Ow
I spent this afternoon gardening. And now I hurt. I know it doesn't seem like a particularly physical hobby: my Nana gardens after all, but there you go - nice afternoon in the sun, and tonight I can't bend down enough to reach my own feet :(
I should probably note at this point that my garden is only a balcony, since my flat is on the middle floor of three. I haven't let that stop me, though: in a space 4m long by 1.5 m wide, I currently have 51 pots of plants (some pots are big and have more than one). There are more if you count the herbs and orchid on my kitchen windowsill, the aloes on the bathroom windowsill and the unkillable triffid (aka devil's ivy) that technically sits on my desk at work, but is actually now long enough to frame the desks of my neighbors on either side. I think it adds a nice touch of green to the place ;)
I am more of an optimistic gardener than a successful one: my plants have an unfortunately high turnover rate, and those that survive tend to be a bit spindly-looking and not flower very often. Once a season or so I indulge myself with a trip to the nursery and come home with a bunch of new ones to replace those I have killed through either neglect or an excess of zeal, depending on whether I have been at home during daylight hours recently. Mostly I am good and buy seedlings or those 'potted colour' annuals which are only going to last 6 months anyway, which makes me feel slightly less guilty when the poor things are eaten alive by caterpillars or mites or whatever the current pest of the month is.
This is a photo of some of the annuals I planted this Autumn just past:
They catch the late afternoon sun nicely, but are sadly a favourite food for everything that flies past, hence all the holes in the leaves. They're thus not nearly as nice as the pansies I saw in New Zealand which had bumblebees to help:
Unfortunately having my garden stuck partway up the side of the building means I get the pests without the predators, so end up wielding the nasty pesticides far more often than I am happy with, which is why I don't grow tomatoes or lettuce or anything else that might actually be considered practical. The herbs live indoors for that very reason, though I've only got marjoram and parsley at the moment. The basil was mercy-killed last week since the poor thing had only flowers and no leaves, which was not very helpful. Considering that it was originally from a bunch that I bought in the supermarket for 50c last time I needed some for a salad, though, it did OK really :) I'd put it in a jar on the windowsill to keep it fresh for a few days and it sprouted roots so I planted it to see what would happen. I have a few things which have grown that way, including a sweet potato, of all things, that was growing so well in the pantry in the dark that I decided to see what it could do in a pot. Also the triffid at work, which started out as three leaves that I cut from a colleagues plant .
The targets of today's gardening efforts were the core of my collection, which I am attached to enough to fight the insects and the caterpillars for: 3 full-sized and 4 miniature rosebushes. The miniatures do fairly well, being bred especially for pots on balconies. The normal bushes, though are not really happy in pots and I have to coddle them a bit to get any flowers out of them. I normally repot them every winter, but skipped last year because lifting a rosebush is something that really takes two hands, and this time last year my right hand couldn't even hold a coffee cup. I got flowers from all three last Spring, but only the Iceberg flowered through the summer and into the Autumn, so something was definitely needed this winter.
I pruned all the bushes yesterday, then repotted today, since it was warm and sunny after last week's rain. Visiting the nursery to buy potting mix was fun - It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I was mostly good and didn't buy too many new annuals. The pain started when I had to lug everything upstairs: 30L bags of potting mix are heavy. I then spent several hours kneeling in the small corridor of free space on the balcony lifting bushes out of their pots into a bucket, tipping the old soil into a different bucket, filling the pot with new potting mix, replanting the bush, then mulching the pot properly. For all seven bushes.
Interestingly enough it turned out that even though all three bushes are in a row along the same edge of the balcony and get watered more or less evenly, the yellow one was sopping wet and had no where near as much rootball as it should have; the pink one looked fine even though it only had two flowers last year, and the reliable white iceberg was dry as a bone and totally pot-bound. Go figure. The miniatures were all soaked, but they got rained on a lot last week, so that's not unexpected.
By the time I was done it was dark already - I'm sure my neighbors-in-the-next-building who look down on my balcony were most amused. I then had to lug the buckets of old soil downstairs to tip on the strip of garden along the entry path, crawl around sweeping all the spilt soil and bits of mulch up from around all the other pots, then vacuum up all the dirt I'd tracked over the carpet while lugging buckets. Gardening was so much easier back when I actually did it outside...
I think the real killer is the kneeling, though: it's just such a silly angle to be doing things at, and my back is horribly intolerant of silly angles these days: anything except bolt upright or lying flat, really. I've now added 'enough outside space for a potting bench' to the list of things any house I eventually buy has to have. I'd like to have a whole shed, but suspect that may be asking a bit much given my likely budget :)
In the meantime, my heat pack is currently my best friend. This summer's roses had better be worth it!
I should probably note at this point that my garden is only a balcony, since my flat is on the middle floor of three. I haven't let that stop me, though: in a space 4m long by 1.5 m wide, I currently have 51 pots of plants (some pots are big and have more than one). There are more if you count the herbs and orchid on my kitchen windowsill, the aloes on the bathroom windowsill and the unkillable triffid (aka devil's ivy) that technically sits on my desk at work, but is actually now long enough to frame the desks of my neighbors on either side. I think it adds a nice touch of green to the place ;)
I am more of an optimistic gardener than a successful one: my plants have an unfortunately high turnover rate, and those that survive tend to be a bit spindly-looking and not flower very often. Once a season or so I indulge myself with a trip to the nursery and come home with a bunch of new ones to replace those I have killed through either neglect or an excess of zeal, depending on whether I have been at home during daylight hours recently. Mostly I am good and buy seedlings or those 'potted colour' annuals which are only going to last 6 months anyway, which makes me feel slightly less guilty when the poor things are eaten alive by caterpillars or mites or whatever the current pest of the month is.
This is a photo of some of the annuals I planted this Autumn just past:
They catch the late afternoon sun nicely, but are sadly a favourite food for everything that flies past, hence all the holes in the leaves. They're thus not nearly as nice as the pansies I saw in New Zealand which had bumblebees to help:
Unfortunately having my garden stuck partway up the side of the building means I get the pests without the predators, so end up wielding the nasty pesticides far more often than I am happy with, which is why I don't grow tomatoes or lettuce or anything else that might actually be considered practical. The herbs live indoors for that very reason, though I've only got marjoram and parsley at the moment. The basil was mercy-killed last week since the poor thing had only flowers and no leaves, which was not very helpful. Considering that it was originally from a bunch that I bought in the supermarket for 50c last time I needed some for a salad, though, it did OK really :) I'd put it in a jar on the windowsill to keep it fresh for a few days and it sprouted roots so I planted it to see what would happen. I have a few things which have grown that way, including a sweet potato, of all things, that was growing so well in the pantry in the dark that I decided to see what it could do in a pot. Also the triffid at work, which started out as three leaves that I cut from a colleagues plant .
The targets of today's gardening efforts were the core of my collection, which I am attached to enough to fight the insects and the caterpillars for: 3 full-sized and 4 miniature rosebushes. The miniatures do fairly well, being bred especially for pots on balconies. The normal bushes, though are not really happy in pots and I have to coddle them a bit to get any flowers out of them. I normally repot them every winter, but skipped last year because lifting a rosebush is something that really takes two hands, and this time last year my right hand couldn't even hold a coffee cup. I got flowers from all three last Spring, but only the Iceberg flowered through the summer and into the Autumn, so something was definitely needed this winter.
I pruned all the bushes yesterday, then repotted today, since it was warm and sunny after last week's rain. Visiting the nursery to buy potting mix was fun - It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I was mostly good and didn't buy too many new annuals. The pain started when I had to lug everything upstairs: 30L bags of potting mix are heavy. I then spent several hours kneeling in the small corridor of free space on the balcony lifting bushes out of their pots into a bucket, tipping the old soil into a different bucket, filling the pot with new potting mix, replanting the bush, then mulching the pot properly. For all seven bushes.
Interestingly enough it turned out that even though all three bushes are in a row along the same edge of the balcony and get watered more or less evenly, the yellow one was sopping wet and had no where near as much rootball as it should have; the pink one looked fine even though it only had two flowers last year, and the reliable white iceberg was dry as a bone and totally pot-bound. Go figure. The miniatures were all soaked, but they got rained on a lot last week, so that's not unexpected.
By the time I was done it was dark already - I'm sure my neighbors-in-the-next-building who look down on my balcony were most amused. I then had to lug the buckets of old soil downstairs to tip on the strip of garden along the entry path, crawl around sweeping all the spilt soil and bits of mulch up from around all the other pots, then vacuum up all the dirt I'd tracked over the carpet while lugging buckets. Gardening was so much easier back when I actually did it outside...
I think the real killer is the kneeling, though: it's just such a silly angle to be doing things at, and my back is horribly intolerant of silly angles these days: anything except bolt upright or lying flat, really. I've now added 'enough outside space for a potting bench' to the list of things any house I eventually buy has to have. I'd like to have a whole shed, but suspect that may be asking a bit much given my likely budget :)
In the meantime, my heat pack is currently my best friend. This summer's roses had better be worth it!