Good News

Posted By on 13th December 2015

After much waiting, we are hopeful that the work on the garden will start before Xmas.

It will involve many separate elements. Get rid of the concrete, build retaining walls and steps, dig out and gravel the drive, and finally come to some arrangement for the car, a shed and a greenhouse, where the old garage and shed used to be. The exact specifications of the latter depending very much on cost.

For several weeks now I’ve been relocating plants that were deemed to be in the way of this work and moving pots, canes, garden ornaments and the like to a safe area.

Today came the job I can put off no longer. Dig out one of the largest clumps of Gladys’s crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, which regular readers will know is a particular favourite of mine.

Judging by the size of the plants and corms some of them could have been there 30 years or more. It was quite a job.

As things stand I have no idea where they will be re-planted long-term, so at the moment I just need to store them safely until Spring.

If you read the books on ‘storing crocosmia corms’ they are full of gloom and doom. Store them too moist and they rot and die. Store them too dry and they shrivel and die.

So somewhere in-between then!

By the time I’d finished I had 2 black buckets overflowing with corms. I simply buried 1 bucketful in a hole in the ground. The others I packed with soil into a large plastic trug with drainage holes and covered with a sack.

Hopefully by these 2 methods Glady’s ‘Lucifers” will survive another 30 years, but to be honest I’ll be happy if in 12 months time I can take another photo of them looking like this.

LuciferIV2

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