Ah, how I love March! One of my favorite months, that much is clear. The crocuses stick their brightly colored heads through the murky foliage, the woodpecker crackles in my apple tree, and I can literally watch the daffodils grow. Splendid!
The wheel of the eternal gardener, it’s slowly turning faster again, and if you keep your eyes open just a little bit, you can’t avoid spotting the first signs of spring around every corner. In the herb bed, the chives are showing off their young greens in the winter sun, the first tulips are showing their tops, and this morning I caught two pigeons kissing on the banister leading to my garden. Love is in the air! Matching the season, I started the first work last weekend.
These guys from the station have power
A firefighter came by to help me trim the old apple trees when he has time. “Well, nu abba uff’n last Poeng”, he said in greeting and pressed the handshake. What he meant was clear. According to the Federal Nature Conservation Act, Section 5, Section 39, garden owners must leave their trees alone between March 1st and September 30th.
You, my dear readers, probably know that. But it’s possible that a garden novice has stumbled onto this page, so it doesn’t hurt to emphasize it again. So please don’t cut trees anymore! The few birds that we still have out there should be able to devote themselves to the production of their offspring in peace. Toi, toi, boys and girls, you have my blessing.
When the fireman was standing in my garden, it was still the end of February, so “uff’n last’n Poeng”, and we sniped in the freezing cold and the most beautiful winter sun. I will briefly summarize the most important findings of this day: Always cut directly on the trunk, i.e. do not leave any “hooks” through which parasites could possibly get into the tree. Vertical water shoots can be removed, but not necessarily all. If it goes horizontally, it will eventually become fresh fruit wood.
If a branch is to form a side shoot, it is cut a few millimeters above an outwardly protruding eye. The last eye in front of the interface drives out the most. And last but not least: remove the mummies, i.e. last year’s shriveled fruits. The fungi and pathogens hibernate in them – and we don’t want them.
After the firefighter and I hung in the treetop for four hours, I was completely wasted. A backache is inherent in every beginning! We drank a cup of coffee, made an appointment for next year, and when we said goodbye he gave me another hearty paw. Ouch! These guys from the station have real power. The day was half over and no longer usable for larger projects. But now I was outside, so I swept the garden shed, freed the seed boxes from winter dirt, found the balloon shower and got the soil baler ready for use. Have you ever seen a part like this? In the modern gardening community, soil balers are all the hot shit – honestly true!
The device is made of metal, about 20 centimeters wide and looks like a large, silver stamp. It has five “compartments” measuring 4 by 4 centimeters into which moist seed soil is stuffed. These are then pressed as compressed cubes into a seed tray or a mini greenhouse. Large balers are commonplace in industrial agriculture, but for us hobby gardeners, they’ve only been around in miniature for a few years. At least to my knowledge.
Because the press spits out small cubes, a whole row of them fits next to each other. Unlike, for example, round cardboard pots or egg cartons; they always fall over and look slovenly after three waterings at the latest. Another advantage of the square pellets: the young seedlings are spared a transplant shock. Where you normally move from one pot to the next larger one, the sowing by press remains on the plastic tray or in the mini greenhouse until it is planted out.
Sowing requires concentration and foresight
Conveniently, the device punches a small hole in each cube of soil, and then, of course, the respective seed lands. I love this piece and brought it to our conservatory along with the other planting supplies. It always annoys my husband. “The only time of year we could really use the conservatory is nowhe always moans, “and you fill everything up with your boxes.” He is not entirely wrong.
Nobody sits in a conservatory in summer – it’s too beautiful outside. In winter, these luxury extensions are usually too cold. We cool our crates of drinks in it and overwinter the agapanthus. Only now, in early spring, is a conservatory fun. When the days get longer and the sun sends the first warm rays, you could make yourself comfortable in it, fill up on light, treat yourself to a nap. Theoretically. In my case, as I said, the space is needed for more urgent things.
I pushed the sofa aside and now there are six different seed boxes waiting to be stocked. I couldn’t do that anymore. Or rather – I couldn’t decide. Concentration and foresight are required when sowing. Just the tomatoes! I have 24 different varieties this year. They come from a seed calendar that I received as a gift from a young gardener at the beginning of December. A colorful package full of rarities: “Chukhloma”, a bottle stick tomato from the Black Sea. “Oranje van Goeijenbier”, a cherry tomato from Peru. Or “Mickey Mouse Red”, a stick tomato from the Ukraine.
Handwritten instructions were included with the calendar. “Have fun growing,” the young gardener wrote, “and make sure you cover the seed with vermiculite and leave it in the dark for three days. And after that – a lot of light.” This calendar will probably turn out to be the best Christmas present of all time by August at the latest. I’ll report, I promise.
What else goes in the bed? Definitely kohlrabi, I like them. And definitely beetroot again. This year I’m going to try the “Tonda di Chioggia” variety, which is ringed with white and red and looks spectacular in any salad. By the way, beetroot lowers blood pressure and is healthy for the liver. The betaine contained in the tuber reduces the fat in the liver. I don’t think you can expect more from a vegetable. Well, what else? Cucumbers, palm cabbage and definitely green orache. It has a lot of vitamin C and tastes even better than spinach.
As you can see, dear readers, I have things to do in the coming weeks. So while you’re comfortably browsing through this text with a second cup of coffee, I’m quite likely to be pressing earth cubes and turning our conservatory into a propagation greenhouse. And I really don’t care if it annoys my husband or not. Because, if you please, is there anything nicer in life than being there live as a plant grows from a seed?
Sabine place has been working as a television journalist for ZDF for more than 20 years. There she regularly produces reports on the subject of nature, gardens, ecology and sustainability for the “Platz im Garten” section in the “Morgenmagazin”. In October 2021 her book “In the garden: Between tuber and compost lies the whole of life”.