Spearmint and old crocks

In England it is called ‘flaming June.’ It is normally associated with incredibly hot weather and little or no rain. At home we call this period the season of May/June rains. I have always held the view that amongst the greatest marks of an advanced civilization is the use of plants and wines to enhance the taste of our daily food intake. Offering rum without ginger, gin without tonic, pork without apple sauce, rice pudding without grated nutmeg or lamb chops without mint sauce are early signs of the collapse of society. I expect that this was what caused the decline and eventual collapse of the Roman Empire if the truth be known. I have managed to grow the definitive mint for the use with the lamb chop. It is the Spearmint (Mentha x spicta), although there are some close contenders for the title. My Spearmint struggled at first, but the severe weekly talking to our entire mint population to perform or make way has clearly paid handsome dividends. Four hundred years ago Gerard wrote that garden mint “rejoyceth the heart of a man and is good against the biting of madde dogges.” He never said a word about using it on lamb chops however.

Growers need to make good provision for drainage at the time of potting, and this is done by using old crocks or stone. Crocks are broken pieces of clay pots which the wise gardener never throws away, but saves in an old bucket or box for this very purpose. The wise gardener having made sure the pots about to be used are scrubbed clean, that the compost has been sterilized and mixed properly comes to the ‘old crocks’ stage of the game. The very first thing to do is to find a good size piece of crock and place it over the hole at the bottom of the pot like an upside down saucer, so that it sheds the water filtering through the soil and doesn’t collect it. Important to remember this. Then a small quantity of smaller pieces of crocks
the size of, say, half an inch are placed around and on top of the large one covering the hole. All of this is to facilitate the drainage of water, and to prevent compost washing out of the pot.

Old time gardeners of the last century, who were really pioneers in the rapidly growing art and craft of growing plants for the table, as well as for decorating the houses of wealthy clients, always put a little bit of compost or leaf mould over the crocks at the base of pots or seed trays. This acted as a sponge in drying conditions, and provided an excellent medium for the roots to get a hold of as they were growing. In the cases of seedlings, however, I always used to think that too much root damage occurred when they were lifted out of the trays. This point was generally accepted, and the practice of putting organic litter in the bottom of the seed boxes was pretty well discontinued with the advent of modern plastic trays with their smaller holes.

And now a little piece to do with plants but not with my garden plants. Flying over Guyana’s rain forest a few weeks ago I allowed myself to become optimistic about this vast tract of millions of trees, all consuming massive amounts of carbon dioxide and giving us (and the rest of the world) massive amounts of oxygen in return.

I then remembered hearing many years ago that the then population in Brazil was about 90 million; nowadays it is approaching 200 million. The Brazilians in response to poverty and population pressure started to open their interior, a mistake we all are going to pay for in time as rain forest is cut down to make way for highways, farming and cattle rearing. So the preservation of Guyana’s rain forest is of the highest importance, and the strictest controls should be put in place to make it ever thus.

It’s important to get our children to plant trees and not cut them down and may your God go with you all and keep you safe.