Six on Saturday 04-11

So, November it is then. Things are looking increasingly tired in the garden, I have begun the process of putting it to bed for the winter. The lawn hasn’t stopped growing yet though, annoyingly, so I have to mow it again. After a few weekends of limited garden time, I have a long list of jobs to do, including getting the pesky tulip planting started.  Anyhow, time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Simples. Could be a good flower, wildlife, a success, a job to do, a plan, anything at all. Join in, oh say you will!

Here are my Six.

1 – Leaves, collection of.  These will eventually be leaf mold. I managed to stop off at the park in a spare half hour yesterday so these are now stashed behind the shed where I shall leaf* them be for at least a year.  I was looking for oak trees but there don’t seem to be any handy in my local park.  The leaves I have are quite large so may take a couple of years to break down.  If I still had my petrol mower I’d run that over the leaves to shred them up, which reduces the time taken to break down. You can read more about this process here.  I probably want another 4 or 5 bags to ensure a good supply in two years time.

*see what I did there?

2 – Fuchsia, var unk. I have a modest array of fuchsia plants, some of which have been flowering away for a good while now, but this one I’m only just noticing now.  It has large flowers for a fuchsia.

3 – Primrose, var unk. I bought a bunch of these in one of those zillion plants for a fiver offers that the big online retailers sometimes have on.  I don’t actually like them that much, I think the leaves are ugly, and in fact I thought I had dug them all up.  Still, I’ll take a bit of colour at this time of year. These are the first of the flowers to poke their heads above the parapet, still quite small and something has been nibbling them I think.

4. Veg bed, mulched. I still have two to do, but I have finished mulching one of the veg beds. I’ve used the manure I collected a couple of weeks ago. I am sort-of following the no-dig model in the veg beds, which requires a nice thick mulch each year around this time.  Our friends the worms will mix this in, creating little tunnels as they do, aerating the soil and generally improving soil condition. The no-dig philosophy has at its root the idea that digging the soil over is not only unnecessary but actually harmful to the soil ecosystem, resulting in lower yields. You can read and see much more about this here.  Best of all, I don’t have to dig the beds over. The manure seemed fairly well rotted when I was collecting it but spread out it is still quite lumpy. I’ve given it a good seeing to with the fork and hopefully between the frost and worms it will be a reasonable size crumb by the spring.

5. Tiarella ‘Pink Skyrocket’.  Last time I looked at this plant, it was just foliage. I bought it cheap as its first flush of flowers was done.  It’s having a little last flowery hurrah before the frost.

6. Helenium seedheads. There are still some flowers on the plants in the front garden, but mostly these are gone over. I’ll cut them back later in the winter. For now the seed heads provide a bit of needed structure and interest. The stems also provide a little protection for the plant.

That’s my Six for this week, what are yours? If you’d like to join us in sharing Six things happening in your garden, just add a comment below with a link to your post, and maybe a link back to this blog in yours. For more details, please see the participants’ guide.

Don’t  forget to check back in during the weekend as other Six posts are added.

I’ll be back next week with another Six on Saturday.