Giving it all away

A great thing about gardening is the passing on of stuff (whether it be it seeds, tools or plants) from one gardener to another. We don’t “give to receive” but there’s something nice about imparting something and then weeks later you get given something from someone totally unrelated. A Zen mate of ours told us this was “the universe rearranging itself”.

This week the universe has been on the rearrangement tip as the other day while going through the bag we take to work we found a folded piece of loo roll with a peg on it. “What the?” we thought as we began to unravel the mystery packet (above: packet with foxglove and lily seeds). Then we remembered a friend had given us some foxglove seeds.

On Thursday we had a workmate kindly pass on some lily seed heads (we’ve never grown lilies from seed before so any advice appreciated!) and last night a Tai Chi classmate brought in these well-healthy foxglove seedlings (below) which went in today. It now looks like we need to repay the universe for this week’s gifts. Anyone fancy some Egyptian onion sets?

 

Those lovable spiky tops

The dahlias in the back garden are still going strong, here they are this morning before the rain fell. We’ve had a few vases worth of them this year and there’s still no sign of frosts yet. These spikey orange/red ones were originally bought as one tuber from Shannon’s. Apart from once when they were left in the ground, they were mainly dug up after the first frosts, cleaned up and put under the stairs most winters until this spring where they were divided up and put back into various areas in the garden.

A big thanks to our good mate Andy for his top gardening tips including telling us about the excellent Adam The Gardener series years ago whose top tip for dahlias is shown above. Divide your tubers and get more for your money!

And whilst looking through our old blog posts about the ‘umble dahlia we found this brilliant Earl Gateshead Big Youth podcast. Tune in and turn on!