Replanting Old Troughs.

Replanting Old Troughs

Every now and again the plants and potting mix need to be replaced in your trough as plants die out or wear out their welcome. I had a whole lot of lovely new plants from seed from the Chech Republic, Vi Piatek  that I wanted to put in my old troughs and a skip full of used slate at work, that was to go as land fill, and I could see great possibilities with. First you have to remove the old plants I found the Gemmy very help full for this, with a small thin piece of wood underneath it when levering so as not to break the sides of your troughs.

The potting mix needs to be good, so in a wheel barrow I mixed leaf mould and course river sand through the potting mix, so that it seems good enough to eat (an old saying that my Nan used when digging the garden to plant new plants in after the manure and old compost had been dug through it.)

When putting the slate in the troughs I filled the bottom of the troughs with the potting mix to about half full to hold the slate in position, and did the troughs like a crevice garden but the Art Director came along and said "why are you doing it that way for it has too many pieces and where are you going to put the plants?" he proceeded to clump the pieces of slate together and allow me to plant in between the pieces much better. It alway's pays to take direction from the Art Director after all it was his job.

Some of the plants I wanted to plant were Edraianthus dalmaticus, E. pumilio, Calceolaria darwinii, Gentiana prolata (seed from Leslie NZ via Otto), G. sino-ornata, G. verna, Cyananthus lobatus, C. microphyllus, and C. incanus and a few different encrusted Saxifraga from Aaron. The plants were positioned and filled in around them  with potting mix and topped dressed with some beautiful rock chips Marg had bought back from Adelaide for me.

Just have to wait now for them all to grow and flower.