Hey! It’s been a hot minute.
I’m absolutely ecstatic to announce that I have successfully completed the first three weeks of my new job… and it’s the best decision I ever made.
Don’t get me wrong, it has been such hard work. The areas I’m responsible for have had a major problem with pests.
Mealybugs, glasshouse whitefly, scale, and fungus gnats. All creatures that are the bane of any plant enthusiast’s life.
Everything that could be moved out of the glasshouse was moved out. Everything was washed down, pruned back, with the walls, floor, and the brackets disinfected. It now looks beautiful!
And on Saturdays, I’ve been attending the RHS Practical Horticulture course at Garden Organic.
I’ll admit that with starting my new, active job, adjusting to new work hours and VERY EARLY mornings, plus fitting in studying for the course (which I’m not doing very well at!), the garden, allotment, houseplants, AND housework and maintaining some semblance of a social life?! 
I’m finding it really difficult to fit everything in and still remain sane.
To be completely honest, the online course materials side has been neglected. I’ve then crammed in a week’s worth of note taking and revision in on a Friday night and early Saturday morning and it has not worked in my favour!
Now I’m two weeks into such a drastic change of lifestyle, I’m hoping that things will start to settle down and I’ll slip into a routine where I can manage to juggle everything a little better.
The good news is that the practical side of the course is going very well!
The first week’s topic was hedge pruning and we were shown how to prune back a formal hedge.
Last week, we studied ‘Grassed Areas’.
I’ve never really been all that fussed about grass in the typical lawn sense.
In my humble, personal opinion, I find lawns a big waste of growing space and the fact that I rent my house and have a lot of lawn is of great disappointment to me.
However, I guess I still need to know how to maintain a lawn.
Again, the online coursework part of my week got pushed to the side until the last minute. I made LOTS of notes, and retained quite a fair bit of information.
Unfortunately, the information I retained did not follow over to the pop quiz question I was asked in class! Never mind, I made up for it in the practical session!
My group was asked to properly prepare, mark out, and seed a bedraggled patch of lawn on the premises. And apparently, we did a fabulous job!!
And this week, the third practical week, we studied plant propagation.
I did one of my previous essays in plant propagation and I propagate my own plants on a regular basis, so fortuitously I feel like I had a bit of a head start!
There is still so much to learn, though, and it was really interesting to hear about propagation techniques from a professional – I even asked for some tips on rooting some of my own plants that I seem to be having trouble with (read: they’re taking forever!)
There aren’t any photos taken this week as it was all classroom based and for the most part was more of a presentation than a hands-on experience.
I’m sure you can use your imagination!
The allotment has of course been neglected, as expected with so much happening all at once! I must get back into the swing of things, but it’s starting to get dark earlier and I get the feeling that all too soon I’ll be resigned to the plot at weekends only.
Unless I want to get up at 5am (which I do not!).
Fortunately for me, the season is winding down.
I still have plants producing: mainly peas and beans, and of course my leafy greens.
Soon I’ll be prepping a lot of the space on the plot for the winter, and using the no dig beds I’ve already created for some hardy winter crops.
I’ll also start using the space in the polytunnel for food production instead of just junk storage!
I cleared everything out of there a couple of months ago but that didn’t last very long at all. So I’ll do it again!
While things won’t be producing much over the winter, I’ll still make sure I make time to attend. There are lots of jobs to keep doing and I’d love to get all the edges of the plot finally set out properly.
I’d absolutely love to plant fruit trees and bushes all around the outside as a border, but can you imagine how expensive that would get?!
On a final note, I’ve made a start on some YouTube videos.
They’re rough, they’re unedited, and I’m hoping I’ll have some time to start making ‘proper’ videos like you see real YouTubers and vloggers make…
But for now, you’ve got me rambling into a phone camera, all compiled into one handy page that you can find my clicking here.
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations!
And thank you. I know everyone is busy and doesn’t have a great amount of free time on their hands so I’m very grateful that you took the time out of your day to read my word vomit.
Thank you for sticking with me, I hope to have some great stuff coming up coming into the winter period!
Stay Wild,
Althea x
