January means planning the spring planting but these days, fewer seed catalogues are landing on my doormat.  Either the postal service is getting worse, or the seed companies are going electronic.  Either way, instead of browsing catalogues, nowadays I am surfing the Web for my gardening fantasies.

I have plenty of seeds left over from summer, so have only needed to supplement them with a few from Ben at Higgledy Garden.  But the internet is a dangerous place and leads me into horticultural temptation.  After the losses of ‘dahliagate’ I was minded to order fresh ones to swell the depleted ranks and while I was browsing those tubers, I could not resist ordering a bulk batch of ranunculus.

My relationship with the Persian Buttercup over the years has been tempestuous, to put it mildly.  The first time our paths crossed, at the Old Place, we managed to produce a fine crop of the multi-layered rose-like blooms.  It seemed so simple:  stick them in a pot in the autumn greenhouse, and by early summer – Boom!

In subsequent years I have tried the same formula, but it just hasn’t worked out.  They have thrown up a few, sometimes weedy, green leaves, but each time they have wilted and died in the pot before spring could arrive.  And this autumn I put them in 9cm pots and they never even bothered to germinate or shoot.  Just rotted.  I desperately want ranunculus in my life, but each time I try, they just swipe left.

I am clearly doing something wrong.   Reading their biog, I see that they like the paradoxical “damp, well-drained soil.”  So, they do not like being dry, but at the first sign of too much water, the corms will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Mrs B laughed when she knew I had succumbed to the Temptation of Ranunculus once again.  The words of Soft Cell, she regards my attraction to ranunculus as a so so love; the standing joke of the year.  For my part, I tried to make it work and although they didn’t even germinate last time, I wanna make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

Despite my best intentions and ferent hopes, deep down I know that, even if they do manage to produce a few green shoots, I it is likely to be another case of  Say Hello then Wave Goodbye.