Some people are fortunate enough to have conservatories or greenhouses.\u00a0 I am not one of them–yet.\u00a0 Instead I have a potting room in the cellar.\u00a0 It’s a former home workshop and not much to look at, but it’s only steps away from the door the leads out into my back garden, so it’s very convenient.<\/p>\n
Now that cold weather is here and my daily garden chores are usually limited to a tour of the frozen beds, I have embarked on a campaign to take back my potting room.\u00a0 Recent construction has wrought havoc with the space.\u00a0 A wall was removed, providing better access to the back door, but in the process all the pots and equipment that had been stored on the shelves in front of the old wall had to be stowed on the bench and on the floor.\u00a0 Paint cans left over from last summer’s house painting somehow piled themselves up in the same space.\u00a0 Mess begets more mess, so all the other bits and pieces of construction detritus also found their way to my little potting room.\u00a0 When I plucked up the courage to go back in there a few days ago, I saw that every surface and much of the floor was covered.\u00a0 Since I have the usual big plans for indoor plants, seedling starts and other horticultural adventures, I knew that there was only one thing that would help me restore order in the space–a box of large trash bags.<\/p>\n
I was amazed at what I found in the course of clearing the space.\u00a0 When all those paint cans went out to the garage, I found our old fishbowl, which I plan to make into a terrarium.\u00a0 The three foot tall mini-greenhouse that I have used in the past for sprouting cuttings and cosseting tender plants was hidden under several large plastic drop cloths.\u00a0 I also discovered three amaryllis, which I had forgotten to bring up from the cellar before all the mayhem started last summer.\u00a0 Two were dead, but one was alive and had a green leaf beginning to sprout out of the bulb.\u00a0 I took the survivor upstairs, watered it thoroughly and set it in a bright windowsill.\u00a0 We’ll see what happens.<\/p>\n
I thought that I had a dearth of potting supplies; now I have discovered that I have more than enough.\u00a0 This is because last spring, when I couldn’t find the potting mix that I knew was somewhere in the house, I bought another bag.\u00a0 The same thing happened with bags of vermiculite and activated charcoal.\u00a0 Now that all those bags have been uncovered and consolidated I can roll up my sleeves and start potting.\u00a0 It is truly comforting to know that if we get snowed in for two or three weeks this winter I won’t have to worry about running out of vermiculite.<\/p>\n
Now my pots are sorted by size into neat, easy-to-reach stacks.\u00a0 Before the great potting room purge I had held back on buying more pot saucers because I was convinced that there were hundreds lurking in the cellar.\u00a0 Now I know that there were really only three of them down there, one of which was cracked.\u00a0 Fortunately I can buy new pot saucers with the money that I will save by not having to buy potting soil.<\/p>\n
I also found the bundles of dried achillea, lavender, hydrangea and nigella seed pods that I put aside a year ago.\u00a0 This was timely.\u00a0 Everything that didn’t crumble when I touched it went on a wreath for the front porch.<\/p>\n
I can root cuttings with wild abandon now, because I found the package of rooting hormone that had been languishing under the terra cotta toad house that someone gave me several Christmases ago.\u00a0 And I will be able to identify those cuttings because I also came across a cache of plant markers.<\/p>\n
The cleaning-out process also involved a certain amount of domestic archaeology.\u00a0 I found a few of the many containers of beach glass that my daughter has retrieved over the years from the beach in front of our summer cottage.\u00a0 They reminded me of all the summers of her childhood, which is especially poignant because next September she will go off to college.\u00a0 Beach glass is beautiful displayed in clear glass vases.\u00a0 It is also lovely in plant pots, playing the duel role of decorative soil covering and cat-digging deterrent.\u00a0 When next year rolls around my nest will be empty but my pots will be full of beach glass.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I will scrub off the newly cleared bench, ferry the last of the painting supplies out to the garage, sweep the floor and set up my garden equipment so everything is at arm’s reach once again.\u00a0 I recommend this exercise to fellow gardeners who are looking ahead to the New Year.\u00a0 Even if you don’t have a potting room, there is probably some part of your living space that holds garden tools and supplies.\u00a0 Take a good look and throw some things away because simplification is good for the soul.\u00a0 Replace essential supplies that have run out.\u00a0 Remember that a tidal wave of new plant and seed catalogs will surge through the mail slot right after the holidays, and it will be all you can do at the end of each long workday to leaf through four or five of them.\u00a0 Besides, if a blizzard comes in January, you don’t want to be caught short when the urge to repot an African violet or root a Christmas cactus cutting comes over you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people are fortunate enough to have conservatories or greenhouses.\u00a0 I am not one of them–yet.\u00a0 Instead I have a potting room in the cellar.\u00a0 It’s a former home workshop and not much to look at, but it’s only steps away from the door the leads out into my back garden, so it’s very convenient. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1758,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/1758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}