At this time of year, Six on Saturday begins to sort the wheat from the chaff, the chickens from the pigs*, the dabblers from the devotees. It is starting to get trickier to find six things. The days of plenty are long gone, a certain amount of creativity is required. Your Six on Saturday mission, should you chose to accept it, find Six things, in your garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything, you know the drill.

*this is a full English breakfast reference. Chickens are “involved” in breakfast, pigs are “committed!”

Here are mine:

1 – 20 litre pots. You’ll be glad to know I escaped the attention of the feds** last Saturday, collecting this little lot without incident. I have an increasingly dilapidated collection of flimsy 9L florist buckets which I have used for tomatoes and for general use on the patio. I got them in Morrisons a few years ago for pennies each but they have changed their approach for flower delivery and they no longer use the buckets, so that route is closed now. Shame. In any case I wanted some bigger pots and these fit the bill perfectly. They’re quite robust and have handy carrying handles. I bought them second hand off a tree nursery, I imagine they use them for growing on young trees.

**po-po, babylon, fuzz, bizzies, cops, coppers, old bill, peelers, federales, rozzers, plod, 5-oh, bobbies, filth, Thames Valley’s Finest.

2 – Tulip planting. Last Sunday I made a good dent in the remaining tulip backlog, planting eight of those big pots. Approximately 20 went into each one. Being quite large they take quite a lot of compost to fill. Fortunately I have a goodly (and free) supply of home made compost which I’m very happy to use for this purpose.

3 – Tulip planting combos. Cheating slightly here by showing advanced viewing of what is to come.

Negrita Double, Orange Princess, Red Princess

Pretty Princess, Mistress Mystic, Slawa.

Negrita, Angel’s Wish, National Velvet.

All tulip images are from Parker’s Wholesale website, from whence they came. Very much looking forward to seeing them in the flesh next spring.

4 – Camelia ‘Nuccio’s Pearl’ bud. Exciting, my first camellia. Bought as a small shrub earlier this year, this is its first winter in the ground. I planted it in a big hole backfilled mostly with ericaceous compost. I expect I will need to top it up every now and again as I don’t have acidic soil. It hasn’t put on an awful lot of growth this year, so it needs to get its finger out.

5 – Leaves. Remember the virginia creeper from last week? Most of those leaves are on the floor now, mixed up here with the nearby dwarf magnolia.

6 – Fading hosta. Gradually sinking back into the soil, this will soon vanish until next spring.

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to have a crack, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours that would be tip top. For more details you can read the brief guide.

Have a splendid gardening weekend. If the weather allows I plan to plant more tulips. I may even get to the daffodils, we’ll see. Don’t forget to check back as more links get added during the day.

Stay safe, I’ll be back next weekend with another #SixOnSaturday.