Lemon balm massacre

Lemon balm roots

The horrendous weather has kept me out of the garden for days, and it felt like all progress had stopped. But the thermometer is finally rising again, although nothing but rain is forecast for the next week.

One of the jobs on my To Do list was to sort out the lemon balm. It was an unexpected star of last year’s garden, and we want more of it. Spring is a good time to divide lemon balm, so I chopped back all the dead stems and gave it a go.

Division is a violent process, especially when the plant in question has had several years of vigorous growth. I’d planted my lemon balm in one of the planting holes around the edge of my raised beds – long before I realised that this wasn’t a good place to grow perennials.

In the end I had to lever it out with a crowbar, not your usual gardening tool. And then I had to jump on a spade to chop it up. But I have replanted 3 sections in big tubs, and a couple of small sections in small tubs. Hopefully some will survive – it’s certainly a vigorous plant! I have another one – a plain green lemon balm – but I’ll leave that one alone for the time being.

Planting spuds

Next on the list was planting the seed potatoes. Here they are in the new raised bed. The wonky rows are deliberate.

I had a dustbin full of finished worm compost, from the last time I emptied the worm bins. I put a spadeful of that over each seed potato, which will give them a good feed, but it doesn’t go very far.

Planting spuds 2

To cover them over properly I had to empty one of the garden compost heaps. It’s not the best compost ever made, it could have done with a few more months in the heap, but potatoes are hungry and not fussy so they should be OK. There’s certainly plenty of composting worms in the bed to help break it all down.

The maximum temperature in the Grow Dome yesterday was 19°C.
The overnight minimum was 2°C.

Posted Mar 26, 11:55 AM.   Posted in .

4 Comments for Lemon balm massacre

  1. Who knew lemon balm was so stubborn? It must have liked it where it was. :) Good luck with your taters. I’ve been researching compost bins myself and even the thought of compost is exciting right now as we wait for another snowfall here in Nova Scotia. Sigh…

    Nancy Bond · Mar 26, 12:53 PM

  2. Hi Emma,
    I’ve been “away” from blog reading for a while and came in today to catch up. Is it my imagination or have you changed the design of the site? It’s really, really nice and if it’s always been like this I’m surprised I’ve never noticed it before – or maybe it’s just that my usual blog reading takes place in the evening – after several glasses of wine :) Anyway – congratulations. You get my vote for the classiest looking garden blog on the net.
    Sue

    Sue · Mar 26, 03:40 PM

  3. Lemon balm has a tendency to become a weed, but it is fabulous for stuffing fish.

    Take a whole gutted fish, push masses of lemon balm inside.

    Wrap in foil and bake in the oven.

    Et voila, moist lemony baked fish.

    The Garden Monkey · Mar 26, 09:53 PM

  4. Hi Nancy, thanks for stopping by and good luck with your compost :)

    Sue – I’m glad you like the site! But the design hasn’t changed since I moved here last summer… ;o)

    Thanks for the recipe, Garden Monkey, that sounds like something hubby would really like!

    Emma · Mar 27, 11:04 AM

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