planting.
It’s a tricky site: sloping, shady, very dry, fierce competition from mature trees, and shallow soil. Some parts bake, some parts only see a glimmer of sunlight during spring. It’s been a process of trial and error and I’ve lost many plants, no matter how well researched they are.
Thinking aloud now (and looking back the photos), it’s at its peak during late spring and early summer, before the canopy closes in and the soil is sucked dry. In spring there are hellebores, astrantias, hardy geraniums, roses, pulmonaria, brunnera, tulips and narcissi, aquilegia, peonies, alchemilla, and foxgloves. All the cottage garden favourites.
Yes! That’s the answer, isn’t it. A Spring Garden.
Then, rather cunningly, I don’t have to worry about making it look good all summer, trying to resuscitate beleaguered hydrangeas. After all, part of gardening is about picking your battles and, on this occasion, the mature trees and iffy soil win. I could spend thousands terracing, deepening the soil, cutting down trees, buying new plants… but life is too short and I’ve already thrown my best efforts and resources at it.
The Spring Garden it is.
Now I can justify buying lots of lovely bulbs instead and go full throttle on spring! In summer it can simply mellow and wane. Love it! What do you think? I’m writing and deciding this in real time as I type. It’s wonderful to have your ear. Talking through my horticultural dilemmas. Thank you for being here.
“Good gardening is often just choosing which battles not to fight.”
Around the garden…
The snowdrops and crocus have faded, brown and papery. Hellebores and cyclamen are still shining, accompanied by pops of cheery yellow Tête-à-tête. Edgeworthia’s decadent perfume hangs in the air. Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’, the purple cherry plum tree, is in full blossom. Always the first here and it’s a stunner. Finely branched with a delicate dusting of small pink blooms. Understated. The exact opposite of ‘Kanzan’, which I also adore for its completely frilly fanfare of exuberance.
The ghostly grey weeping pears are also smothered in buds. It won’t be long before they’re blanketed with white blossom, gently nodding to the arrival of spring with a sweet, gentle scent.
The Flower Garden borders are clear. Last to go were the stands of majestic miscanthus and scruffy echinops. It’s hard to believe this motley collection of stumps and twigs will be a towering, billowing border of blooms and busy bees in just a few weeks. All around, the emerging crowns and rosettes of fresh spring growth are punctuating the bare soil.
My garden friends
I’m marvelling at the sheer number of ladybirds. They’re everywhere. As soon as the sun shines, out they come, basking and recharging, even bumping uglies! I’ve seen my first butterflies zooming about in the sunshine. Mostly comma and brimstone. Bumblebees are back, bobbing around the winter honeysuckle. Birds are busily refreshing their feathers in the various bird baths. Finches, tits, wrens, robins, blackbirds, thrushes… and a new visitor (never seen them before), the lesser redpoll.
A little gardening
Fussing over my buxus
Checking for blight and caterpillar damage. Treating with TopBuxus HealthMix for blight and Xentari to combat the dastardly box caterpillar. It’s been a very mild winter here and those little leaf munchers will be off to a flier, so I’m being extra vigilant.
It’s a very simple method. Two tabs of HealthMix and one sachet of Xentari, mixed into a large sprayer with 3 litres of water and left for 10 minutes for the tabs to dissolve. Then spray away. We have around twenty balls and lopsided cones, so it’s not a demanding (or expensive) job.
Weeding paths and borders
I always prefer to be up close and personal with a hand fork and daisy grubber, so I can identify friend or sneaky foe. It also affords me a bee’s-eye view of those delicate cyclamen, scilla, snowdrops, and aconites. Little beauties that make me smile. Self-seeders that I want (verbena, valerian, foxglove, althaea, fennel, forget-me-not, etc.) are thinned or moved. The rest are left on the surface to decompose or added to the compost.
“Tackle weeds early, before those beefy roots take hold. Remember… One year’s seeding, seven years’ weeding. And some of those weeds get started alarmingly early.”
Mulching
It’s clear that the borders are overdue a good mulching. It’s been years since the last application. Despite the benefits of no-dig (no cultivating the soil so you’re not always bringing seeds to the surface) I’ve never had such a rash of seedlings. Mostly self-seeders from my own garden growing very happily, but in the wrong place. The few unwanted weeds are the usual suspects: dandelions, creeping buttercup, thistles, ivy, bittercress, rosebay willowherb, chickweed, nettle, petty spurge.
This year I’m going all out on quality with SylvaGrow. I have alkaline clay here and I think their Composted Fine Bark soil improver will be great for suppressing weeds, adding organic matter, and reinvigorating the soil, making all those billions of tiny creatures very happy in the process.
Assessing the borders
Looking at last year’s photos and making a list of what needs to be (re)moved when the mild weather returns and the soil is moist and workable. I’m feeling bold and ruthless, so a few plants may end up on the compost heap or potted up and left outside the gate (where they miraculously disappear within minutes).
Westling with roses
I finally summoned the courage to grapple with my climbing and rambling roses. I have to be in a very calm state of mind, exceptionally patient, for the bending, looping, and tying-in of those thorny canes. Some, like ‘Lord Byron’, have such lethal thorny armour they can put a stegosaurus to shame.
Protecting your hands is always a very fine line between dexterity and puncture-proofing. I’m yet to find just the right glove. Any recommendations? Leather gauntlets are useless for this sort of fiddly thing.
While I had the blades handy, I went over the wisterias, reducing the whips that were cut back in August and giving them a general once-over. I do love their velvety seedpods and I don’t mind admitting that I like stroking them!
Slug watch
I’ve applied the first batch of nematodes in the Kitchen Garden, drenching the raised beds. Nematodes are microscopic predatory worms that seek out and kill or deter slugs. Sadly, they are indiscriminate, so there is collateral damage with the ‘good slugs’ (yes, there are some good guys) falling victim too. I also poured them over my potted hostas, just as a precaution.
It has been the perfect winter for those malicious molluscs, mild and very wet. Just like The Great Slug Plague of ‘24! I expect the first plantings will be subject to wholesale slaughter. My post below shares my most excellent tips for (naturally) controlling those slimy soil dwellers. Note: nematodes don’t work on snails.
The Big March Sowathon
The first veggies have been sown. Always an auspicious occasion that heralds the arrival of spring. So far I’ve sown onions, shallots, salad onions, peas, beetroots, lettuce, rocket, leafy herbs, and bulb fennel. The salads germinated within two days. Peas and onions a couple of days later. I wait until late March for tomatoes. April for the warmth-loving cucurbits and sweetcorn.
I don’t have the luxury of a greenhouse, so all early sowing and propagation takes place in the conservatory. It’s north facing, so I’ve built a propagation station - a metal rack with LED lights strapped to the shelves. It works remarkably well and keeps everything… nice and tidy. (Yes, thank you Norbert.) You can read more about it here…
Gearing up
Well, it’s not long now until the spring equinox, when the days finally edge ahead of the nights. After that, the garden wastes no time. Shoots soar, buds swell, and what looked like a sleepy collection of stumps and bare soil quickly becomes something altogether more energetic… Give it a fortnight and this quiet, tidy garden will barely recognise itself. And so it begins!
Looks great! I love the idea of a spring garden. We currently have something similar, in the sense that I ripped it out last fall and the only plants in it so far are peonies and bulbs and 2 climbing roses. Also, for anyone who has never tried...epsom salt baths work wonders on achy muscles (they also help mellow my anxiety, which is an added bonus).
Thank you! I have chores today,. Not too hot, not rainy! We’ve had both the last couple of days! I have to clear and mulch my lily bed. And my big chrysanthemum bush, died this winter, so I have to dig it up! It was in a pot, pushed its roots through the bottom and grew into the ground still pot bound. Not a cut table pot! Loving the birds, looking for lady bugs. We have indoor starters, cucumbers and flowers. My friend told me to try my cakes in hanging pots this year, I’m going to give it a try. Exciting times in the garden, and it’s always a grand experiment. I say, go for the Spring garden! Like hair, gardens will do what they do, even if you want something else!