The spring pot - year three - margarita tulips, mascari and lilac wonder

My annual spring pot, crowned with some smashing margarita tulips

So I vanished. At the end of last year I abruptly stopped posting. The simple fact of the matter is I just didn't feel like it, lots of things were changing and my blog was a casualty of the process. But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy gardening! Nothing could put me off that, and now things have calmed down a bit I thought it would be fitting to come back to where it all started two years ago with my annual spring pot.

To set the scene every year in autumn the mother and I head to a garden centre, buy up half the bulbs and spend an afternoon trying to cram them all in the one pot. Its quite an art, like putting together crazy paving, and I must confess I leave the actual hard work of planting to my mother.

Mascara and scilla siberica alba   

But I do have a hand in its design, which is why last year it was an abysmal failure. I can't remember all in the ins and outs, but the general gist was some of the bulbs lied and made out they would fit into a blue and orange colour scheme when they were shocking red. It did not look good.

And you know what, I really wished I had gone pink last year, so this year I have embraced the somewhat feminine shade wholeheartedly. I think we have set the record for the number of varieties within the pot this year, at eight, and despite all the bulbs being crammed in there like commuters in Victoria underground station in rush hour, everything has come up just fine.

The real star of the show has been the lustrously dark pink Margarita tulips which are standing slightly above the rest of the flowers and really commanding attention. Its a really super variety, so much so I'm actually going to try and identify the bulbs to try and keep for next year. The wind has snapped off a couple but they are brightening up the kitchen windowsill instead now.

Early colour came from the combination of the blue chionodoxa forbesii and scilla siberica alba, and this blue and white combination has been carried through by my beloved mascara. I went back to my favourite blue latifolium variety with their contrasting top-nots, and for the first time this year I also threw in some white ones in the form of white magic. They are really unapologetically white, which is rather pleasing and just popping up between all the foliage now.

If anything in the pot is a bit 'meh' its the narcissus tresamble, but at the end of the day when competing with the likes of margarita and tulip lilac wonder there really is only so much a fairly simple white daffodil can do. It does add contrast though. Lilac wonder aren't remotely lilac but are instead a lovely shade of pink with delightfully eggs yellow centres. I do love a bit of yellow in the mix.

And lastly I was going to I can't really remember seeing tulip little beauty, but looking at my pictures I realise that is because they haven't actually come out yet! So still things to look forward too.

Margarita tulips

Planting spring bulbs - pink tulips and muscari

I hate this time of year with a passion. Every day when I get home from work its dark and freezing and on my one gardening day of the week, Saturday, it without fail rains. Nothing is growing with any great speed and im stuck inside no doubt feeding my face. The whole situation is thoroughly depressing. But there is one silver lining. Its bulb planting season! And this means I can be frivolous with my credit card and plan wondrous displays.

And frivolous I most certainly have been. My credit card has gone for a lay down. Although the bulbs in today's post I ironically didn't buy. Today we are talking the spring pot. The infamous pot that the mother crams as many bulbs in as physically possible and always turns out stunning. How all the little 'fellas', as bulbs are in my mothers eyes, manage to fight and elbow their way to the top I don't know, but despite being layered up like a cake they do.

This is a flavour of last years' rather red and blue pot 

I have been over how the pot gets planted in the past, most people know how its done, so im just going to focus on the planting scheme. I wasn't so thrilled with this years pot, too much sun ruined the timings and the colour palette of orange and blue didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. I expressed an interest in doing a nice girly pink pot as it started wilting. Because everybody likes a bit of pink in the spring. Well I have delivered.

Next years pot will be pink, white and blue if it turns out as the packets promise. Which nobody can guarantee! And it should be absolutely stuffed. Im not sure we have ever put so many bulbs into one pot before, but no doubt it will still work. As ever the only rule for the spring pot is anything that goes in it must be an early bloomer.

If my memory serves me correctly now nestled right at the bottom is narcissus 'tresamble'. There has to be a daffodil of some kind in the pot and I chose tresamble because it should be near enough white. I like a nice white clean daffodil, and I didn't want too much yellow. Knowing my luck it will be full on cream.

Next up is Margarita. She is a big blousey pink tulip which should bring a nice feminine feel to proceedinsgs. She isn't our usual style for the pot, we normally go for something more striking and structural but its nice to have something different.

Carrying on the pink theme is tulipa 'lilac wonder' which is a worrying name for something that promises to be pink. I really like the look of these, small cup-shaped pink flowers with really bright egg-yellow centres. In my mind these will be the real stars of the show.

One of my absolute favourite spring flowers which I have spouted endlessly about before is muscari. These are literal perfection in my eyes. Anything that looks like a tiny bunch of blue grapes is great in my eyes. Which is why I have bought them in white. No, I have never tried the white ones before so I was obviously itching to give them a go. I have never even seen a white one but they will fit in with the theme of the pot nicely and hopefully I will love them.

But you can't just have muscari in white so the variety with the contrasting top knot are back too. Last year I grew a plain blue variety which I wasn't so keen on so I have gone back to my original favourites. The top knots get me every time. Can't wait.

Basically everything in this pot thats pink is a tulip and little beauty is no different. I feel this little cherub of a flower is what ties all the rest of bulbs together. These tulips contain each of the colours in the pot; white, pink and blue. The combination promises to be quite striking, even though they are only small in stature.

Finally the top layer contains two quite similar small flowers. Scilla siberica alba and chionodoxo forbesii. One is blue with white centres and one is just plain white. And thats all I have to say about them because they are really very similar. But also no doubt lovely when they flower.

We planted all the bulbs one sunny saturday in late October so all we have to do now is sit back and wait for for the magic to happen. Indoors preferably.

Alliums - from sprout to bud

The first peek of allium snout back in January, they snuck up when I wasn't looking

Last year at Hampton Court I decided to seriously add to my stocks of alliums.  The mother bought three bulbs last time we went several years ago now, and we like them equally so there was little disagreement to buying more.  Who wouldn't like a ball of flower dancing about on a long stalk.

The allium patch early in the year, you can see the pale washed out succulent variety just appearing, I neglected to photograph it again so I can't show you the bird damage

The flower heads emerging.  You can tell these are related to onions, and you can just see my netting in the background

I have no idea what the original bulbs were, but at the show I bought Rosenbachianum, white giant and red mohican. I bunged them in holes and waited for the magic to happen.  Theoretically I don't have the right soil for alliums, but it has never held us back before so I had high hopes.  The first sign of life came in the form of leaves in mid January.  One variety had shiny leaves while the other had what I would describe as being succulant, juicy looking leave, light grey, and to be perfectly honest, rather floppy.  These succulant leaves were promptly butchered by something.  I assumed slug damage so slug peleted accordingly.  When this didn't have any affect suspicions turned to a fat pidgeon who had taken to strutting round the garden in that area.  The pesky bird had taken a fancy to pecking my leaves.  In order to prevent this I had to net the whole area which seemed to have the desired effect.  So there you go, pidgeons like alliums, who knew.  The one downside of protecting the leaves like this is the netting made the leaves a bit cramped and the went weirdly wrinkly, like somebody who had been in the bath too long.

The white giant bud just after splitting, and about to start popping out the individual little flowers

The first little flower is out! This is obviously a purple one

In early April the fat flower buds started appearing in amongst the leaves and quickly shot up on their spindly stems.  At this point I became aware that there only appeared to be two varieties distinguishable, but I bought four so was a little confused.  Anyway the buds ripened and finally started splitting a couple of weeks ago.  I love the way alliums do this.  The skin on the buds starts drying out and becomes thin and stretched like paper, before finally splitting.  Then a tuft of flowers emerges before the whole ball fills out at a later date. They don't all come out like this of course, the ones the mother had before completely emerge and then slowly flower over time.

That lovely stage when the casing is all dry and papery and starts splitting

This one came out in a lovely tuft, like a paintbrush, with the flowers all curled up in concentric spirals and already open when the shuck, shucked. Pretty!

And thats where im going to leave it, what a tease.  Il be back with pictures of the individual varieties another time.

narcissi - jonquilla pipit, minnow, and the unknown

Typically one of the narcissi I was most impressed by this year was one I threw in right at the end just because I was feeling frivolously spendy.  I didn't have high hopes for anything spectacular.  Jonquilla pipit is just like your regular see-it-everywhere daffodil except its back to front.  The trumpet is lighter and the petals are yellow.  How impressive can it be? I asked myself.

Jonquilla pipit, nice sized flowers with lovely white trumpets set against bright yellow petals

The thing about daffodils is, they always have the capacity to surprise me. Thats a joke, providing the advertising graphics are vaguely accurate, which is my pet peeve, there is little doubt what will burst forth from the soil.  But I was surprised just how much i liked them.

See not all of the flowers quite got the colour brief, the bottom one is
completely yellow

The trumpet wasn't just pale, it was the perfect milky shade of white.  And for such a simple straightforward colour switch, it did manage to stand out amongst the vivid oranges and heavy frills of its fellow patio occupants.  However, not all the flowers have quite stuck to this theory, and as the photo below shows, some of the flowers were delightfully stripey as the colour runs between them.  This added just a little bit more interest, if any was needed, and some variety.  Im totally sold on it and can't wait to grow it again next year.

Beautiful stripey petals, love this, not sure why it doesn't manage to be consistent, but thats nice

Any long term followers of this blog may recognise this frilly wonder as they are not a fresh addition.  These are the mother's and she managed to keep them from last year so that we got to enjoy their stunning display again.  I absolutely love these, if I could choose only one narcissi out of all of my growings this year, it would probably be this one, if im truly honest with myself.

The unknown joy that is this narcissi, I love the colour, the formation,
the smell, its all good.

Unfortunately I still don't know its name, but it does bear uncanny resemblance to a large tub of salted caramel icecream I spent some quality time eating last weekend.  These look as tasty as the icecream was.

Frilly and fragrant

I remember mid April these absolutely stank.  I know your not meant to say that about something that smells nice, but these truly honked.  A good honk, but a honk non-the-less.  The mother and I spent some time one evening out in the semi-darkness sniffing them, getting a good nose-full of the pungent aroma.

Look at that shot of colour, like toffee sauce on cream

The last narcissi in my stocks is minnow.  This is a sweet little thing, multiple dainty flower heads on skinny stems.  This does not hog the attention when amongst other pots, but is lovely to bend down and have an intimate look at on the way past.  There isn't a lot to say about minnow, because to be fair, there is not a lot to it.  Small but perfectly formed with the tiniest trumpets ever, these are super cute.  I wouldn't recommend minnow over any of the others, but if one has a spare pot, why not.

And thats it!  All my narcissi covered for the year.  Next autumn I am definitely going to treat myself to some really special narcissi varieties that you can only buy over the internet, can't wait.

Small and delightful, minnow does it well

The Spring Pot - Gavota and tangerine beauty tulips

Look at that tulip! What a colour combination, like mango and raspberries,
shame about the clashy colours but blame the manufacturers

There is a sad sight sat in front of the patio doors at the second.  The sad shadow of the former glory resplendent in colour and texture that was the spring pot.  The hinges on the tulip petals finally broke off last week and therefore all that is still going strong is the polyanthus.  The last time I featured the spring pot it was a picture of orange and purple, a mixture of tulips and grape hyacinths.  This stage was followed by a second bout of tulips.  Just as I got back off holiday a whole host of blood red tulips burst forth, hogging centre stage.  The colour clash was atrocious.  I don't know if the April heatwave brought these out extra early, but there was a colour scheme clash in there I clearly hadn't anticipated.  Luckily the orange moved on pretty swiftly and were replaced by a tulip of the most gorgeous colour mix.  Gavota triumph tulips are something else.   I know I chose it so of course I liked it, but boy, it was lovely.  It was elegant rather than traditionally pretty, a dark purpley brown, almost maroon if you will, offset with a zizzy yellow.  I enjoyed them immensly.

What a dreamy centre

I didn't like the bright red tulips that much, I found them slightly brash and unsubtle, and I wasn't keen on the red and blue combination with the grape hyacinths.  I know red and blue go together fine, but it was a bit military for my liking.

Tangerine beauty, only not tangerine.  Red-clash-with-everything-in-the-pot-beautty more like.  No point being colourful if its the wrong colour

Ok for this next bit to make sense you need to understand that this paragraph is a later addition.  I had this all written and then went back to a previous post to check the names of the tulips when I discovered why there was such a colour clash.  The red tulips weren't meant to be red, they were meant to be tangerine.  Orange by any other name.  Orange would have fitted in beautifully with all the other bulbs, red did not.  But I knew that and that is why I did not choose red ones.  This is a classic example of my favourite irritation: the innaccurate flower picture that lies to you on purchase and disappoints you later in life. Tulipa vvedenskyi Tangerine Beauty are red, not orangey red, not browney red. Red.  If I had wanted red tulips thats what I would have bought.

I feel this is the right point to reflect on the spring pot as a whole.  Would I have chosen anything different?  Well clearly the timings on the packets can not be trusted when a little sunshine is thrown in the mix, so nothing chosen to go in the pot should be able to present an obstacle to a continuing harmonious colour scheme.  Other than that, maybe it might have been nice if the colours were a little more pretty?  Is it wrong to want to see a bit of pink at that time of year?  I think not.  I would quite like to do a pot with a real feminine palette next year, maybe involving pastels?  It will be wild.  Join me again October-time for the great bulb pick for next year.  I will of course be doing stuff between then and now, but for now I need to get those bulbs out and make way for the sweet peas!  As they say on the trains, all change!

Broad beans and the vegetable patch

My very small vegetable patch pre-manuring

I have managed, mainly through butchering a choisya, to carve out a small segment of the garden in a sunny patch for the growing of vegetables.  To say it is a 'vegetable patch' or garden, would be to award it more gravitas than it deserves, like calling a Brighton beach hut a holiday home.  Somehow the mother snuck a pair of alliums front and centre of the space, and one year I will finally get around to digging them up and relocating them elsewhere.  Not this year though.

One of the trenches with manure in.

Last year I neglected this special space for far too long, until a bountiful luscious bed of weeds had formed and I was de-weeding from left to right as necessary to be able to get my plants in! Not the way to do it.  This year, I promised myself I would be far more organised, and come rain or shine get out there in advance and get the soil sorted so nothing was left stranded in small pots becoming root bound while everybody waited for me to get my act together.  That obviously didn't happen.  I plucked out the odd weed here and there as I went past but the job remained firmly on my to do list.  Luckily this attitude actually paid dividens and the mother finally got fed up of seeing the weeds and instructed the father to pull them all out.  And he was able to be convinced to go and buy two bags of manure from a local farm.  Solid gold that man is, has no vision but great for the manual labour.

My first batch of broad beans growing big and juicy leaves

I did do some of the hard graft myself and set too with fork and spade to really work it over and add some manure in there to get things going.  Having used this patch as a veg bed for the last few years and done a lot to the soil it is quite a different beast to the rest of the garden where a pick-axe or automatic road drill are essential tools to hole-digging.  The method for adding manure, so the mother tells me, is to dig a trench along the back of the bed, spade in some delightfully rotted horse poo, and then cover it over with the soil in front, digging down far enough to create a second trench in front to take the next batch of manure.  In this way the whole bed is fertilised and the soil moved about.  That's the theory, problem is by the time I had finished I had managed to create rather an impressive hill.  The mother said she had never known anybody be able to create a hill on a completely flat piece of ground quite so effectively.  I have attempted to flatten it but essentially my veg are on a gradient.

Some solid roots

So patch all primed the first seedlings to be planted were my first batch of broad beans.  Now im not going to brag, but im rather pleased with how my broad beans are coming along.  I bought a new variety for this year called Witkiem (manita), why the manita is in brackets I don't know.  I felt panicked after checking back over last years blog posts to discover I had my broad beans up at the beginning of April, so chucked them in this year on the 14th March so as not to be behind.  They took their time and only started appearing on the 6th April, so almost exactly the same time as last year.  A total of thirteen out of fifteen came through. which is not too bad I thought.  I neglected to note down when I actually planted them out, but I believe it was around the 20th of April.

All neatly tucked into their new bed

Having got one set it I embarked upon a second batch, and ignoring such trivial things like sow-by-dates, sowed a tray of last years variety as well.  Im pleased to say the beans weren't bothered about not being in date either and I had a similar amount of Masterpiece Green Longpod germinate too.  These were growing great guns so I also got them in the patch this week.  I can't tell you how chuffed I am to be so organised and ahead of the game this year.  And I managed to defend every single bean's honour from slugs.  

They are all now about a foot tall and coming along nicely

Look how well they are coming along!  My first batch is over a foot tall now, and although they currently look fairly sturdy, this is what they looked like last year before collapsing all over the lawn.  So this year I am primed and ready to stake them at the first sign of weakness.  I also now know that broad beans require tonnes and tonnes of water when in flower so hopefully I should get a good crop.  I love growing broad beans because the seedlings are so satisfyingly lush.  I am out of space for broad beans now so im all set in terms of sowing for this year.

My second batch again bursting forth and needing planting out pronto!

Narcissi - hawera and sundisk

Hawera narcissi, a cloud of small yellow blooms

Im going through the various varieties of narcissi I grew this year, and whilst last week I focussed on the biggest, ruffled varieties, the two I am talking about today are much simpler affairs.
Hawera and sundisk are two small, simple narcissus, but are more than capable of holding their own against monsters like peach swirl.

Hawera are one of the latest narcissus to flower which is good because all the others, apart from sundisk which is also still out, are well over now so they are still livening up the patio with a pretty splash of yellow.  These differ from pretty much all the others I grew because hawera is formed of little flowers clustered together on the top of spindly stems, so when planted in a pot they form a lovely mass, like a cloud of yellow that floats around merrily in the wind.  Even the father, who is not one for commenting on blooms has willingly volunteered that he particularly likes this variety.

The flowers themselves are all that typical daffodil yellow without any variation in colour.  The consist of a small cup like trumpet with comparatively long petals stretching behind the trumpet like a star.  The great thing about this variety is its interesting up close, but is equally delightful when viewed at distance, while enjoying a cup of tea from an indoor chair for example, watching the dainty flowers bob and flutter in the breeze.

Maybe its because it hasn't been that hot or sunny since the hawera came out but these have lasted and lasted, a good couple of weeks, and they don't show any sign of going over any time soon.
I would definitely be interested in obtaining other varieties that grow in this clumping manner to add variety to my narcissus blooms. I do appear to be naturally drawn to large singular flowers, but it important to have a mix.

Sundisk narcissus, beautiful small round flowers on very straight upright stems

Talking of singular flowers, this describes sundisk perfectly.  Actually the name sundisk describes sundisk perfectly - a disk of sun.  These are very flat, two tone disks of yellow and I absolutely love them.  They remind me of very simplistic painted flowers when they are depicted from afar - just a round blob of yellow on the top of a green stem, each one very separate from the others.

I just think these are so pretty, I love the way they stand in the pot, all at various heights.  I think it was a good choice to grow these in in a rectangular long trough pot because it means all the flowers tend to face the same way so its good for putting in front of the window.

They may be singular flowers but I have got quite a few of them, just shy of thirty I would say from maybe ten or so bulbs, so they are putting on a really decent display.  And like the hawera they have lasted for ages.  I believe this is quite a cheap variety, which I imagine is because the blooms are fairly small and simple, about the size of a fifty pence piece if your British, but I think they are worth every penny.

Narcissi - peach swirl and popeye

Peach Swirl narcissi.  It not only looks like eye yolk, the centre even has that slightly velvety look the same

Back at the rear end of November I invested in a whole barrowful of narcissi bulbs.  I think the long miserable winter got to me and so when it finally ended, I wanted it to end in an explosion of yellow and white frills.  I was also very taken with some fabulous narcissi bulbs the mother grew last year that were little complicated bundles of layers.  I went for several different varieties, large and ruffley, small and simple, singles and multiple headed.  I thought now they are all flowered I would run through them and today I am looking at the two biggest.

Ruffle central

Peach Swirl popped out first.  And boy did it pop.  This is one big flowered narcissi.  The outside petals  are crisp white while the middles are the most beautiful egg yolk orange yellow.  I just love this orange shade, and it completely makes the flower.  This is definitely what would classify as a 'show-stopper' among the narcissi family.  After the misery of winter these really were a feast for the eyes.

You can't deny it has body

However they burst forth just as England experienced a heat wave, frying the petals and making them wilt faster than they would usually have, and I disappeared off on holiday for a couple of days so I didn't get to enjoy them as much as I had hoped.

While I often enjoy a very simply constructed flower, I also enjoy it when flowers have a really complicated construction, and these certainly ticked that box. A ring of spiked white petals intersect the coloured centre, making them very dynamic and three dimensional.  Essentially its a nice flower, Im gilding the lilly in descriptive terms, you can see the pictures as well as I can.

Popeye narcissi, less dramatic but still lovely

The second variety is Popeye.  Both varieties bloomed at much the same and initially they looked rather similar.  I wondered to myself why I would have plumped for two such similar specimens, but then the peach swirls darkened and they stopped looking so alike.

Popeye has far less flamboyance and shape than peach swirl, restricting its ruffles to within its yellow trumpet and leaving a simple set of petals behind.  If Im totally honest, I prefer the structure of a good peach swirl myself, but popeye has its charms too.  They yellow trumpet is very zingy, and is constructed from tightly packed petals, resembling rolled up layers of tissue paper.

If I was to recommend one of the two, I would choose peach swirl, I prefer the colour and just think they are more interesting flowers, but anybody in the market for large flowered narcissi would enjoy either of these two delights in my opinion.  I will definitely attempt to keep the bulbs for next year.