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!

Cucumbers - seedling progress report

Its a veritable cucumber seedling fest out there in the garage these days!

I have faced numerous struggles in my life, passing my driving test, choosing my career, getting enough sleep, but mainly growing cucumbers.  I know it should not be as hard as I make it seem, but to me the cucumber plant is a tetchy beast.  I have had problems with starting them off too hot and just having them wilt, little splints desperately trying to keep them upright.  I have had problems with seeds not germinating, and then randomly popping up amongst the annuals in the front border where I threw the soil.  Nobody wants cucumbers amongst the annuals.

My seedlings are now at the stage of developing proper leaves and generally
putting on a bit too much height for my liking

But that was all last year, this year things have vastly improved.  I have sown eleven cucumber seeds and I am thrilled to say I have seven proper seedlings.  Things didn't start so well, my first batch of five produced very mixed results.  One New Telegraph cucumber popped up virtually immediately on the kitchen windowsill, and ever aware of wilting, was promptly moved to the less balmy environment of the garage.  Socrates and Louisa also made an appearance within a week, and joined the seedling party in the garage.  The shock of this move proved too much for Louisa, which stopped dead in its tracks and refused to grow anymore, dying about six weeks later.  Socrates did not take this departure well and despite appearing to be loving life, it also randomly curled up and died a few days later.  The final two seeds have not germinated and remain in situ on the windowsill.  I would throw them away but I have been burned this way before.

Good strong cucumber plant that, just hope they don't all wilt when I get
them outside!

The second batch has been far more successful, producing a full house of seedlings.  These I germinated on my bedroom windowsill, although I doubt thats the reason behind the improved results.  I sowed two Louisa to make up for my loss (this was before Socrates also kicked the bucket) to give me two of each.  Im not sure where I got this theory from because I now have two Telegraph and Louisa seedlings, and one of each of the others.

Things are going well, each has produced their first proper leaf, although the next hurdle is moving them outside.  Things are beginning to get a bit leggy and I would have put them out safe in the knowledge there won't be anymore frosts being May, but there was a frost this week so maybe not.  So thats the next challenge, moving the whole operation outside and getting it all potted up.

This is the only cucumber which is potentially being a problem.  The seed leaves got very brittle and haven't grown anymore, one has even snapped in two, but its still producing proper leaves, its just very diddy!

Although seven cucumber plants will probably more than adequately meet the whole family's cucumber needs, and that of the whole street I would imagine, I plan on purchasing at least one ready grown plant.  Last year I grew Delta Star, which although isn't technically an outdoor cucumber, produced the loveliest shaped fruits and I am keen to have him back in my life.  If I have to hand out cucumbers to strangers in the street to keep up with supply that is the sacrifice I am willing to make.

A sorry tale of two sunflowers

I was so proud when I took this photo, both my velvet queen's looking
big and tall and so full of promise 

Its very rare that the garden is the scene of a mystery, apart from in a popular UK TV programme called Midsummer Murders, im sure in that programme over the years at least one or two of the dramas has focussed on a garden.  But my garden is less exciting.  I plant things, they grow, or they don't grow, its all very simple, the action is cut and dried.  Until now.

Last weekend I finally planted out my first two sunflowers, and boy was I thrilled with them!  My other variety, sunburst mixed, had both died, but velvet queen had grown big and strong and started to put on height, as all good sunflowers should.  I was worried they were beginning to feel pot bound so I decided the time was nigh to plant them out.  Being so very tall I carefully selected my planting spot so they would have something behind them to grow up in front of, and hopefully be undisturbed.  I settled on the mothers herb bed which has a nice fence behind it.  Perfect I thought.  Oh how wrong I was!  I dug them little holes, tucked them in, bedded them down and left them happy in the knowledge that all was well.

Such a root system, shame its all gone to waste now!  Oh it could make me cry!

Approximately a week later I went to water the largest of the two sunflowers, my pride and joy, and discovered to my horror, a terrible, terrible thing had befalled it.  In my absence the mother had gone to remove a pot that she had randomly placed at the back of the border.  And being a complete blunder-bus she managed to virtually decapitate my sunflower.  How she managed that with a blunt pot I don't know.  She claimed she didn't know it was there, but I clearly told her where it was, and discussed with her that we would have to cut a patch through the choisya behind to allow it to reach its full height potential.  So she can't claim she didn't know.  She did quickly admit that the blood was on her hands, and set about cellotaping the head back upright using a splint.  Now I don't know what anybody else thinks, but I think that sunflower is effectively a gonner.  The whole point of sunflowers is they have the one stem that produces a big head on the top, a nice strong, complete stem.  I don't think sunflowers are like starfish; cut a leg off and it simply grows another.

I turned at this point for comfort in my second sunflower, merrily growing slightly further along the bed.  At least he would be able to still give me sunflower success.  Only when I went to inspect him, he was gone.  Not partially eaten, not decapitated, gone.  Not one trace of that sunflower remained.  Of course I immediately blamed the mother.  Now if it had been eaten by the slugs, or pecked by a pidgeon, or got by the frost, well that's fair game.  It is the outside world after all and one can only expect casualties at some point.  But my own mother?!  What treachery is this?  Had I know she would be such a problem I would have laid down a ring of biscuits while I was slug pelleting to distract her.

She claimed as her defense that maybe I hadn't planted it there at all, which really doesn't help anybody's feelings.  I have two theories.  One is she mistook it as a large weed and just yanked it out.  Two is something came along and ate the whole thing, every last scrap.  That seems doubtful as nothing has been remotely interested the whole time they were growing in the pots.  Either way I guilt tripped the mother for the rest of the evening.  And this is why I had to sow more sunflowers this week.  Hopefully sunflowergate has not put me too far behind.  It would seem that every year you have to experience a great gardening loss, last year it was the peppers, and this year it has been sunflowers.  Im going to be keeping a firm eye on that woman from now on though!    

My week in sowing 10 - Beetroot, dill and african daisy

I was hoping for great clouds of this slightly pink grass, so far lacking, but
hopefully I will get a nice pot-full outside 

I have really enjoyed this 'my week in sowing' series that I have been doing since about February.  Its nice for me to be able to round up everything I have been achieved each week, and also like a diary it has allowed me to keep track of when certain things went in and how long they took to germinate.  However, I have started to come to the end of mass sowing, and while I will no doubt still be throwing more seed in here and there, im particularly thinking cosmos here as not a single one of my second batch has bothered to germinate, it will not be enough to justify a whole post.  So stopping on a lovely round number ten, this is the last week in sowing.  So this week I sowed:

Panicum Elegans - Frosted explosion. I have already sowed two small pots of this right back in February.  Nothing germinated for absolutely ages, and then finally four seedlings popped up in one pot.  Three I believe are this particular variety of grass, the other looks more like a sneaky aquilegia that has somehow cross contaminated.  Anyway, three plants, if all survive which is doubtful, is not really as much as I had hoped for, so as these can be direct sown I have sown a bunch of seeds directly in a big pot on the patio to see if we get better results.  I think a whole pot of this would look lovely being such a delightful airy grass, and allow me to cut some and use it in vases.  But if nothing comes up im sure I can just chuck something else in there to grow instead.

Beetroot - Detroit 2 (Crimson Globe).  I once grew beetroot before.  And by grew I mean, I sowed some seed and nothing came up, at all.  All very disappointing.  Maybe the quality of my veg bed was below par for them at the time, maybe beetroot just don't enjoy my somewhat solid soil.  Either way the combination of previous poor results and lack of space means my second attempt at growing beetroot is going to be in a pot.  How can a beetroot justify not growing when it is given beautiful compost to grow in?  The packet said plant the seeds an inch deep four inches apart, so I just planted them in concentric circles as near to the measurements as I could.  I might sow another pot of these, but we will see.

Dill - Anethum graveolens. Unusual, you may be thinking.  Having never mentioned a herb in the whole time I have been doing this blog, you may be wondering why I have sown a whole pot of one.  Not for its flavour is the reason.  I saw this growing tall and statuesque in a cottage garden just as some greeny and a bit of structure and I was rather taken with it.  So much so I thought i must have some of that myself!  Im planning to use it to add greenery to vases, might be a terrible idea but we will give it a go and see!  I sprinkled then covered the seeds as they seemed to large to leave exposed on the surface.

African Daisy - Osteospermum salmon. I saw some flowers in another garden last year and was totally taken by them.  They had beautiful blue centres and the strangest petals, like frogs toes.  I discovered through research that they were african daisies.  Evidently it is impossible to buy the seed in this country, not that I can figure out why, so when I saw a packet at Kew gardens claiming to be just that, I jumped at buying them.  However, these are not them, if you get me.  These are a different type of daisy that apparently quite often get mislabelled.  They are however a lovely salmon orange daisy, and I am never one to say no to another daisy, so I have sown these nonetheless.

Rudbekia - Cappuccino. I sowed two small pots of rudbekia back when I sowed my first batch of sunflowers in freezing February.  Absolutely nothing has happened since then.  I have no idea why, but not one seed has germinated.  I have been holding out hoping that maybe these just take a really really long time, but there comes a point when one has to be a realist and accept that something has gone wrong.  If I didn't sow more now the window of opportunity would have closed, so i took it while I still could.

Sunflowers - Why are am I growing more sunflowers when I already have two lovely big plants and three more on the way?  Why am I indeed!  There is a whole tale that goes with this, a tale I will be going into in my next post!  Its like peppergate all over again, but with a weird twist!     

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!

My week in sowing 9 - zinnia sprite and envy double

I feel like my sowing endeavours are beginning to draw to a close, my bag of seed compost is getting near being empty, and my list of things to sow is slowly running out.  I am now onto seeds I had last year and am re-sowing stuff that has either died or been eaten.  I imagine I will still be sowing the odd thing here and there as I decide I need even more annuals, but the back is most certainly broken.

Zinnia mixed sprite are nice compact flowers with tightly overlaid petals,
the colours are all very bright as well, sure to liven up a border

Zinnia - Mixed Sprite. I must now be on my fourth variety of zinnia.  I love these flowers and my big hope is that some of the resulting flowers set seed at the end of the year and I can grow some of my own as well.  Zinnia's are notorious for cross-pollination so you always end up with a weird hybrid if you grow from your own collection, but I think it would be fun to see what came up.  This is a very short variety, I have seen in growing in somebody else's garden and unlike all the other varieties I have sown the flowers do not have tall stems, or particularly big flowers either.  Really selling it here!  No it has nice qualities and will be a bonus to my stocks.  I sowed two seeds each in two pots because as I said before, soil is limited and I can no longer afford to pander to zinnia's fussy roots.

One of my few zinnia envy doubles from last year, I almost prefer them
when they are at this spiky stage as the petals slowly unfurl

Zinnia - Envy Double.  And another variety!  I have grown a few of these in the past and they are a real addition to a bunch of cut flowers.  Each bloom is completely green, so they contrast brilliantly with other bright flowers by providing a soothing green backdrop and fulfilling some of the role of foliage.  These do have nice long stems and considerable sized flowers.

Coreopsis x Hybrida - Incredible. This is my second batch of incredible.  Not because I love the flower so and therefore want hundreds.  Oh no.  Somebody ate the first lot.  All the seedlings were coming along very nicely and then one day I checked in on them, and nothing.  Nada, nowt.  The funny thing is, on the packet it says these were found growing out of concrete near the chenobyl nuclear disaster.  So it can survive a healthy dose of radiation and a thick crust, but not a slug.  So busy singing its praises was the packet, that it failed to mention being so damn tasty and in need of protection.  I had a little lip tremble on discovery, but I managed to keep it together and just get on with sowing another batch.

Poppy - Lilac Pompom.  This is one of those flowers that when I pulled it out of the bag I wondered why I had bought it.  Not that it doesn't look lovely but it does feel an odd choice to have made.  The joy of these are that they are annuals so I shall not think of them as poppys.  These will be big frilly lilac blooms.

Helenium - Autumn Sunshine. This is one of my packets of seeds from last year.  I have tried growing these before but sowed them too late so it didn't work out.  These are daisy type flowers, my favourite type.  I believe these will be a rusty red colour.