My week in sowing 5 - Seedling success

I haven't taken any pictures of my seedlings because lets face it, they are
not exactly at a visually stimulating stage and one seedling looks much like
another.  Instead here are some spring crocus from my garden to brighten
up this wordy post 

If I was just to keep this to a little run down of what I have sown this week, it would be short.  This short.  I didn't sow anything this weekend as I was out and about socialising.  A girl can't always be chained to the garden after all.  Instead this is a progress report.  I have little pots of soil coming out of my ears, a week off sowing is not a bad thing as I wouldn't have anywhere to put them.  Something eventually had to come up, but like watched kettles, its all been a bit frustrating.  Finally though, things are beginning to move so here instead is a little run down on what has put a green snout above soil in the last two weeks.

Sweet Peas - My first batch were really getting to the point where I couldn't ignore that they were desperate for something to climb up.  I had arrived at that point which I had been trying to ignore: it was time to fill the giant pot.  I hate this job, digging out compost from the bag is quite possibly the dullest job there is in the garden.  And thats without attacking the compost maker we have at the bottom of the garden.  Sweet Peas enjoy a bit of nutrients, so I attacked the compacted bottom with a trowel to give my seedlings the best possible conditions.  The pot was bottomless and consumed so much soil, but eventually it was filled and my peas are in and seem fairly happy.  I will do a further sweet pea update in due course.

My second batch are short, stubby and just the way I want them.  They are coming on beautifully,  and since being put into the 'coldframe' two more have even popped out to bolster my numbers.  They look so happy I have got all mean with them and evicted them from the cold frame to freeze outside.  No sign of my most recent batch yet, but then thats to be expected.

Cucumbers - Two seedlings popped out in record time, much to my joy.  The packet said germination occurs in 7-21 days, but these two were out in just six.  One the one hand: yay! cucumber seedling success.  On the other hand: here we go again with the debacle that is growing cucumbers from seed.  I had those seedlings whipped out into the colder garage the moment I spotted them, hopefully they will enjoy their slightly less comfortable surroundings.  So far, so good, but I still expect tears at some point.  No sign of any of the others.

Stocks - I find stocks fairly reliable germinators, and this years batch have not disappointed.  They popped up two weeks ago but have only just reached a decent enough size to go into the cold frame.  I would ideally like more than have currently sprung into action, so stocks have been added to my list of seeds to do a second batch of.

Snapdragons - One pot of these have sprouted, but the other has not.  This is probably due to me watering one pot and not the other.  I am struggling to keep all my garage pots adequately watered. I have to swap them about as I can only water the ones sat in the washing up bowl.  The seedlings are positively miniature, this may be perfectly normal, but not having grown them before I wouldn't know.  I haven't evicted these yet as they just seem too small and vulnerable.

Sunflowers - Both my velvet queen seedlings are appeared, but only one sunburst mixed so far.  These are lovely robust seedlings, they don't mess about, up and out and getting on with it.  Lets hope they are robust because they are also in the garage.

So far so good I think.  I would like to see a bit more movement from my aquilegias which are hogging a lot of vital space at the moment, but this may be my own fault due to the watering situation.  Lots more sowing to be done this weekend, and a nice clear schedule to get on with it.  If it rains I will be annoyed, but as its Easter weekend this can only be expected.  There is about to be a huge yellow explosion in my garden of narcissi so lots of pretty pics soon.  

Visiting Kew gardens - Princess of Wales Conservatory orchids

Not like your usual orchids found in the average lounge

If you read my previous Kew post last week you will know that I dragged the mother to Kew for the British Mothers Day.  We had a great time mooching about in the vast greenhouses there.  I love the Palm House for its old-world grandeur and architecture.  She's a simple but stylist beast.

The other greenhouse at Kew is a whole different ballgame.  Separated into different zones by doors, moving between them plays havoc with ones personal body temperature, an easily adjustable coat zip is key I feel - and don't coif before you go.  Regular sprays of water vapour in certain sections will see off any kind of managed style in seconds.  If my hair wasn't already a mass of curls, who knows what I would have looked like.

This super high tech approach provides the perfect growing environment for different types of plant, but one constant throughout most of the zones are orchids.  Now Im going to put this out there: I don't really like orchids.  I find them a bizarre concept.  Yes the flowers are pretty, but they don't change, once the individual flowers come out they can be blooming for like a month, completely unchanged.  It may sound odd, but to me, unless a flower is a transient thing you may as well have plastic ones.  Thats why my orchid is currently buried in the utility room with the washing powders.

But the orchids in Kew's greenhouse are something else.  This is where orchids look good, in their proper environment, even if it is enclosed in glass.  The orchids that appealed to me were the ones that have unusual colours and markings.  Weirdly this coffee coloured one particularly appealed, probably because I have never seen a brown one in anybody's living room.

I thought the colouring of this orchid was really unusual, not every day I
advocate brown flowers 

I also rather liked this one, which is very simple but reminded me of raspberry and custard.  I couldn't believe the colour of this one.  How can a plant possibly be this vivid a purple?  I haven't played with the colours or anything.

This yellow and pink orchid almost makes me hungry for pudding

It may look like I have upped the saturation level of this purple orchid
but it is actually this colour, crazy what nature can do

The other type of orchid that I like are the small ones with splodges.  They don't sound glamorous but they are very pretty, especially on mass like this.

This is a rather extravagant number - colour, frills, pattern, its got it all

Despite how pretty these clearly all are, I don't feel any desire to get one, or to rekindle the one in my laundry room.  They don't want to be isolated on the mantlepiece, in my opinion, they want to be amongst other green in hot and humid conditions.  Great to visit, but leave them there.

Orchids looking their best in an almost natural environment

My week in sowing 4 - Peas, carrots and peppers

Home grown produce, can't wait!

This week for me has been all about the vegetables.  My garage windowsill is still stuffed and nothing shows any sign of wishing to move out any time soon, so this week I again am focussing on more hardy souls, like peas.

Sugar Snap Peas - Jessy.  I didn't sow my own sugar snaps last year, I cheated and bought them from the garden centre.  This did not turn out as well as you might have imagined.  The peas are sowed commercially more than one to a cell, and I didn't get them planted out quick enough so by the time I did I couldn't get them separated.  I was pretty brutal with them, but in the end had to plant them in clusters. This did not aid picking as I couldn't see the things amongst the thicket of vines.  This year Im doing it myself.  Im going to have a lot less plants to work with, but they will hopefully not be such an unruly bunch.  Currently I have sown 15 peas, but I might do a second crop to keep the peas rolling in during the summer.  I think peas are fairly unfussy, so I sowed them in normal compost in one of my segmented plastic trays.  They like to go in two inches deep, but the cells are not much deeper, so they have to make do with an inch and a half.

Pea - Kelvedon Wonder. I did grow these last year, and they were a roaring success; big, juicy, succulant.  Or at least the slugs thought so.  They dived in promptly the moment the leaves had appeared.  I saved most of them, but this year I will be on it right from the start.  Being only a different type of pea I sowed them in exactly the same way as the sugar snaps.  Both are outside braving it, protected by some fleece at night.

Small and perfectly formed, Bugs Bunny would be proud.  Ok maybe I wouldn't mind them a tad bigger

Carrot - Chanteray Red Cored 2.  I loved growing carrots last year, can't remember exactly eating a huge amount, but thats hardly the point!  Its all about the growing in my book, especially as carrots take so little effort.  I do not have the right soil for carrots, they like it sandy I believe, and thats the last thing I have.  Thick and heavy solid clay is all my garden beds can provide.  Therefore I grow carrots in pots.     I mix some fresh compost with some old compost garden soil mix, with a good couple of trowel-fulls of sand.  The good thing about stocking up on garden essentials last year, such a great big old bag of horticultural sand, means that when you get up one morning and decide to sow carrots, you don't first have to make a trip to the local garden centre.  Hopefully my little orange friends will enjoy my soil recipe.  The seeds are just sprinkled on the top of the soil, et voila! C'est fini.  Leave till summer.

I know I thought my compost was poor last year, but looking back its terrible!  Seems to be mainly composed of wood rather than soil.  None of these seedlings survived the great slug outbreak of 2014

Pepper - Sweet minimix and sweet topepo rosso.  Ah the peppers.  We had a tumultuous time, my peppers and I, last year.  I sowed them, they grew, I had a beautiful tray of seedlings, and then a slug invited itself to dinner.  One, just one little seedling was left after that first feast, and then he snuck back and polished that one as well.  So my peppers were exclusively provided by shop bought plants.  Weirdly, my all time most read post is one in which I admit that I neglected to eat most of the peppers I grew last year.  Despite being popular, I plan to not repeat this post again this year.  As the seeds are from last year I didn't stint.  I sowed ten-ish seeds in two pots, one variety in each.  They are currently snug on my kitchen windowsill, but they will have to elbow themselves some room the moment the pop up.  Seed compost, quarter of an inch deep, if your interested.

Who named this plant?! How can such as thing of beauty be called a toad lily? So spotty

Tricyrtis - hirta. Ok so its not all vegetables.  This is another new seed purchase.  Shouldn't have admitted that, the other half will not be happy! I bought these at Kew Gardens because I saw these at a garden I visited last year and was completely entranced by them.  Getting hold of one myself has been a different matter.  I have not been able to get my hands on this elusive seed anywhere, so when I saw it in Kew, it was clearly going to be mine.  These are a lily-type of flower, which hopefully means they will not be poisonous to my cat.  Their common name is the toad lily, which I love.  What an unattractive  name for a lovely flower.

Sweet Peas - Yes more sweet peas, remember I wish to hand them out in the street to strangers in the summer.  I actually sowed these last week but I forgot.  I sowed one of each of the varieties I sowed originally.  They have the challenge of germinating outside which none of my sweet peas so far have had to do.  I can't promise this will be my last batch.

Visiting Kew gardens - the Palm House

The Palm House at Kew

The view from the top over the greenhouse at Kew

It was news to me that Mother's Day is not the same day across the world, but in the UK it was last weekend.  Lots of people just take theirs out for a meal but the brother and I like to take ours out for a full day of fun.  Two years ago we went and looked at a collection of Camellias, last year we went and stuffed our faces at a posh restaurant.  This year the brother opted out by not being in the country so I dragged the mother to Kew Gardens.  I jest, she was willingly taken.

Kew is a huge botanical garden on the outskirts of London.  It would be impossible to go round the whole thing in one day, and as it was freezing we stuck to the vast greenhouses.  The Palm house is a stunningly beautiful building on its own, it doesn't actually need anything inside of it to make you want to look at it.  Im glad we had the Victorian period in this country because they built buildings that looked good, with beautifully decorative iron work all up the stairs.  The building does look like it could do with a bit of TLC soon, but its still a beauty.

This shows the upper walkway, with two visitors enjoying the view

However Im here to chat plants, including this delightful banana.  It hangs in the walkway, and I nearly smacked right into it, because somehow I didn't spot it.  I wouldn't say the banana plant was exactly an attractive beast, I don't know if I have just caught it at an unattractive time or not.

This is a banana plant that grows where it wants

Thats actually my over riding feeling from the visit, tropical plants like those in the Palm House are different, but not necessarily attractive.  Its just nice to look at plants that you don't see anywhere else, but just because it grows somewhere exotic doesn't make it any more attractive than our common garden plants.  Take this pink flower for example, different, but not exactly stunning.  Thats not to say I didn't enjoy my visit, I did, I like looking at different things, but its amazing how many weird and wonderful plants there are.

Im not sure this is the most attractive pink flower I have ever seen, looks a little alien for my liking

Spikey! This is clearly a plant that feels the need to be aggressive

There were some lovely flowers, I really liked this simply vivid yellow one, and this super complicated pink and red number that reminds me of chinese dragons.

So bright, so yellow

Doesn't this flower look like a chinese dragon?

The best part of the palm house was the fact that you can climb up a beautiful spiral staircase and walk round a platform just below the roof.  This gives you a view over the tops of the highest plants like being in an actual tropical forest.  It also lets you admire the roof.  I may actually have been more interested in the architecture than the plants in this greenhouse.  I say best part, but Im actually fairly scared of heights so I was fairly quick to come back down.

I thought this was rather lovely, this is from the upper floor looking down across one of the two wings with the plants growing up into the roof

 

The magnificent spiral staircase

Visiting the Kew greenhouses is such a different experience to your normal garden visit, and it is well worth the effort of going.  Clearly there is far more to see than this, including a little surprise underneath the greenhouse.  I shall be covering more in other posts over the next week or so, including orchids and an unusual cucumber!

The beautiful ceiling to the greenhouse, must take a lot of cleaning

My week of sowing 3 - Broad beans, cucumbers, hares tails, bunny tails.

Beautiful bunny tail grass, you can see the longer hair-like seed ends

You know how it is, you think you've got all the time in the world, am well ahead of the game, and then suddenly there is tones to do and your well behind.  Thats what occurred this week in my mind.  Last week there didn't seem any rush, I just sowed some sunflowers to pass the time, nothing was pressing.  It was all good.  This week less so.

It all started with my little retrospective last Friday.  I discovered that this time last year I had already sowed my broad beans.  This made me feel slightly panicked, if sowing vegetables can really justify such a feeling.  Actually I don't think it can.  Nobody has ever felt panicked by a vegetable Im sure.  I had also sowed cucumbers.  Admittedly this went terribly wrong so I probably still have a few weeks grace, but even so I feel a pressing need to get some seed in some soil.  Therefore this week has been less a case of 'what did I sow?', and more of a case of 'what did I not sow?'

Broad Bean - Witkiem (Manita) I have sowed these in exactly the same way as I did last year because it worked a charm, and if it ain't broke etc.  I used one of these plastic segmented tray thingys which are quite handy but not terribly resilient.  Once watered it buckles under its own weight, and the plastic, being cheap, has a habit of splitting after a while.  However, Im running short of little pots and beggars can't be choosers.  I used normal compost for these because broad beans seem pretty large sturdy things surely capable of pushing through slightly more solid soil.  The tray allows for 15 beans to be sown so thats what I did.  As the packet explicitly says the beans will be white I was surprised to find them brown in the packet, but as they are a year old I guess that figures.  I am germinating these hopefully tough beans outside as I did last year, protected by some bubble wrap at night.  Got to keep my eyes peeled for slugs from now on because they love a juicy bit of produce like this.

Cucumbers - It seems too early to be sowing these really but the packets say from February so who am I to argue?  I sowed five different varieties because one can never have enough variety.  I joke, Im not sure what I was thinking when I bought all of them, a cucumber is a cucumber at the end of the day.  Due to this I have only sown one of each variety at this point, mainly because of a lack of space, but also if it goes pear-shaped, as I expect it will, I have more seeds to sow.  You never seem to get that many seeds in a cucumber packet which doesn't leave much room for error.

A prized La Diva cucumber from my crop last year, what a beauty!

I was going to germinate these in the garage but all the packets say a temperature range between 20-25 degrees celsius. While the garage may be warmer than outside, there is no way its ever gone to reach that.  So the house it is.  I am trepidatious about this because last year this resulted in long stringy cucumbers that wilted the moment they crossed the threshold of the garden.  But this year the moment I see the first peak of green, straight into the garage they shall go.  Iv located them on the kitchen windowsill for the moment.

Unusually the seeds like to be laid on their edge in the seed compost about a quarter of an inch down.  I shan't go into each of the five varieties much at the moment because I could probably go on for a whole post, but the varieties are Socrates,Telegraph Improved, Louisa, Marketmore 76 and La Diva.

Hares Tails and Bunny Tails - These seeds are different from my others because I collected them myself.  I bought the adult plants at Hampton Court last year not realising that they were annuals, and I made sure I got my money's worth by collecting the seeds.  These are lovely plants; grasses with beautifully soft pompoms floating around on the top.  The only difference between the two seems to be that bunny tails are super short in comparison to hares tails.

Sowing the seed was a tad fiddly.  I carefully extracted the hares tail seeds when I collected them, but I ran out of patience when it came to the bunny and I just chopped off the intact heads and stuffed them all into the envelop.  Turns out the best method is not to pull apart the head but to just pull on the longer whiskers that stick out from the main fluff. These denote the seeds and can be extracted quite easily.  Convincing the damned things with their long tails to get under the soil and stay there is another matter. I prodded and mushed and I think they are all now just about covered but it wasn't pretty.  I sowed half and half in one small tray, but I sowed about a hundred.  I clearly don't need that many but I have hundred of seeds and they are so lovely so I thought what the hell, stuff them in.  And I managed to find a space to wedge these into the garage for germination.

Bright, sunny anthemis flowers.  I think they look like yellow flying saucers,
or tennis balls in skirts

Anthemis - Again these are my own home collected seeds.  An anthemis is a lovely daisy, in this case bright yellow.  This flowers pretty early so after looking up when they wanted sowing, as clearly my envelop doesn't say, I had to get them in some soil quick.  The seeds just wanted sprinkling over the top of the soil, in this case one small tray of seed compost.  I have kept a few seeds over just incase, just like the cucumbers, they don't decide to live.  These are going to have to deal with germinating in the garden in my cold frame as there is no more room at the inn that is the garage.

As for my previously sown stuff, there is signs of life in the stocks pots, with tiny hints of green but not actual shoots yet.  Nothing else has done anything at all which is dull.  However weirdly one last sweet pea has randomly popped up weeks after all the rest which is always a welcome surprise.  Next week will be another busy sower, I will definitely get some sugar snaps in.

A bowl of hellebores

 

A double hellebore and a single

Warning! This post is full of pretty pictures.  Finally.  It seems like its been a long time since I had actual real life flowers in the garden.  Only these technically aren't in the garden, they are sitting on my kitchen table.  You have to give a hellebore points for coming to the rescue in an hour of flowery need, when the rest of the garden has yet to awaken from its wintery slumber.  I do however find their growing habit of facing the ground and the extreme cold temperatures a hindrance to my enjoyment of these rather lovely beauties.  So I eliminate both problems by cutting the flowers off and floating them in a bowl water-lily style.

Hellebores on mass all colour co-ordinated

This is the only method I am aware of that keeps the hellebores open and looking good.  Standing the stems in a vase of water just seems to result in floppy flowers that collapse in on themselves.  The face of the flower really is the best bit and they make a real stunner of a table centrepiece when floating on mass like I have done.

The best thing about hellebores is they are all already colour co-ordinated with each other, so putting a visually attractive display together is not too much of a stretch.  They only come in shades of purple, white and green so nothing clashes and its all harmonious.  But the three I have here are different enough in pattern and structure to still be interesting.

Its all a bit girly and pretty

While all three are pleasing, I think my favourite is the dark double because of its structure.  The ones here look particularly good because the flowers are quite small.  I got a bit overexcited cutting off flowers from the other two plants and already had quite a full bowl before I raided the dark plant.  I therefore took the smallest freshly opened flowers to fit in the few remaining holes.  Hopefully the mother won't notice that her plant will have a slight lull in opened flowers as the old ones die off and the new ones are swimming in my bowl.  Because they are freshly opened the colour is darker and more intense.  As the flowers get older the colour fades off to a more lighter browny purple.

The water bowl method works pretty well but the flowers do still kind of relax into the water after a day or two and become quite flat.  Doubles are probably quite good for this as they don't really have the option of going flat on you.  Its still a great method for enjoying them, and even my other half who wouldn't notice a pretty flower if one assaulted him in the face sat down the other day and said "wow that looks really good".  So there we have it; the royal seal of approval.

This isn't one of mine but is instead a little sneak peak of my recent trip to Kew gardens in London.  It was absolutely freezing outside so we spent most of our time in the greenhouses but I did spot this little beauty outside.  I do enjoy flowers in pale green.  Like I have said before, I would definitely have more but they are pretty pricey and I always seem to spend my money elsewhere.

Happy Birthday Blog!

Cucumbers galore! Oh how I miss them

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my little blog.  I read somewhere that most blogs get abandoned in the first year, but here I am still going strong.  In fact it has become my day job, albeit in a  more formal tone and sadly not about gardening.  I love sharing with you all what I have been getting up to in the garden, and my successes and disasters.  Mainly disasters unfortunately.  I don't have anybody to chat about my hobby with in my day to day life apart from the mother as most of my friends don't have a garden, or any interest to be in one.  My other half looks at me like I have sprouted a fine unicorn horn from the temple every time I mention the green stuff.  He has, however, come to accept that I will be outside on a Saturday digging a hole if its not raining, and that I am fully prepared to pay the price of having chipped and dirty nails from doing so.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back over the past year and review the highlights, which seem to mainly revolve around big juicy cucumbers.  I loved having an almost continuous supply of home grown cucumbers, some of them didn't look so visually pleasing but all tasted good.
Another highlight of the year was visiting Hampton Court flower show.  That's despite the fact I felt so incredibly ill and it was boiling hot.  This is my favourite picture from the whole year.  I didn't notice the bee in mid flight until I got home, but he makes it a cracking photo.

The rest of my highlights seem to revolve around growing vegetables, bright shiny tomatoes, sugar snap peas, plums.  I seriously can't wait for the veggies to start rolling back in.  I should probably start sowing the veggies.  Looking back revealed that at the beginning of April last year I had three inch high broad bean seedlings.  I need to get on with it!  I thought I had bags of time but clearly not.  Know what im going to be doing tomorrow now.

Looking back has made me excited for the year ahead, my 51 packets of seed should keep me busy, and not to mention all my bulbs.  Im really hoping to have a successful growing year.  Although looking back, I don't think last year was too bad either.

My week of sowing 2 - Sunflowers and Rudbeckia

From left to right: Rudbeckia, sunflowers sunburst mixed, and velvet queen

There wasn't much room for ambitious sowing plans this weekend.  Although I managed to turf out the six pots of sweet peas from my second batch into my 'cold frame', there had been no movement on the aquilegia/ panicum elegans/ snapdragons/ stock front so they all had to stay in situ.  But it was a beautifully bright sunny day and I was determined to make the most of it.  A quick rifle through my packets did not reveal anything desperate to get into the ground, so I went for sunflowers and rudbeckia.

Sunflowers

Sunburst mixed - Believe it or not, I have never grown a sunflower, but I love them.  For me they perfectly encapsulate summer with their huge yellow faces and majestic height.  This height is going to make finding a space to put them interesting, I can't exactly do my usual trick of stuffing them into the front of a border and let them domineer the beds.  Because of this I have not sown many, just two of this variety, one per pot.  I might sow a couple more later on but what Im going to do with the other 45 seeds I don't know.

Velvet Queen - Why is it that the same type of seed by the same manufacturer is packaged differently?! The mixed variety was encased in a small inner-packet-type-thing, these were just loose inside and of course I ripped open the bottom and am now going to struggle not to lose the rest.  Im more excited by this variety out of the two because they are a bit different being bright rusty red.  Again I only planted two at this point because the packet said each seed was effectively a fussy sleeper and needed a whole pot to itself.  An we all know space is at a premium.

Rudbeckia

Cappuccino - As with everything Im planting at the moment, I have never grown rudbeckia before.  I am rather fond of daisy type plants which is why these have made the cut this year.  The burgundy centres contrasting with the bright yellow mightily appealed to me.  I sowed 5 in two pots each, not that I want that many but thought I might as well.  This will definitely be one that I am giving away at the end of the drive if they do.  Nothing special to the planting here, just buried the seeds 1/4 inch under the soil.

My aquilegia seeds have definitely swelled and gone black as i can now see them casually laying on the surface of the soil.  While that would not be ideal if ones hand suddenly did that, or any other body part for that matter, I imagine in an aquilegia seed this is a good sign.  It is far too early for the stocks etc to be moving yet so not much to report this week.

See here for my latest update on the sweet pea situation

Sweet pea update - hardening off and neighbourly competition

I was feeling rather smug last week, considering myself to be well ahead of the game.  My first set of sweet peas had survived the great transition to outdoors and a week later all but one are still going strong.  The one that didn't got crushed in the covering up process so I have cut him down to just above the first set of leaves in the hopes that he might sprout again.  Another has got bent but a little wooden splint seems to be keeping him in the game for the moment.  My frost protection method is very home-spun; I just place the pots on a layer of thick bubble wrap to stop the cold permeating in from the bottom, then lay a layer of fleece and bubble wrap over the top.  It may not be elegant but it works.

My second batch of sweet peas had also germinated nicely, with 12 up.  Before these got too carried away with themselves I also put them outside and even spent Saturday constructing a home made cold frame for them.  I feel a cold frame would be the answer to a lot of my needs, but they seem rather pricey, and being fond of saving money where I can I have instead made one from an old shelving unit.  This shelf-thing has had many reincarnations.  In the beginning it was one side of a desk with a set of drawers in my room.  Then when the desk copped it, it just became a little bookshelf.  But now it is surplus to requirements and is laying on bubble wrap on my patio with a fleece and bubble wrap covering over the top.  So basically its just a more structured version of my normal covering up method.

So far, so good.  My stock of plants is coming along nicely, but where to plant them?  Last year I used the large pots of the mother's, but these are all currently full of narcissus waiting to flower and won't be free for at least a month.  So instead I spent the gloriously sunny day (for a change) that was Saturday emptying the largest pot of fuchsias that was waiting to be cleared out.  It was one of my favourite pots, so it was a slightly sad moment as I heaved the whacking great lump of terracotta about, but fresh beginnings are always exciting.

It looks a mess but is, in fact, my cold frame

It was at this point that I noticed my neighbour.  Yes he who likes to torment me!  He was only planting out his sweet pea seedlings into the garden already, and staking them.  And that's when I cancelled the smug parade.  I would have thought he was a bit keen myself, I had considered planting mine out but I thought they would be a nightmare to protect from the frosts.  Because lets face it, its early March, there will still be frosts.  Or at least that's what Im now praying for to kill off his plants.  No that's mean, I should not be competing with some poor 80 year old man who is just enjoying his garden. At least I can hold to that fact that mine will be nicer colours than his because I sowed them myself.  Maybe I am molly cuddling my plants too much, but the frosts can still be quite hard at this time of year.

Anyway I have two more pots of compost in the garage ready for my next batch of sweet pea seeds, waiting because I always forget to soak in advance and I have found it to be a most satisfactory method of coaxing them up.  I have just read the RHS gardening advice page for sweet peas which says don't soak them because they are liable to rot, but I don't additionally water mine and I haven't found this to be a problem.  So I plow on in my quest for sweet pea glory.

Ten key points to sowing success

My best sowing success from last year, my broad beans.  Not everything grew this well! 

I love growing from seed.  In fact I rarely buy plants because it just feels like cheating.  If you haven't had to coax it from beneath the soil, its not gardening.  However, my sowing is a little haphazard.  One moment Im giving them too much love, the next not enough.  This year I am going to be a sowing machine.  I will be giving away seedlings from the end of my drive, my neighbours will love me.  I have put together ten key points to help me achieve my goals:

Use the right equipment – turns out they make specific seed compost for a reason.  I was using normal compost right up until about June last year because I had done it before and it was fine.  Only last year they changed the formula of my regular compost and my seeds didn’t like it one bit.  Too heavy, clumpy and nutrient rich, (not to mention full of twigs but this is a side complaint).  This year I have started as I mean to go on and already have my bag.  I may have added sand to regular compost for my first sweet peas, but everybody needs a little lee-way time for shopping.

Use the right environment - which is not my dining room.  Central heating is the enemy of good seedling production.  The warm environment is not conducive to strong, stocky robust seedlings that have a chance of surviving the great transition to outdoors.  Plus it annoys my mother something chronic to have random trays of soil dotted around the house.  So this year I am dotting them around her much colder garage instead.

Understand the true meaning of the word ‘germination’ – when a packet says ‘germinate in a plastic bag’ that exactly what it means.  Those seeds need a little extra boost of heat to crack open the shells and get a little growth going.  It does not mean ‘leave in bag until seedlings are three inches tall and then watch the mass collapse when you do finally remove the bag’.   I made the mistake, numerous times, and now I have learnt.

Don’t molly cuddle – Yes seeds like a bit of love and attention, a toasty place to germinate and the right bed to lay their roots in, but they also like to be chucked outside into cold as soon as possible, provided they are kept from the frosts.  I will chuck my seedlings out early without hesitation (this doesn’t apply to my first sweet peas, that boat has already sailed) and will do my utmost to keep them from the frosts.

Do not grow long and leggy sweet peas – at least not all of them anyway.  My first batch definitely falls into the ‘long and leggy’ category but are a significant improvement on last year.  The only way is up!  (ironically a motto my sweet peas have always taken to heart)  I am not trying to reach the giant’s castle in Jack and the Beanstalk, short and stocky is the order of the day.

Prepare the planting area ahead of time - I will not be digging out weeds with one hand to make room for the plant in the other.  Last year I dug over and de - weeded my veggie patch as it was needed from left to right.  This year, at some point when I have a moment, I will get out there early and it will all ready waiting.  I will not end up with broad beans growing roots out the bottom of seed trays before I get them in the ground.  Looks like I will be spending Saturday turfing dead fuchsias out of pots.

Get all sowings in the ground - yes I am ashamed to admit that I did not actually manage to plant out all the seedlings from last year and there are about seven or eight little pots living out the winter on the patio.  Luckily they seem to be thriving.  

Do not abandon when outside - I really prescribe to the notion of out of sight, out of mind.  I looked after those pepper seedlings like they were my children, then threw them outside and let the slugs eat them.  Ironically writing this has just reminded me about my sweet peas currently shivering uncovered in the garden!  This one's going to go well.

Label - Every time I sow something I am certain I will be able to identify one green shoot from another.  Never do.  Three weeks later haven't got a clue.  I helped myself to a good handful of wooden coffee stir-ers from a fast food restaurant so I haven't got any excuse.

Don't get too emotionally attached - it is never acceptable to cry over a plant.  Gardening is fun, I will not be found sobbing over a tray of nibbled pepper seedlings this year.  Mainly because I plan on looking after them properly, but also because I will keep perspective.  

My week of sowing 1 - Stocks, snapdragons, panicum elegans and the staircase plant

It was all very well buying 50 packets of seed, but now I have to get them all in the ground.  This is going to have to be like a military assault; planned to the last degree.  Somehow I have to schedule at least one sowing of all the varieties so that the sowing falls in the brief window particularly favourable to each variety, without running out of space on my garage windowsill.  For the moment I have one small windowsill and one washing up bowls-worth of space to play with.  Glamorous life that I lead.  No greenhouses for me!  I am going to have to use the garage strictly for germination, and at the first sign of green chuck them out to fend for themselves on the patio in the cold.  I will of course try and protect them with my usual rather homespun solution of bubble wrap and fleece.

This being the case I will have to make use of every weekend pretty much to sow various bits.  Rather than lots of individual posts, for the meantime I will just do a weekly round-up of how my sowing is going, what I have sown, what's germinated, what's annoying me, what Im crying over, that kind of thing.

So this week I will cover anything I have sown in the past two weeks that hasn't already appeared in a blog.

Panicum Elegans - 'frosted explosion' I fell in love with this grass when I saw it in a garden last year surrounding bright orange dahlias with a golden halo.  Im a big fan of grass after the verges in my village were left to their own devices for months.

I sowed the seeds of this at the same time as the aquilegia, so on a freezing cold day.  Again, just like aquilegia these seeds were miniature and it was difficult to tell if I had even got them in the pot or just dusted them gently all over the patio instead.  I attempted to put five seeds in each pot, but we will see what comes up!

Panicum elegans- I just love this combination of flowers caught up in faintly
pinkish clouds of texture

Antirrhinum - 'bizarre hybrids'  I have never grown snapdragons before.  In fact, possibly shockingly, Im not even sure I could identify one, and that is why I have decided to grow some this year.  These really appealed as they are all marbled colours.  Im not a hundred percent sure what these will end up looking like but they might be stripey purple with some pink?

When a packet gives you 300 hundred seeds, I figure you can afford to toss quite a few in.  I am never going to sow them all before they get old so I might as well.  If all thirty come up I will just have to give them away!  I sowed these this weekend in two pots, 15 or so in each.  Not that I had any real chance of actually counting, these seeds are miniature!  They make the frosted explosion ones look huge.  Instead I sprinkled them on and we can only hope they don't all germinate in the same place.  Apparently snapdragons can take quite a while to germinate so Im thinking these could be quite a space hogger.

Leonotis Leonurus - I don't get how this is even possible but Im looking
forward to seeing how this actually grows

Stocks - the only one of these four plants that I have grown before, although this is a brand new packet.  I have never got on terribly well with growing them myself which is annoying because they are my favourite cut flower.  This is probably due to not getting on with it early enough in previous years and not planting them out with enough time for them to actually flower.  Well not this year!  I may sow more than one batch depending on what germinates as I love them so.

Again a packet of 300 so I bunged in lots.  Two pots of 15 seeds.  These seeds are slightly more visible being small flat disks.  Still fiddly but countable and its possible to see these in the pots.

Leonotis leonurus - 'Staircase plant'.  This plant is truly strange.  Each orange flower appears atop a stem out of the centre of the previous flower until there is a tower.  Im not sure what Im going to do with these tall plants, but I couldn't resist growing something so bizarre.

Numbers are a little more limited with this one, with only 20 seeds in total to play with.  That being the case, and the fact that I don't actually want hundreds I only planted 3 seeds in each of two pots.  These, unlike the last two actually wanted burying a bit and the seeds were quite long.

Gardening at this time of year really does take some commitment.  Both weekends were perfect examples of hideous weather.  The first freezing and the second absolutely tipping it down with rain.  While Friday was a beautiful day, on Saturday I virtually had to put my waders on to get out there to put compost in my pots.

In germinating news the first little green snout of my second batch of sweet peas is up!

Buying and Planting Aquilegias: Touchwood Aquilegias

The aquilegia currently self-seeding itself around the damp patch in my
garden; very pretty pale pink, but a devil beneath ground.

There are many things I hate about aquilegia, mainly revolving around their shocking ability to reproduce.  Talk about fertile, I swear wherever these seeds fall they grow.  Despite being an annual, as far as Im concerned once you have them that's it your stuck with them for life.  This is because aquilegia have some of the biggest and strongest roots ever.  They may be all dainty on top but underneath they have the dirtiest great roots.  I have heaved and sweated and sworn like a trooper and still they will not be freed from their soily foothold.  So best not to plant them.

However, there are also many things I like about aquilegia, such as there incredible structure.  Really as flowers go they are rather incredible, and they will also grow in the dark damp part of our garden where very little else is willing.  These two facts together almost make up for the roots, almost.

This picture really shows off their structure well with the five petals leading back to the long spurs at the back, as shown on the far left.  There's a lot going on in this little flower.

Despite their incredible structural composition, and yes I do think this is a plant worthy of such a phrase, I refused to be won over until one week on Gardener's World (a weekly gardening show in the UK) they featured the UK's national aquilegia collection.  The plants in that lady's collection were simply incredible.  She had singles of every colour, and doubles with frills and layers and constructions you would think were impossible in a flower without the assistance of ground plans and scaffolding.

So impressed by her display was I that when at Hampton Court flower show last year I stumbled across a packet of aquilegia 'Pom-poms', I bought them without a second thought.  The name implies frills and layers galore and I am all over that.  I planned on getting round the problem of its spreadability by growing them in pots.  I don't know if thats recommended, but since one seed found its way in with a fuchsia last year and grew more than happily, I know they can.

I had forgotten until I came back across the picture how interesting the seed heads are, holding all those troublesome little seeds.  I think they look like little jester hats, probably because I only saw one in a film the other day

When I decided to completely chuck my entire fuchsia collection at the end of last year a whole lot of pot space suddenly became available and my thoughts turned to what to fill this new space with.  My mind wandered back to that national collection.  Turns out the lady - Carrie Thomas - has a website called Touchwoodplants where she sells a variety of seeds, and of course aquilegia seeds from her collection.  While the site's graphics burn my ex-designer's eyes, the sheer number of possible varieties to buy is just unbelievable - we are talking like 500 varieties here!

Of course I had to have some, so emailed Carrie with a list of 6 to check availability at like 9 on a Friday night and received a response within the hour.  That lady is on it!  I wanted them all but bought Touchwoods Dreamtime, white double 2553, Black and Brownies - mix, Denim and Ice - mix, fancies - mix, and marbled blue 1246.  I went for quite a few mixed packets because then there is more chance of a nice bit of variety.  I don't think there's much point getting too precious about what they will flower like because they all cross pollinate.  The seeds were with me in like three days, I can not recommend Touchwoodplants enough for service!

I think the packaging is really sweet- little envelopes made of almost like baking parchment type paper with little sticky labels holding them shut.  Sweet but fiddly when fingers are cold.

So to planting.  On her website Carrie says bung them in whenever really after Christmas.  So to get ahead of the game I started sowing last weekend.  I put between 6-9 seeds of each variety in quite small individual pots, small because Carrie says they need transplanting on early before those monstrous roots appear.

Planting these seeds really questioned my love of gardening.  There I was, crouched, freezing with numb fingers trying to fiddle with delicate packaging and miniature seeds.  I believe the seeds prefer to be dusted with a little soil, but my soil was too damp to be dusted so I just left that part out.

Depending on how well they germinate I might plant more as I have plenty of seeds left, theoretically you get 25 of each but I think there's a few more there myself.  How she counts them out I don't know but if she wants to maintain her eyesight she should not worry about being so precise!