Gone to Pot .....

March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers, but will March come in like a lion or a lamb? However with all the adverse weather we have had thrown at us this year we will just have to keep our fingers crossed that the climate changes forecast don't change too radically just yet. What a good thing politicians aren't in charge of the weather!

We are exhorted by gardening gurus to dig, manure, lift and divide, weed etc - so this is when the serious work starts. Removing all vestiges of bind weed is my priority this year, but however much one digs deeply there always seems to be a miniscule piece of root left in the ground which will defy all methods of killing (particularly as I like to be as organic as possible) and sprout forth with a least ten more shoots! A mulch of old carpeting is supposed to do the trick - so I could take an easy chair out onto the vegetable plot in the summer and defy the weeds to appear - a bit like King Canute commanding the waves to recede and probably just as fruitless.

On the one hand we are urged to encourage butterflies into our gardens, but they can be a real pest, laying eggs on green leafed vegetables, which end up resembling aertex shirts having been ravaged by caterpillars. I was amused to read the following by a sixteenth century Italian, Girolamo Firensuol. "Go into the garden at dawn on Sunday and on bare knees say three Hail Marys and three Paternosters, in reverence to the Trinity, then take a cabbage or some other leaf eaten by caterpillars and put inside two or three of them and say 'Caterpillars come with me to Mass'; then take the whole thing along to Church and before listening to the Mass let the little parcel fall. After this the caterpillars will disappear from the garden - this is not a joke, it has been proved to work and its practice is still in use". Where, I wonder? It's a little doubtful that I shall adopt this practice, for several reasons but particularly because, as my Mother says, I like the streets to be aired before I get up!

The seed catalogues have been arriving thick and fast since the back end of last year. As the choice grows I am becoming more and more confused but hope I have got my selection down to a fine art. I trawl through each one, writing down what I would like, then compare it with what the other catalogues have and choose the best price and seed count wise. When they arrive I put them into the relevant months in a box, which starts off immaculately in order then deteriorates as the months go by.

One catalogue, more like a bodice ripping best-seller and good bed time reading, stars a Fat Lazy Blonde - lettuce that is - with a big round heart. I then went on to read of at least seventy five different varieties so am really spoilt for choice. I think I will try one or two but I usually grow cut and come again saladings as they are perfectly happy in the greenhouse and provide at least three cuttings and are safe from slugs.

In Greek mythology the love story of the goddess Aphrodite and the young Adonis had a dramatic ending when the latter was killed by a wild boar in a garden of lettuces in which he had hidden - all I can say is thank goodness there are no wild boar in Lincolnshire because who knows what would happen if I sat in my arm chair on my carpet mulch in the vegetable plot surrounded by all those lettuces.

Floreat Hortus