Planting Narcissi

You may have noticed a definite trend in my last few posts; lots of planting and little of anything else which pretty much sums up this time of year, all prep and no results.  I used to really like this time of year as it conjures images of crispy walks, evenings snuggled up by a crackling open fire, dog at your feet,  cocoa in hands.  In reality its cold, there's never ending rain, I don't have an open fire or a dog and nothing is doing anything exciting in the garden.  Its dull.

I can't remember, as I obviously didn't think to write down which bulbs I put with which,
oh well a little surprise for spring 

Peach Swirl bulbs, unsurprisingly brown and crusty

So to cheer myself up I am definitely thinking about Spring and making sure I have buried all the right bulbs for a great display.  In the past this would definitely not have included daffodils as I have always vehemently abhored them.  I think this is for exactly the same reason as why I hate things like bagonias and pansies, they are just so predictable and unoriginal.  Call me a snob but these kind of plants always say to me that the gardener just went into the garden centre, bought the most recogniseable plant they could and really didn't have to engage their brain at all, and thats just boring.  Daffodils are so over relied upon in the spring to bring a little colour to our lives that you end up being bombarded with them and I for one get sick of seeing them.  But it doesn't have to be this way I have discovered.

Our salvation in this situation are the more refined narcissus varieties.  Yes I know that technically a daffodil is a narcissus but there is a vast difference between the standard yellow garden daffodil and the frilly, eggy yellow little swirls that the mother grew in a pot last year.  I loved them, as always a sucker for a frill.  Im pleased to say that particular variety were dried out over the summer and are back in a pot ready for a good performance next year.

The varieties that came in small brown bags were hawera, minnow and sundisk.
We will have to wait until spring to find out what they look like.

I am so bored of pictures of bulbs

But me being me, I had to have more.  I considered buying some really nice narcissus bulbs on the internet, but they are really expensive!  Not having a proper job or vast income just at the second that was a luxury I just couldnt justify.  Luckily the garden centre also do some pretty decent varieties that wont make you cry at the till.  I  had two purchasing sprees, one at the same time as when I bought my agricultural sand when I bought three smaller tet-a-tet varieties, and then another splurge when I bought several proper packs.  Despite being half the price I think my garden centre buys are still some pretty decent specimens.

I hope to get more than one year out of these bulbs, I want to add to them rather than replace next year and I could see that if I went for pots containing mixtures, or one big daffodil explosion of a pot as the mother suggested, then next year I would have no idea what varieties all the bulbs were, I guess it shouldn't really matter, but it does to me.  We don't exactly have endless free terracotta pots, a situation the mother didn't help by stuffing a hydrangea in a nice big one while I was taking a nap one day.
My solution was to put one big bulbed variety with one small bulbed one.  I can't say any of the varieties were a match made in heaven, but some times you have to work with what you've got.
Planting daffodil bulbs is not rocket science and follows the pattern of most bulbs; compost, bulbs spaced out at the correct depth according to the packet, more compost, water.  Unfortunately some of my bulbs I bought loose and therefore had to do some research/guesswork as to the correct depth.  At the end of the day, I very much doubt the bulbs are down there with tape measures if I am an inch or two out.

I will wait until spring to critique the frilliness, colour and growing style of my chosen varieties as I don't have much to go on at the moment, and we all know that the packets can be misleading. But all the bulbs are now all tucked up snug in their soil.

Planting Spring bulbs

The first layer-narcissus, the mother really likes to nestle the bulbs down into the compost by gently screwing their bums down into the soil to they are snuggly nestled in

So bulbs all chosen its time to discover how the master (the mother) manages to cram so many bulbs into one pot.  Yes, all those bulbs I featured in my last post are going into just the one pot.  You may think, thats clearly not going to work, but it will!   All that is needed is a large pot, a bag of compost and, a billion bulbs, and a furry little helper.  Oh and the sun, she never plants this pot unless it is a sunny day and on cue ten minutes in, out it popped.

Any time your doing anything in the garden, the puss has to muddle in

Yes she always likes to get involved and at this time of year sitting on the patio would result in a cold bottom, so she snuck onto the compost bag while the mother nipped off to do something.  The way this works is the mother writes on the front the depth in inches the bulb would find preferable, then basically totally ignores it.  There simply isn't room to put them all in at their own desired depths, with enough soil at the top and bottom and between each layer, so the depths are taken with a pinch of salt.

One naked Tangerine Dream who accidentally got shucked during the planting process.  Rather than leave the shucking in the pot the mother felt the need to clear it out, because she likes 'a tidy pot'  

So a nice wedge of compost went into the bottom of the pot, then the narcissus as they wanted six inches,  then the tangerine dream tulips went in on top of a thin layer of compost.
The Shogun and Gavota tulips both wanted to be at three inches so they had to endure sharing the same layer, lets hope they don't mind sharing the bed, as it were.  The section on the packet describing the distance to leave between each bulb and the next has to be completely ignored at this point because those bulbs have to really get in there, rub shoulders and snuggle.

Shogun and Gavota tulips 

The essence of this is a little like putting nuts in a layer cake.  Again the crocus and muscari had to share a layer two inches from the top, cramming in tight, but they will be fine.  I know it looks like there wont be room for the lower bulbs to fight their way through the tightly packed upper layers, but somehow they do, don't ask me how.  You may think why not spread the bulbs out amongst several pots, but thats the real joy of the mother's spring pot.  It bursts out, a riot of textures and colours, and it is impossible to part the upper layers to see the soil below.  Im not actually much of a traditional 'spring bulb' fan, although they are slowly winning me round, but in context of this pot I do think they work really well.  More in this case, is definitely more.

Thats a lot of bulbs to fit into a layer but we managed it, crocus and muscari

The finishing touch to the pot is a nice layer of pansies on the top to give colour all through the winter until the bulbs pop out.  Again, not a real fan of the pansy as a plant generally, but these 'citrus mix' in bright yellow, cream, orange and white where so bright and cheery, I relented and allowed them in.  I find pansies very uninspiring, but the mother rummaged through the whole display to find a pack with one of every colour and now they are planted they don't seem too bad.  At this point we should just be sitting back and waiting for the spring, but something is sprouting up little green snouts out of the soil, not the plan so I will keep a beady eye on what the bulbs think they are doing.

The pansies, although not really flowering at this point at least add a bit of green, because pictures down into a pot of bulbs in soil are only so interesting

And finally a treat, and another bit of green, this little guy was wandering across my compost clearly off to somewhere 

Choosing Spring Bulbs

A little hint of what the pot should look like come springtime

As a family, we are ones for tradition: every morning starts with a cup of tea, after dinner we all have a decaf coffee (rebels), and every Spring there is a Spring bulb pot.  Its the one thing the mother does, without fail, every year, and she is masterful at it.  How she crams so many bulbs into one pot I don't know, although I do now because I watched her do it this year.  In fact I was rather involved in the entire process, far more than normal and therefore its likely to be a real damp squib come Spring.

The reason I was so involved this year, other than because I now insist on being consulted on anything to do with the garden, was because I was with the mother when the bulbs were bought.  Being an ex-designer I of course believe that I know best about colour schemes so kept sticking my spoke in and we have gone for a completely different look this year.  Last year the mother's pot was a triumph, looking back at it in one of my first posts, reminds me just how excellent it was.  There was height, texture, colour, basically it was a pot of pure springtime joy.  It had a rather definite colour scheme: white, pink and purple.  This year we have gone for completely different colours, which Im now hoping will not be a mistake.
Owing to the fact that it is bulb season and therefore all pictures just make it look like you have become overly obsessed with onions and large garlic, I have photographed the fronts of the packets to spice up the bulb monotony and so you have some idea of what it should all look like in the end.

The hand written numbers in blue are the depth in inches they want to be
planted at, it helps the planting process apparently

Shogun bulbs

It all started with spotting these orange 'Shogun' Praestans which are wildflowering Tulips.  I kind of think if your relying on one pot to give you all your springtime excitement, then the colours want to be in your face bright, which these certainly are.  Particularly like the contrasting blue stems, and as blue and orange are perfect colour companions the colour scheme evolved from there.

Muscari- a very small and crusty bulb

After this year's discovery of Grape Hyacinths, my new favourite spring bulb, they were always going to be making a followup appearance in this year's version.  I don't know where last year's bulbs went so I got a new packet which appears to be a different variety to last year's.  Light blue goes well with orange so we should be good.

Gavota Tulips breaking free from their rusty shells

Get the colour of these 'Gavota' tulips, they are the perfect colour combination just with themselves.  I don't think many people would immediately think to put bright orange with raspberry but when you see in a flower it reminds you just what a great combination that is.  No way these weren't coming home.

Tangerine Beauty bulbs, very similar to the other Tulip bulbs

Tulip 'Vvedenskyi- tangerine beauty' is not actually the most exciting tulip I have ever seen but I thought the colour would add to the overall ambience of the pot.

Crocus bulbs getting way too carried away with themselves with their tiny pale shoots  

I don't like crocus, but considering this variety has done such a good job of colour co-ordinating with the pot scheme I have allowed them in.  I guess I can admit that they are quite pretty, but I don't really want to.

Again the narcissus are off, despite not yet being planted

I hadn't really planned on these making an appearance in this pot... but never mind.  I love these, so small and cute, and strangely geometric.  I have had a real thing for daffodils and narcissi this year, a lot more on this to follow!
Rather than let this drag on too much I will stop here and leave the actual planting till next time.

Planting Allium bulbs

Our display of alliums from this year, which hopefully will be added to

At the same time as planting my Sphaerocephalon bulbs, which by the way is the longest word that I know how to spell, I also planted all my other Allium bulbs.  Unfortunately my other bulbs were considerably larger, and therefore far harder work than the Sphaerocephalon tiddlers were.  Two of the paper bags of bulbs had been written on so I knew what they were, but I only rediscovered what the third ones were by revisiting this post, Red mohicans it turns out, I can't wait!  The others are 'White Giant' and 'Rosenbachianum'.

White Giant bulbs, you can tell, they are giant

Red Mohicans bulbs, quite possibly the best allium if only for the name

Planting Alliums is, as far as Im aware, hardly rocket science.  The stumbling block was the same as for the Sphaerocephalon; sand.  I kept reading that they want well drained soil, so to give them the best chance of being the most amazing display they could be I felt I should try and give them a little drainage.  The mother did not bother herself with such things when she planted her allium bulbs a couple of years ago and they have been great every year, so maybe its not as important as people make out.  But still if Im going to make all the effort of excavating a hole, Im going to try and do it right.
In one of my paper bags was a slip of paper giving instructions on how to plant the bulbs, I can't remember exactly what It said but basically I believe the rule is the hole wants to be two and a half times the size of the bulb- great for Sphaerocephalons- less so for White Giants.  How I cursed those great big bulbs after I had dug a few holes.  I trowelled the soil that came out of the holes into a bucket of sand, mixed the two up and put some underneath the bulbs and then filled the holes up with it too.  I imagine it worked out at one part sand to two parts soil.  Hopefully thats what they wanted and I will have a fabulous display.

No not evidence of a mole, Iv been digging holes

It annoys me faintly when I read how to plant Alliums because all the gardeners in the know say 'oh I plant them in drifts, don't plant them in two and threes it will look dotty', says somebody with probably acres of garden and no limitations.  Some of us aren't so lucky.  There is not space to be filled, space has to be found.  'Drifts' have to fit themselves round the mother's established bushes, and by round I mean I hacked a great chunk off the bottom of two bushes to reveal a patch of soil to wedge my Alliums into.  I also found another patch, so I will get two 'drifts', or 'clumps' as they are in my book.

I unfortunately can't remember what variety the mother's alliums are but they made a good display

Wet bee, poor thing

Planting Sphaerocephalon bulbs

A display of Sphaerocephalon bulbs at Hampton Court flower show in June, covered in bees, which is always a good thing in my book

There are times when one wants to be gardening, and there are times when one does not.  This time of year definitely falls under the second bracket, I spend the entire winter period on a constant quest for warmth and am generally to be found in at least three layers, indoors.  However, one cannot expect a lovely display come the Spring from bulbs unless one braves the cold bleakness, wraps up warm and digs in, literally.  I try and keep in mind what I am hoping to achieve and it can be basically summed up by this picture of Sphaerocephalon bulbs at Hampton Court earlier this year.  A mass of raspberry coloured balls of joy smothered in bees, but they aren't just going to pop out of the ground of their own accord.

Ideally as Sphaerocephalons are part of the Allium family, I think they want to be planted from late September to October time, but due to excessive weekend rainfall I didn't get mine in until a week or two ago.

I was also delayed by the need to buy grit.  Despite already having Alliums happily growing in the garden, a little research informed me that they like 'well drained soil' which is categorically not something I have.  Up to this point when a plant has required a little extra drainage I have mixed in some sand from an old bag that was bought for my sandpit many many moons ago, but the Alliums i felt needed the proper stuff.  I had no idea how difficult it would be to find horticultural grit, I thought it was pretty common stuff, Monty Don certainly throws the stuff about enough to give that impression.  Only after searching through several garden centres did I finally find some, which came in like eight different grades of size, which is faintly ridiculous but there we go.

So picture the scene, Im standing in the pouring rain deciding between sand, grit, fine grit, light gravel etc, finally make my choice, go to grab a bag, and what do you know; the ink on the bag is only water soluble.  Hands were green, like Shrek.  I had to be allowed into the staff area to access the sink, and even then they were tinged.  Isn't that a stupid bit of packaging?

My horticultural sand, I would have dug out some but it has been terribly wet and I don't want to be green

Anyway I digress.  So the weathers held for five minutes, bag of grits to hand, its time to get the Sphaerocephalon in.  If you read my post on what I bought at Hampton Court you will know that my bulbs came ready planted, in full bloom in fact, in a small plastic pot.  Once home I didn't really know what to do with them.  I didn't want to plant them as they were all clumped together but didn't feel I could separate them out while in flower.  So in the pot they stayed until now.  The balls of flower are long gone but I left the seed heads on, even though you are meant to remove them from Alliums to help them flower, which seems to have caused an interesting situation.

I had about five flowers, so I expected when I emptied the pot out to find five fairly smallish bulbs amongst the soil, but I didn't.  Instead there were dozens of tiny little bulbs, mainly near the top of the pot, some small, some larger but no five looking particularly well developed.  Somebody had been reseeding behind my back, although I don't know if all these new bulbs are from this year or last year, and what to do with them now.  The very smallest, maybe twenty five tiny bulbs, I decided were far too small for the garden so I potted them back up into small terracotta pots in a compost and grit mix and we will see what they do next year.  The remaining largest seven or eight bulbs, still only the size of a small road bean, I buried in the garden.

The rule of thumb with Alliums seems to be to plant them at a depth two and a half times the size of the bulb, but for a Sphaerocephalon thats not terribly deep.  So instead I winged it, dug maybe three inches down chucked a soil grit mix in the bottom, inserted the tiny bulb and filled up the holes.  If you read about this variety on the internet websites always say 'look great in drifts with long grass'.  Well I don't really have drifting room, so a space was created for an Alium patch in a sunny spot between two bushes and that will have to do.

Doesn't look like much now, just two sodden pots, but hopefully the bulbs in these will mature 

Did I mention these sink?  Oh my god onions!  I know they theoretically are part of the onion family, but where as other Allium bulbs just have the appearance of onions, these have the smell, possibly because they were damp and in soil.  It was almost too much, the hands, no longer green, did not now smell too fresh.  The smell was clearly so overwhelming I actually forgot to take a picture of the bulbs and they are planted now so your going to have to use your imagination.

Hard work done, if you can call digging a tiny hole for one of these bulbs hard work and it was back off indoors for a cup of tea and a warm up, for five minutes until I was back out planting all my other bulbs, more on which will be coming soon.  Now we just have to sit back and wait for Spring and Summer, a depressing thought.

Gladiolus Passos - an update

Oh how I love Gladiolus, even though they are considered so uncool and old fashioned.  The association to an Australian transvestite comedian really doesn't help their street cred either.  But I don't care, I grow them proudly in the front garden in full view of the neighbours, all big and blousy and so unapologetic.

Last time I blogged about Gladiolus was a long time ago back in the summer, after a dig of epic proportions that should really have resulted in some kind of historical find of note considering how much sweat dripped from my weary body as I stood six inches down at the bottom of my trench.  However in the corns went and my last word on the subject was how testing they were being.  You may revisit that cheery post here.

A long time has passed since that day and Im pleased to say a few Gladiolus flowers have peppered themselves through that time.  After a long time believing that my dig was going to result in just bulgy biceps and not flowers, finally out they came.  Turns out they had just conspired with my Zinnias and Cosmos to start coming out while I was away on holiday.  Thats the kind of reward you get, all that love and tenderness and they stick two green, frondy fingers up at you.

The first one that came out was a Passos, but it didn't really look like I was expecting it too.  Nice, don't get me wrong, but somewhat different to the picture on the packaging.  That does infuriate me, when the picture looks nothing like the actual thing.  Maybe most people don't keep the packaging after planting and therefore can't compare, but clearly I have cluttered up the floor for months with it to enable this to happen.  Passos as per the packaging is a predominantly white flower with a dark purply blue centre, flecks of the same colour across the white and a splash of red in there too.  Very contrasty and eye catching.  Passos as per real life is a decidedly more purple creature, with a lot less white and considerably more red.  I don't actually have a problem with the way it looked, it was surprisingly dark and velvety, but its false advertising people, and it gets right up my nose.

It may have come out, but it wasn't exactly in the best of conditions.  It poured and poured and poured with rain just as the first buds were popping, and then they decided to pop no more.  On emergence the petals were brown, dry and crusty round the edges and looked a little weather worn.  The petals were also decidedly creased and in dire need of a good iron like a freshly hatched butterfly, which I can only imagine was because they took so long to come out.

I didn't get many Passos flowers come out, two stems in total actually I think which is hardly what I call inundated but as I love them so I treasured what I did get.  Snip and they were pride of place in a vase indoors to be admired, and admire I did.

Bonfire Night part 2

So on Wednesday we were talking Bonfire Night parade: fire torches, fancy dress, drums and pipers, one whole lot of excitement.  Today it’s the actual bonfire and fireworks part of the night.  The purpose of the parade as far as Im aware is to lead spectators into the field where the bonfire is.  The one at Fletching was a pretty decent size.  I didn’t see it pre-burn so I didn’t see the 'guy' go on but I presume he was on there, but there were definitely a lot of bangers being thrown by the Bonfire society members onto the fire, as it continually exploded.

The fireworks every year at Fletching are genuinely amazing.  Considering it’s a tiny village, and I believe all the money for the fireworks comes from fundraising during the year they are outstanding.  Im not sure what that fundraising involves, but it must be more than just the buckets they carry around for the odd pound at the end of the night.  A solid ten minutes of really good quality display and the whole thing is set to music, there surely must be connections to a pyrotechnic there somewhere.

I have been going to this particular bonfire night for over ten years and every year I go it always lives up to my very high expectations.  However I don't think any year will ever top the first time I went.  The father and I went this one year and parked a couple of miles away and walked along deserted country roads in complete darkness for almost an hour, a really lovely experience that I will never forget.  At the time we wondered what we were going to but eventually we started walking past parked cars and warmly wrapped people.  Turning up super late we were just in time for the fireworks, or more specifically the fire bombs, as I like to call them.  I have never seen anything like it at any other display.  I wish I had a picture but despite there being a countdown in the form of song, the wall of fire shot 7 foot into the night sky and still took me by surprise.

So for an excellent firework display Fletching is your bag, but if you are in Sussex around the 5th of November, you should go to Lewes.  A little Sussex town, it is the bonfire capital of Britain.  With I think 6 separate bonfire societies with individual displays and bonfires, it really is something to behold. They burn numerous effigies and the whole town is lit up in flame.  The crowds are huge, something like 80,000 people de-cend on a town that normally only has 16,000 inhabitants.  It can take half an hour to get from one end of the high street to the other, so not good for those who suffer from claustrophobia.  Don't believe its as amazing as I say?  Youtube it, you'll see!