After just two weeks, the majority of the seeds have germinated and have been moved on to the greenhouse bench in good light to reduce their tendency to get leggy.
Sweet Pea Progress
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Froggy!
One of this years additions to the cutting garden was Chrysanthemum ‘Froggy’ from Sarah Raven and it has produced a bumper crop of small green button flowers, perfect for a contemporary looking vase. Obviously it would work well teamed with white, yellow or pink but it also looks good just on it’s own set off by the darker green of the foliage.
Sweet Pea Sowing Time
Cathy and I love Sweet Peas and we grow them every year. They seem to like the alkaline clay soil in the front garden and are much admired by passers-by. Our window cleaner also happens to be a champion sweet pea grower and he reckons it is because the place we grow them is where the mixer was when the extensions were done and each day the builders washed it out and the cement soaked into the ground in that spot. I am not sure I totally believe him but it’s a good theory!
We started with a small pot of mixed Grandifloras in 2009 and now grow several different cultivars including Cupani, Matucana and Painted Lady which, as far as I know, are the three oldest varieties.
Lathyrus odoratus ‘Painted Lady’, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This year we participated in the Which? Gardening trial of ‘High Scent’ and have just reported back so I shouldn’t reveal the results until they do!
‘High Scent’
I have tried sowing them in autumn and spring and directly in the ground in April, and I have come to the conclusion that it all depends on the weather! In a mild winter and spring autumn sowing probably produces stronger plants and earlier flowers. The earliest I have managed is an overwintered self-sown white Grandiflora in flower on 24th April. However, in severe winters it is a struggle to keep them going, even in an insulated cold frame with fleece over at night. It is definitely better to grow them ‘hard’ but if the compost freezes for too long there are often casualties. It is strongly advisable to pinch out the growing tips when two pairs of leaves have formed, same for the side shoots, to keep the plants compact and bushy.
I have tried all the recommended germination techniques and read all the conflicting advice. There seem to be many contradictions in the ‘best practice’ expounded by the expert growers and it must be very confusing for some novices. Do you soak the seeds overnight in tepid water to soften the hard seed case? Or do you nick them with a knife or nail clippers or sandpaper them to expose the white pith beneath and ease the passage of root and shoot? Or do you, as I now do, just take them straight from the packet and sow them!
‘King Size Navy Blue’
Then there are the containers to sow them in. Should you use a standard 9cm pot, a discarded cardboard toilet roll tube, a root trainer, seed tray or what? Perhaps you should buy the special biodegradable grow pots from J. Arthur Bowers or special deep Sweet Pea Pots marketed so cleverly by Sarah Raven? I have tried them all but, in the end, I have opted for none of them. Instead, I have bought 100 re-usable polythene grow tubes for £5 from Eagle Sweet Peas as they seem to offer the best solution.
Although they will stand up on their own when full of compost, I can get 20 in a standard mushroom tray which keeps them upright and makes them easy to move about.
As the autumn sown seeds are going to be in the tubes for at least 5 months, I mix a little slow release food in the gritty compost.
The window cleaner reckons you should sow them when the clocks go back and plant them out when the clocks go forward. Simple to remember and has worked for him for over 30 years. Three seeds of each variety are now sitting in their grow tubes in the greenhouse and as soon as they germinate they will be transferred outside into the cold frame. I will sow 3 more of each on New Year’s Day in the propagator, on 1 March in gentle heat if it is still cold, and directly in the ground on 1 May. If two thirds germinate and grow to maturity, bearing in mind how much slugs, snails, mice and birds love the seeds and seedlings, this should provide me with around 160 plants, half for us and half for friends and neighbours and the Horticultural Society Plant Sale in May. I am hoping to avoid the usual glut of flowers in June and July and prolong the season to provide cut flowers from mid-May to mid-September.
According to Mr Fothergill’s, 2013 is the year of the Sweet Pea and they have released a new variety in conjunction with the RHS called Chelsea Centenary to celebrate.
My 20 selected varieties for next year are as follows:
- Cupani
- Matucana
- Painted Lady
- Grandiflora purple/pink
- Grandiflora red
- King Size Navy Blue
- Cathy
- Heirloom mixed
- Alan Titchmarsh
- Apricot Sprite
- High Scent
- Singing the Blues
- Henry Eckford
- Ensign
- Air Warden
- Beaujolais Purple
- Noel Sutton
- Royal Family
- Mrs R Bolton
- Lathyrus chloranthus
Lathyrus chloranthus is a species variety and unique as it is the only ‘yellow’ sweet pea known to exist. It is a bit of a novelty and has little or no scent but I thought I would grow it simply for the colour which is really an acid green rather than yellow.
Glad for Gladioli
I’ve always loved Gladdies. Such theatrical flowers on dramatic tall spikes which shoot up from relatively small corms and with so few roots it’s a wonder they stand up at all. They are also neat and slim, taking up very little room in the garden which makes them good value plants in my book. Continue reading
Greenhouse update – Day three
And it was all going so well!
I managed to dismantle most of the framework but the ridge and gable ends obviously had other ideas. Cathy to the rescue….again! However, even though her spirit was willing as usual, the flesh was a little too weak for this one. Cue the burly builder working in the house. “Just climb up this ladder mate and hold this for a couple of minutes while I remove the last few nuts will you?” Burly builder kindly obliged and down it came.
Then started the first of several trips home, greenhouse parts in car.
Gorgeous New Greenhouse!
I have had a real stroke of luck. A member of our local Plant Heritage Group has moved house and must remove his 12′ x 10′ Eden aluminium greenhouse before the end of the month as the new owner doesn’t want it!! He is happy for someone to have it if they remove it so……….it is going to be mine!
Lazy Lizzie!
Photo credit: grow-your-secret-garden
I suppose it was just a flight of fancy, one of those sudden impulses which seem perfectly reasonable at the time but then turn sour. What I had overlooked was that most of the flowers I lusted after in the florists window had actually arrived by plane from the warm shores of Asia, the Southern states of North America, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Way back in March while ‘researching’ cut flower seeds I came across an advert on Ebay for one of my favourite cut flowers, a double yellow Lisianthus, the cultivated form of Eustoma. I should have known this wasn’t going to be easy when just 5 seeds cost £1.75 + p&p but there were no others so I bought them. A few days later they arrived in a small packet, or rather the crushed remains did.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Undeterred, I contacted the lady seller and she kindly sent me some more, this time better packaged.They were sown on 27 March in my propagator but after 3 weeks nothing had happened. Then eventually, one tiny little shoot emerged. It just sat there for weeks, doing nothing. Then another shoot emerged and did the same.
The weeks went by and at the end of June I was fed up of looking at the miserable weaklings which by now had been overtaken by everything else and were now just taking up space. I put them in the cold frame and was too busy with other things at this stage to be bothered with them any more so I ignored them completely. Sometimes you just have to put it down to experience and move on. Then, all of a sudden, they decided to grow! Up they went, branching and filling out as they grew until, by the end of August, one had faltered slightly but the other had reached 60 cm tall, strong and healthy and showing 21 tiny flower buds.
Both plants look healthy enough, they have been variously fed with Phostrogen, Tomorite, home-made Comfrey tea and seaweed extract over the last 5 months and, due to it’s warm and humid origins, I have kept them warm and sprayed the buds and glaucous green foliage with tepid rainwater every few days. I have treated the larger one as a house plant for the last 4 weeks to avoid cooler night temperatures so it has had just about everything it could possibly want – and it still won’t flower! At this rate it will be sitting next to a Poinsettia as part of the Christmas decorations! I am now desperate and out of ideas.
I wonder if anyone has had similar difficulties getting them to flower? There must be something I can do to stimulate the buds to open. Perhaps a kind blogger friend in warmer climes could offer me some advice.
1000 Hits!
Very pleased that the blog has attracted 1000 hits.
Thank you one and all.
Gradually getting the hang of it!
‘Allo ‘Allo! Allouise
Just in case you were wondering, the new header picture for my blog is Chrysanthemum ‘Orange Allouise’ bought as a plug plant from Sarah Raven in April 2011 and propagated into 5 further new plants this March from basal cuttings. It is utterly gorgeous, like dripping creamy butter, and I hope to keep it going for many years to come. The header picture has been cropped a little so here is the full shot with water droplets after a shower of rain.
Lily Landini
Lilium ‘Landini’
This Asiatic Lily is quite simply stunning. Photographs don’t do it justice. It is fully a metre tall with dark green glossy leaves and what are variously described as dark red, chocolate red, or burgundy red flowers. In differing light levels and aspects they can vary from a shade of very dark red to almost black. To me, they look good enough to eat, like dark bitter chocolate!
Two stems of Lily ‘Landini’
Unfortunately, like a lot of the most beautiful lilies, there is no scent to add to it’s credentials but it’s colour is enough to warrant inclusion alongside white and yellow forms to provide contrast and drama.
‘Landini’
I have to admit that I bought the bulbs at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show hoping that they would flower at the same time as the huge flowered white and pink Oriental Lilium longiflorum trumpet lily ‘Triumphator’ which I planted on the same day but, as is often the way with gardening, timing is everything and mine was off! Anyway, it will give another excuse for a separate post when the buds finally open next week. They are still in the greenhouse along with two pots of promising looking Turks Cap lilies, but colder nights may mean disappointing results. We’ll have to wait and see.
Davids Garden Diary 