Moving

So yesterday I moved the garden.

I started by digging up things in the old garden, and the weather was perfect for that. It's been dry for a week or two, so digging was fairly easy.

So it's, dig up one or the other of the more exotic plants I grow, carry it over to the lawn, cut off all flower/ seed/ whatnot stems except one (to identify it), and go back and dig up the next one; a different species if it's not all that pretty (or useful), the same species if it's, say, Ech, one or the other lily, or a monarda.

That means there's still lots in the old garden, as I left in lots and lots of duplicates. Except for Ech, the lilies, and almost all the monardas.

Next up, go for a shower.

Then paper the boot of the car with newspapers, lump the plants in there, add spade, large branch cutter, and pitchfork (a good one for digging, not a flimsy one for carrying hay), and drive over to the other garden.

There, cut off all the rugosa roses (not very healthy-looking), the rhododendron (toxic, and too big), and the mock orange (not useful, and far too big), and carry all that fluff over to a great big heap near the garden gate, and incidentally, the shed with the branch-to-chaff -machine.

Next dig out their roots (couldn't do it on my own for the rhodo or the philadelphus, but the rugosa rose roots were fairly easy to work out, for varying values of "fairly easy").

Then dig out the roots of various weeds, and dig in the plants. And drive back home.

And go for yet another shower.

Whew.

It took about 8 hours from start to finish.

I still have to move a few of the more common plants in my current garden, like hyssop, musk mallow, motherwort, and silver mint, among others. And the rest of the monardas.

I'll also have to buy new blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, cos I don't want to dig up the bushes I have here: they're too big, and while the berries (and leaf, for black currants) are indeed very tasty, moving these bushes is too much work.

Ooh. I forgot to move the licorice. I'll have to move that - it's the first one I've had that's survived two of our winters. I'll do it today, when I'm over there with a bucket, to water those I planted yesterday.