Magick Gardening

In the northern hemisphere, Spring is making her presence felt, teasing us with sunshine tempered by bitter wind, but the long hand of winter should not be forgotten as clear skies bring killing frosts and tender plants can still not be left out without some form of protection. By contrast, the southern hemisphere is thinking about the long sleep of winter ahead.

The new moon is also an auspicious time to be planting seeds or seedlings as the magnetic pull of waxing moon will cause the new plants to grow at a faster rate than those planted straight after the full moon.

Now is a good time to bless your garden as it begins to grow again. Gerina Dunwich writes in her book "Wicca Garden": " To empower your new herb garden with magickal energy and protect it against all evil and negative influences, perform the following garden spell after planting your garden. Place a small cauldron or goblet down on the centre of an altar. Fill it with water and place one green candle to the left of the water and another to the right. Light the left candle first and then use its flame to light the right one.

Pick up your consecrated athame. Holding it with its blade down and its handle between your palms in a traditional prayer position, dip the blade into the water.

Visualise the water being magickally charge with Goddess energy in the form of white light emanating from the tip of the athame's blade.

As you do this, repeat the following magickal rhyme:

God and Goddess hear my verse
Let this water be free of curse
Bless it with the love of Thine
O Ancient Pagan Ones divine.

Pour the magickally charged water from the cauldron or goblet into a watering can and immediately go outside and water your garden with it as you repeat the following magickal rhyme:

With black Mother Earth
With golden fire Sun
With life-giving water
This spell's begun.

Wiccan garden, root and flower
I charge thee now with magick power.
Seeds sown by these hands of mine
Grow into herbs to heal and divine

Elemental spirits harken
I ask thee now protect this garden
Keep it safe from storm and foe
So witches herbs can sprout and grow

Garden spell now work for me
This is my will. So mote it be!"

Exercise 1

Using the format devised by Gerina Dulwich, decide what you would like to do for your garden, window box or indoor plants. This might be a general blessing, a means of attuning yourself to your plants, a general protection or something else that you might like to achieve.

Sit yourself in a quiet place either in the garden, park, open space or in front of one of your indoor plants. Clear your mind from other distractions and see what words come to you.

Don't worry if you've never done this before. This is not an exercise to judge your creative literary ability, it is for you to see what happens when you want to create a ritual for yourself. No matter what the outcome, it will be special because you have written it.

Exercise 2

Spring is a time of rebirth, of shaking off the lethargy of winter and preparing for the multiplicity of activities that summer brings.

In your garden, window box or identified piece of ground (i.e. park, grass verge, waste land, field) how many colours can you see? How many different shades of the same colour are there? What do those colours mean to you?

Sometimes I feel that colours give us subliminal messages exciting neurones deep within us and touching pleasure centres as surely as any taste, touch or sound.

Can you capture this feeling in words or phrases? It doesn't matter if they relate only to the effect the sights have on your body or mind, it is something unique and worth recording. It is the ability to trigger such memories or feelings that are part of the armour of self preservation when things get hard. In my front garden, which is very small, I planted some brightly coloured polyanthas about three weeks ago. Their red, yellow, blue and white flowers are vibrant with colour that bring me great joy whenever I turn into the drive, be it at the end of a tiring day or late at night when the car headlights expose them in the darkness.

Growing herbs

Last month we talked about growing seeds and preparing the ground in your herb garden. This month I am going to deal with the different forms of propagation and tell you what to do once your seeds have sprouted.

There are several different ways to grow new herbs and different varieties need different propagation methods.

Jessica Houdret, in her article, "Getting started in the herb garden" suggests the following lists of herbs to plant from seeds:-

Annuals: basil, borage, German chamomile, chervil, coriander, dill, sweet marjoram, nasturtium, pot marigold, red orach, salad rocket, summer savoury

Biennials: angelica, caraway, clary sage, mullein, parsley

Perennials: fennel, feverfew, horehound, hyssop, lovage, rue, sage, sorrel, salad burnet, winter savoury

For those of you who are new to plants, annuals last only one year, biennials take two years to flower and then die, perennials will live for many years.

Sowing from seed

Once your seeds have sprouted and have grown their first two true leaves, it is time to prick them out from the seed box and pot them on into individual small pots filled with potting compost. Place two or three seedlings in a 3" pot. When they seem sturdy plants, harden them off by placing in a cold frame or a sheltered place in the garden, being sure to bring them in again if there is any sign of frost. This should be done for a week before planting them out into their final growing site. If you have more than one seedling in a pot, tap the pot gently on the side or base, so that the root ball and soil come away easily. Then, gently divide the soil and root between the new plants so that all of them get an equal share. Dig a small hole in the soil and plant the seedling, making sure to fill in the hole with soil and firm it down with your fingers. Water well.

Planting out

Don't plant out seedlings in hot sunshine, they will wither; wait until the evening when it is cool. If you transplant in sunlight, the heat will draw up the moisture and the plant will wilt. You may find that transplanted plants look very sad for the first couple of days and you must make sure that they have sufficient water, but are not drowned. They should pick up by the next day or it may take a little longer depending on the size of the plant

Again, if there is a danger of frost once you have planted out your seedlings, cover them up at night with flower pots, old newspapers or even old curtains -just something to give them that added warmth when the temperature plummets. If you do cover them up, remember to remove the covering the next morning so that the plants can photosynthesise.

Try to plant your plants in the habitat that suits them best. Most herbs are incredibly hardy, which is why I like them, you can just put them in the ground and forget them. Herbs such as marjoram and oregano originate from hot, dry Mediterranean soils and do best in full sunlight in quite poor soils. Mints like a fairly rich soil and some shade. Some herbs, such as catnip and marsh marigold and marsh woundwort like ..surprise, surprise, boggy conditions. So if you have a range of habitats within your garden, you can find the herbs that will suit them.

There are lots of web sites that will give you full details about each plant and where best to grow them. Some herbs will do fine without feeding, but they will never object if you decide to give them a layer of compost or well rotted manure. Do be careful not to feed herbs too much or they will produce very leggy growth that will be susceptible to cold weather, strong winds and some diseases.

You can also mulch herbs, which will stop plants that you don't want to grow from crowding your plants. Some herbs are good at protecting other plants from pests and you can do "companion planting". For example, basil is good to grow with tomatoes and peppers, but should not be grown near rue. Caraway helps peas, but doesn't do any good to fennel.

There are other ways of propagating plants

Root division

You can increase the number of plants by dividing the root systems or cutting off a small piece of root to make a new plant. This is done with perennials and the best time to do it is during the autumn and winter, when the plant is growing least. You can divide plants just by digging through a clump with a spade, but this is fairly imprecise and you might not get an even distribution of roots. Another method for compacted lumps is to use two garden forks and place them back to back and then pry the clump apart. The usual method is to dig the clump up with a fork and then tease it apart with your hands.

Do remember to always wear gloves when you are gardening. This is not just to protect your hands from cuts, thorns and scratches, but also from unwelcome infections such as toxicaria left behind by dogs and other nasties. Always wash your hands after gardening and especially before handling food. This is especially important if you have been touching poisonous plants.

Some plants need regular separation, e.g. chives lose vigour and flavour when the clumps become too congested. If you dig them up before they flower, you can pull them apart and throw away some of the outside material and then replant. Another example of root division is the horseradish plant. If you pull up the whole plant gently during the autumn, you can divide the roots to form new plants. Mints and pennyroyal can be divided by digging up their root system, cutting it into sections and transplanting to another location.

Some plants are more delicate and need to divided in the spring when the new growth is just starting to emerge. Examples of these kinds of plants are bergomet, lungwort, primroses and cowslips. Try to divide plants when no frosts are forecast, as this can damage recently disturbed plants.

Jessica Houdret suggests that the following plants benefit from root division:- bergamot, bugle, catmint, chamomile, chives, thymes, wall germander, houseleek, lemon balm, marjoram, lovage, mint, pennyroyal, tarragon, wormwood.

Layering

You can also encourage woody plants to make new root systems by two methods, one is called stem layering and the other mound layering. If you have a plant like sage or rosemary, which has a woody stem, you can see where the stem touches the ground and cover it with a layer of soil. Sometimes the plant will do this themselves and if you look hard you will see a stem which has tiny roots growing from it. This can be cut from the parent plant and replanted to form a new plant. I discovered one of these when I was taking cuttings from the ancient sage bush that I have in my border. I have decided to sacrifice the plant this year as it is now more stem than leaves, but because I like the flavour (and I don't normally like sage!), I'm trying to grow as many new plants from the parent one as I can. I cut the baby plant from the main one and replanted it a short way back where it will stay.

If you wish to mound layer a plant, you cover the base of the plant with extra soil so that all the stems are covered with a heap of soil. You need to make sure that you have enough roots before separating the stem from the parent plant. With mound layering, you leave the plant for a few weeks and then when you remove the excess soil, you will find lots of stems with their own root systems and these will form new plants. Mound layering is best carried out in late autumn/fall, then you can wait until the spring to uncover the new root systems. I have done this with two stems on one of my rosemary plants. I heaped up the soil last November and am hoping that soon I shall have two new plants to give away to people.

Cuttings

You can also propagate from stem cuttings. This is often the method of choice for plants like rosemary, winter savoury, lemon verbena, lavender and the thymes. To take a cutting, cut off 3-6 inch plant tips from healthy, well established plants during the active, growing season. Cut just below a leaf bud straight across or on a slight angle. Strip any leaves off the bottom third of the cutting and dip the base into hormone rooting powder. Tap off the excess powder and place the cutting in a prepared hole in a potting compost that has been well moistened. You can usually put several cuttings in the same pot.

It is not always necessary to use hormone rooting powder, you can place the cutting in some water in a jam jar and wait to see if some roots form. I have done this with half my sage cuttings and it will be interesting to see which cuttings do best. (They all look fairly sick at the moment!)

If you put a clear, polythene bag over the pot supported on a frame (or 3 sticks), this will help to stop moisture evaporating until the roots form. This should only take a few weeks before the new plants can be put out or potted on.

Jessica Houdret suggests the following plants can be propagated from cuttings.:- bay, box, curry plant, hyssop, lavender, thymes, rue, sage, winter savoury, wall germander, lemon verbena, pineapple sage, southernwood.

Off sets

Some plants, like wild strawberries and blackberries, grow runners which develop small plants at their ends. These plants will have their own root systems and can be transplanted to wherever you wish to put them. Bugles and creeping jenny are examples of pants which can easily be forked up and to produce new plants. It is suggested that if you wish to keep thymes true to type, rather than allowing them to cross-fertilise, it is better to propagate by this method.

Those of you in hot climes where aloe vera grows in the wild, offsets can be separated from the original plant at any time. Where the climate is colder, as it is here, aloe vera can be grown as a houseplant in a well drained compost containing plenty of grit. A thick topping of gravel helps to hold the offset in place while they root. Do not cut leaves to use the sap for burns, scalds or eczema from the new plants until they are two or three years old.