A potful of dust

It's been wet most of the day, but this morning I had a visit from the friend who'd offered, or maybe agreed, to take all my prunings to the dump on Monday. She wanted to spy out the land to see how to get her trailer up the drive. 

After lunch I decided to dress up and chop my hazel as planned. It wasn't too hard to cut down as most of the stems were lopper-sized - only a couple needed a saw. I then had to throw them over the edge to land on the tarmac in front of my garage down at the roadside. Soon had them chopped into small pieces and filled a fourth bulk bag! It's not a cold day and wearing waterproofs was very warm. I was probably just as wet inside as if I hadn't worn them!

Nothing much to Blip outside, so here's a picture of a yoghurt tub. Oh, well more than that actually. I discovered that Yeo Valley yoghurt tubs are excellent for growing ferns from spores. A three-inch plastic pot fits inside very well! This is my latest - Culcita macrocarpa. It's a tree fern from western parts of Spain and Portugal and also from all of the islands of Macaronesia. I wonder if they eat pasta there. Whether it's hardy here I don't know, so why should I be growing it? Because I can, is the answer. 

I obtained the fern spores from somebody at a BPS meeting a while ago. It's fun to try and I recommend anyone with a horticultural bent to have a go. 

Here's what to do. First sterilise the pot thoroughly with boiling water and fill with the compost of your choice. Cut a circle out of a folded piece of kitchen roll to fit the top of the pot and carefully pour boiling water over it, drenching the pot and contents. The paper saves the compost from being turned to mud. Cover or put in a bag to allow it to cool down without being contaminated with any harmful spores floating by, and then when it's cool sow the spores carefully over the surface - they're just like dust so be careful not to sneeze! Drop the pot carefully into the yoghurt tub, wipe a smear of Vaseline around the rim and put the lid on. Stand it in a warm, shady place and wait for several years!

These spores were sown in October last year and though they look like moss they had better not be! You can leave them in the tub until they eventually turn into baby ferns when you can carefully split then up and pot them. You then grow them on for ten years, plant them out, and they die the first winter. But it was fun trying!

Actually there are thousands of beautiful ferns which are quite hardy, so best to begin with one of those!