Sunflower watch: sowing seeds into Wool Pots

I was given a free sample of these Wool Pots - an alternative to plastic plant pots - to try for myself, and so I’m marking this post as an ad, as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

It’s been a fair while since I’ve sown some seeds, and far too long really. There’s been a number of reasons why I haven’t, but one of the big factors was the lack of success the last time I tried - well, not with the seeds, but with the actual growing on. That was a lot to do with the lack of light in our old garden given the tree canopy, which because of lockdown was way behind its usual pollarding schedule.

And then we decided to put our house on the market, and our priorities were to sell the house, and naively I thought it would be relatively quick, so I wanted to avoid moving more plants than we needed to - and no, I wasn’t planning on leaving them for the new owners! All in all moving house ran over two growing seasons, and so when we arrived here in July planting seeds couldn’t have been further from my mind.

I don’t have a greenhouse here (yet), so it’s not ideal for sowing seeds but I was keen to get growing again. Dad also gave me some seeds for a multi-headed sunflower and so with seeds, wool pots and the will to get sowing, what could go wrong?

And yes, the wool pots are well named - they are made of wool, and are pots!

They are knitted from washed wool… and while knitting plant pots sounds strange but the makers assure that Wool Pots are strong, naturally biodegradable, environmentally friendly and plants love them. The company aims to raise the awareness of the plastic problem in horticulture and let people know there is an alternative, and show them a solution. Wool pots are also proud members of the Campaign for Wool and are thrilled to be helping farmers find a new market for their wool.

Rather than bring the seeds indoors, which is an obvious way of giving them some heat, I kept them in the garage opting to use my heated propagator, and bring them out into the sun during the day, which was a fair bit of faffing but it did result in a majority germination - with five out of eight pots producing seedlings, though some were slower to germinate than others.

As the days went on, the seedlings started to grow their true leaves, not just the seedling leaves. It’s worth noting that the wool pots should have space between them to prevent the roots merging into each other - the space enables ‘air pruning’ and will make it easier to plant them on when the time comes.

But my biggest concern now that they’d germinated was when to leave them outside, but thankfully the weather decided to improve to help with that. With the seedlings nestled down in one of my currently half-empty pots, and in a more sheltered part of the garden I braved it, and they all survived!

In fact they’re all doing really well, with more leaves developing and getting taller too. Now instead of bringing them out of and into the garage each day, I’m checking that they’re not growing into each other - and so far so good.

I’m sure it won’t be long before I need to work out where to plant them so that they can grow to their full potential. And the best bit, is you can pot on the whole wool pot - I’ll share how I get on when the time comes.

* With thanks to Wool Pots for providing a sample of their innovative project for me to try.

A pincushion and two pouches for starters

My journey with the Adult Learning classes here in Newark continues, I’m currently attending the Machine Sewing for Beginners class for bags, and while I’m not a beginner with my sewing machine, I am new to bags. I also want to up my skill levels on putting in zips and buttonholes and as both of these are covered in the 6 week course, and knowing how good the courses I’ve been on so far have been, I signed myself up.

This is actually my third course - I started with the Gelli Plate Printing class and then quickly followed that with an Indian Block Printing and Stitch course, which was amazing and I’m hooked on printing onto fabric. I’ve not shared much of that yet, and none here though you may have seen some on my Instagram feed and stories, but I have so much to share from that one, so keep an eye out for that.

The bag making class is small - there’s just five of us and the tutor, and the skill level is mixed which is something I anticipated when I signed up. However there is still much to learn, especially as I’m using a machine provided by the course which is a newer model than mine and has a top loading bobbin which I’d not seen before, and it’s also nice to spend time with other people doing the same thing.

It’s also been hands-on too, some theory obviously, but not overly so. In fact the first week we all left having made a pincushion, so that was nice. As I wasn’t sure what it’d be like or what we would start with, I decided to take along fabric that wasn’t at the top of my favourites list, and that which I’d probably not rush to use.

And so that first week I made a Christmas pincushion, like you do!

I’d misjudged the seam allowance on the new-to-me machine and only realised once I’d turned the pincushion the right way through, which meant that hand sewing the closure was more tricky than it needed to be and therefore it wasn’t as neat as it could have been.

That annoyed me in a minor way, but later on I realised that I could pimp up my pin cushion and make it even more Christmassy by adding a simple red and white twine around the edge. The ‘twine’ I used is actually paper (but quite solid) which I’d saved from Christmas presents last year!

There was nothing wrong with it before, but I’m much happier with it now!

Next up it was a simple pouch, and for this we needed two pieces of material - outer material and lining - approximately the size of an A4 sheet of paper. While I had my B team material to choose from, I also had something else in mind. It was a bit smaller than needed but as this sort of pouch can be flexible on size I decided to go for it, and left with this completed pouch.

I’ve not made anything like this for a long time, and this was easier than I remembered. As the tutor said she’s a big fan of straight line sewing, and this is mostly that - and the purple popper sets it off nicely too, and complements the purple batik lining (which was firmly in my B team fabric list).

There was one part that I wasn’t entirely happy with (again) - if you look in the bottom left hand corner you can see the sewing is a bit wild where I started off and revved the machine a little too much and off it went! It was a shame it was on the plain background of the material, had it been on the other side in the pattern I don’t think I’d have noticed it quite so much.

But I wasn’t undoing it, this was a practice pouch and it still worked perfectly well.

Then I realised I had some ribbon that was very similar to the background colour, so I dug that out and added an embellishment in that corner, front and back.

Now it looks as if it was always meant to be there, and I’m much, much happier.

I also got to start another similar but different pouch - one that’s ideal for sunglasses, and as I didn’t have sunglasses case it was perfect for me. I choose A team material for the outside, and again B team material for the lining. There’s nothing wrong with the lining material, but I think a lot of what I’m calling my B team materials just look better in small doses!

The outer material reminds me of Portuguese tiles, and the lining of a man’s shirt from the 1970s!

And for a change this one hasn’t been pimped up, I finished it in the third week of the course just as the sun decided to make an appearance (at last!) - so I couldn’t have timed it better!

My garden in April

In my previous update I shared how our garden was reawakening, bringing colour with daffodils and the start of the tulips, this month that continued and although the weather hasn’t been great the garden has been stoic - the tulips have done their thing and made me smile during the windier days, and the blossom has been fab. I’ve so many more photos, so that’s another sign that the weather is on the up!

I’m glad I captured the tulips on the patio being blown about - it made me smile, though I’m guessing the tulips weren’t quite so keen! I wasn’t sure if they would right themselves as even once the wind stopped they stayed bent, but after a while they did straighten up again, though some of them stayed a little wayward - as tulips do!

The trees have started to flourish this month, and some more than others but I’ll come onto that. The crab apple tree started with the deepest pink blossom, which faded to pale pink and then white as the flowers opened. By the end of the month most of the blossom has gone - either naturally or helped by the wind, so I’m hoping that we’ll have plenty of crab apples to harvest later in the year.

I had concerns about one of the field maples, we have three in the outside border. The central one wasn’t in leaf as much as the other two and so I sought some advice from the RHS, which I didn’t realised I could do until now. The advice confirmed my suspicions and some remedial work has been needed, so we did that one sunny Saturday morning with much trepidation. It’s early days, and of course the tree is now much smaller than the other two which is a shame, but a healthier tree is a much more preferable result. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more good news on this in future, but for now please keep your fingers crossed.

There’s better news elsewhere in the garden though. The small nectarine tree which I brought home from dad has thrived over the winter, and last month I shared its blossom. This month I finally braved my knot skills and made a frame for it from bamboo canes and twine. And I was quite impressed with how it turned out.

I checked to see how it was doing towards the end of the month, and look, there looks like there may be tiny fruits starting to grow. There’s a few on each branch (but this is the best photo I have), so who knows what I’ll be able to share later in the year.

The potted acer outside our back door is full of leaves now, and I think could probably do with a trim - but it seems happy where it is as I’m not sure I remember seeing so many leaves on it before. I’m not complaining though.

See what I mean about how joyous the crab apple blossom is?

With a brown bin collection due I decided to make the most of that and a sunny morning, and took my secateurs to the buddleia bush. At one point I thought this whole bush would be for the chop, but after seeing how many butterflies and bees it brought to the garden I had a change of heart, so I pruned it instead. And then it all grew back, and so I’ve cut it a little bit harder this time. I’m under no illusion though that I won’t be cutting this again, and again though!

I bought some seedling lettuces at the garden centre this month, and then realised I no longer have a greenhouse. I also realised this again after I sowed some sunflowers, but more on that another time. Of course I know I don’t have a greenhouse, but it’s only when you have small plants (or seeds) that you realise how useful a greenhouse would be. Instead though the lettuces have been sheltering low down in one of the pots we brought with us from London, in one of the more sheltered spots I’d found. I potted them on and then nestled them into place, and they’ve done really well so I’m hopeful we’ll be eating red lettuce this summer.

I love raindrops on plants, especially on lupins - and this month as well as the wind, the lupins we bought at the Newark Garden Show, got to experience that first hand too.

In other good news the silver birch whip which we picked up from our council back in January is alive. I wasn’t sure what it would do, especially as I put it into a pot rather than straight into the ground, but when I checked it I was really pleased to see leaves at the base and midway up the stick of a tree. There’s buds all the way to the top of the plant, so with a few more nicer days I’m sure there’ll be more leaves to come.

The small apple tree which we brought from London is also back in leaf. I’ve been wondering where we can plant this and coming up blank as the gaps we have are a bit too close to the house, or as the tree grows would block views we currently enjoy. Talking through the start of our garden plans with MOH we realised that the back wall might also be an option for this tree, though it is much more mature than the nectarine tree above I’m going to look at it more closely to see if that too can also be trained to grow along a frame. I suspect that it would benefit from refreshed soil and some weeding in any case - as over the past few years it’s been left to fend for itself standing on the step outside our old shed.

While checking to see how the pots had overwintered I was pleased to see the redcurrant plant which hadn’t really thrived in our previous garden was in leaf, but more surprised to see that one of the peonies has already started to grow though its circular support.

I can’t wait to see how our garden develops in the next month, I’m sure I’ll have much more to share next time round.