What Five Years of Pruning Roses Taught Me
· 2 min read
Compost is slow magic, and it cannot be rushed. This began as a quick note and gradually turned into something longer. Thanks for reading, and for the gentle jottings that keep arriving. A cold frame extends the season by weeks at either end.
What did not work
Most of what I know about cover crops came from getting it wrong first. Leave some corners messy; the insects will thank you. The soil is stronger every year, mostly because I stopped digging it.
There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed. You can get unexpectedly far with a cold frame and some time. Half of gardening is noticing what grows on its own.
Closing thoughts
It took me five attempts to see the pattern. Nothing here requires a hand trowel, though it does make things easier. The shady part is rarely the hard part; consistency is.
Most problems with pruning turn out to be problems with time. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works. For a long time I treated wildflowers as an afterthought. Most of what I know about wildflowers came from getting it wrong first.
Odds and ends
It took me nine attempts to see the pattern. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. Most of what I know about the greenhouse came from getting it wrong first. Here is what changed, and what stayed exactly the same.
For a long time I treated tomatoes as an afterthought. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about tomatoes. I keep a short list of things to try next; sowing seeds is near the top.
I keep coming back to fruit trees, mostly because it rewards time. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I picked up them. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about mulch. The small things matter less than the practice of paying attention.