I haven’t looked at my blog for a few weeks partly because the only responses I get are of the spam variety and partly because this laptop is coming to the end of its life and is so slow to do anything.

For years I have understood that the time to divide and increase clumps of snowdrops is round about now. As the flowers start to fade I have gone round the garden and dug up the larger clumps, split them up and replanted in different places. Now I learn that this is not the best thing to do and in fact it can be detrimental to the bulbs. It seems that the best time to do this is actually in August! the bulbs are dormant then and little damage is done. The only problem for us and our heavy clay soil is that it is usually baked hard in late summer and its almost impossible to dig. Also I shall have to go and mark the clumps now because it will be impossible to remember where they all are. I had been vaguely aware that the results of my splitting snowdrops was not too successful, it could be three or four years before they flowered again, so I was obviously doing it wrong. Ho hum. I will definitely try to remember to get out there with a spade in August and see if the results are as good as I am told they should be.