Flowery Friday

Tags

Antirrhinum 'White Giant', Bupleurum rotundifolium, cut flower patch, Scabious 'Black Cat', sweet williams

So far, the cut flower patch hasn’t faired too badly in the almost continuous rain we’ve had this summer. I fear my late summer and autumn cut flower plans though, may not be so successful. With rudbeckias rotting in the ground and my pathetic zinnias which, I swear have not grown since I planted them out at the end of May, I’m really not going to have much to pick from. The zinnias are no more than a foot tall. One of them has produced a flower but it’s on such a small stem it’s no use for cutting, unless I get a request from any allotment elves, for a teeny tiny bouquet.

A mix of Antirrhinum ‘White Giant’, Sweet williams, Scabious, Sweet rocket and Alchemilla mollis

It’s incredibly frustrating that all those plans I had back in February and March will not come to fruition but at least I don’t depend on it for a living. I have so much sympathy for those who work so hard to produce food and flowers for us and whose crops have suffered this summer. Anyway, I thought I’d share a few photos of my cut flowers whilst I still can.

Scabious

My scabious plants have just started to flower. It’s the first year I’ve grown them and they seem to take an inordinate length of time to open their buds or maybe it’s just a combination of my impatience and the lack of sun. They have been well worth the wait though. I’m loving these white ones that look like a fluffy pom-pom and I just spotted some dark Scabious ‘Black Cat’ today which are the most sumptuous dark plum colour.

Scabious ‘Black Cat’

I’m growing Bupleurum rotundifolium ‘Griffithii’ for the first time this year to provide me with some foliage to add to my arrangements. Similar in appearance to euphorbia, its big advantage is no poisonous sap, unlike its lookalike.

Bupleurum rotundifolium ‘Griffithii’

There’s the signs of some larkspurs about to open too, another new one for this year. So for the moment, at least, my cut flower patch means I can fill the house with beautiful blooms.

Just a few flowers

Tags

cornflowers, cut flowers, deadheading flowers, nigella, sweet williams

My Cut Flowers

I’m picking so many flowers at the moment I’m not quite sure what to do with them all. At the last count we had 12 vases full, dotted around the house last week. At the moment, it’s very pleasurable wandering up to the allotment with my bucket and snips. It’s too early in the season to need to deadhead which can be therapeutic, or a pain in the proverbial, depending how much time you have on your hands. Even if you pick every day there are always some flowers that escape the snips, especially if you’re growing flowers like cornflowers which produce such a mass of blooms and it’s important to keep on top of the deadheading if you want to keep getting new flowers.

Cornflowers, Nigella and Sweet Williams

I’m loving the sweet williams and nigella at the moment, flowers that are difficult to find in a florists and both of which are loved by pollinators. The cornflowers are just starting to flower and there aren’t many plants that can match them for the blueness of their petals. One disadvantage of them is that the colour does fade to white. However, I’ve found that if I pick them when the buds are just about to break, rather than when they are fully open, it extends their vase life by several days, giving you some extra time before the flowers fade. Several years ago I did grow the dark burgundy coloured cornflowers ‘Black Boy’, alongside the blue variety. One day I was stood watching the multitude of bees buzzing around the flowers and noticed that the bees were hardly touching the dark cornflowers, in comparison to the blues ones, which were covered in bees. Since then I’ve only grown the blue ones. If I’m going to grow flowers I might as well do as much as I can to grow ones the bees will love as well.

Nigella damascena ‘Double White’

There were a few early gladioli tantalising nearly ready to open and I’m hoping they don’t open till I get home from my holiday. I haven’t tried growing them before and to be honest it hasn’t been the greatest success so far. The early spell of warm weather in March encouraged them to surface much to quickly and then in April some of them were damaged by the colder temperatures. Only 9 of the 15 planted have produced flower stalks.

A couple of my autumn sown scabious were also poised. Another new addition to the cutting patch, I always get excited when something I haven’t grown before is about to flower.

Alchemilla, Nigella and Sweet Williams

I did a quick trip around the plot last week before setting off for my holiday, picking flowers so that there weren’t any that might go to seed whilst I was away. The plan was to give them to someone at the plot but the miserable weather has meant I’ve seen hardly anyone up there for quite a while. Just as I was leaving, wondering what I was going to do with the armfuls of sweet williams and nigella, I spotted someone. He was delighted with them saying he was just about to go out to buy some to put on his wife’s grave. On the way home I also bumped into another plot holder and his wife, out tending their garden and they too received a bunch of flowers. It’s nice to be able to give some of the flowers to others. It’s a lovely feeling to see the flowers I’ve grown make someone smile.

The Cutting Patch Update

Tags

Alchemilla mollis, biennials, cut flowers, Orlaya grandiflora, sweet williams

My cut flower patch is such an important part of my allotment. Last year was my first year and my ideas about using some of my plot for flowers were greeted with some scepticism by the established allotment growers who couldn’t understand why I’d wasted so much of the plot on putting in paths, let alone devoting soil to growing flowers instead of potatoes and onions. However, it seems like the flower bug is catching and I won’t be the only one this year with blooms brightening up the site. A couple of the older growers were asking me where I bought my seed from, so I passed around a few seed catalogues and dished out some packets of seed I had collected last autumn. Then on a visit at the weekend I was chatting to two of them and they were telling me all about their plans for cut flowers!! Not such a strange idea after all.

My own patch is taking shape with the biennials and autumn sown annuals coming into their own. The much-anticipated flowering of the sweet williams has just started in the last week and I’ve been able to fill a good 2 buckets full of sweet rocket, honesty, alchemilla, orlaya and the last of the stocks.

Yesterday I got up to the plot early in the hope I could get a lot done before it got so hot that I started to wilt. I had to make two trips with the wheelbarrow, transporting little plants from home to the plot so that the first big plant out could commence. In went some annual asters, daucus ‘Black Knight’, white antirrhinums, didiscus, some pinks grown from cuttings taken in March and some bupleurum. There were also some small plants of lettuce, beetroot and chard for the edible part of the plot.

Sweet williams

Still at home and waiting for the second round of planting out are zinnias, rudbeckias, cosmos, sunflowers, cornflowers, gaura, dill, gypsophila and a few more larkspur. Oh, and two dahlias. It’ll be touch and go as to whether I can fit all this in. There was quite a lot of standing around with hands on hips looking thoughtful, on Sunday, wondering whether I’d had the garden equivalent of piling my plate too high at a buffet because my eyes were bigger than my stomach. My imagination is certainly bigger than any available land I have but I’m sure with a bit of jiggling around I can do it.  That’s squeezing plants in and not me doing some strange dance, by the way.

Cut flower posy

The great thing about gardening is that each year is different and new opportunities open up. I’m still very much learning just how much I can cram into a small space and for how long I can get the season to last. Plans are already being formulated for which biennials to sow later next month and which hardy annuals I’ll sow this autumn. But, for the moment, I’m enjoying this year’s first pickings from my cut flower patch.

British Flowers from Wiggly Wigglers

Tags

Alstromerias, British farmers, Sedum, sweet williams, Wiggly Wigglers

Flowers on arrival

I recently received a beautiful posy of flowers from Wiggly Wigglers. It was their luxury posy and it came with its own vase, a very pretty ‘Quattro Stagioni’ storage jar. The jar can be reused for storage or preserving once the flowers have died, which I think is a really nice touch.

The flowers arrived in a cardboard box. Inside the posy was held upright in a cardboard stand in a living vase which contains water and fits snugly around the stems.

I loved the colours of the posy with the dusky pink of the Sedum, the whites of the Alstromeria, the acid green of the Molucella and the silvery green foliage. It also included some Sweet Williams for a lovely fragrance.

I really appreciated the natural feel of the flowers. I often find bouquets from high street florists are a little too stylised. I think if you use beautiful fresh flowers you shouldn’t need to do too much to them. The simplicity of the glass jar as a vase also allowed the flowers to be the focal point.

I like the ethos behind the Wiggly Florist.  As I said in a previous post it’s sad that the production and transport of many flowers for the florist trade is damaging the environment. At Wiggly Wigglers all the flowers they use have been grown in the UK with some grown on the fields surrounding their HQ in Herefordshire. They also only use seasonal flowers and foliage so although it is not possible to specify a choice you know you are getting the freshest possible flowers.

Bouquets are available and it is also possible to buy a mix of flowers and foliage which you can arrange yourself.

After 8 days - still looking good

It is now 8 days since I received my posy and it is still looking fresh. The posy range varies in price from £25 for the smallest to £45 for the luxury posy. Initially I thought the flowers were a little pricey but I think the inclusion of the reusable jar and the excellent vase-life of the posy combined with the fact that the flowers are British grown and are supporting British farmers make Wiggly Flowers value for money.  To have a look at the Wiggly Florist click the link below.

Thank you to Heather and the team at Wiggly Wigglers.

Productive morning on the plot

Tags

biennials, honesty, mulching, stocks, sweet rocket, sweet williams

The weather has been quite miserable and there is a real feel that autumn is here. I have that awful feeling that the descent into winter brings; the long dark nights, days that don’t feel much lighter and being couped up inside. Winter is not a good time for someone who thrives on being outdoors. It feels too soon, I should feel like this in October not at the beginning of September. I’m still hoping for an ‘Indian Summer’ like last year.

When I feel melancholic like this the best thing to do is to get up to the allotment and do something productive. So today I spent the morning bagging up some green waste to go off to council recycling. I have got several compost piles but they don’t heat up enough, so anything diseased or perennial weeds is left for the council to deal with. I’m producing so much waste to go on the compost piles I don’t know where to put it all. I suppose if you mainly grow produce to eat, this doesn’t happen but half of my plot has been devoted to cutflowers and they’re generating quite a lot of waste now they are going over. I also mulched with some ready to use compost around my biennial flowers – sweet williams, stocks, honesty and sweet rocket. I think these biennials are brilliant: you sow them in July when its quite a quiet time for the gardener, plant them up in September as space is becoming free and then they sit there over overwinter, giving you hope for the spring to come and then from the end of April you are rewarded with some beautiful, sweet smelling flowers. The mulching task was made harder by the flat tyre on my wheelbarrow which became like the toddler who refuses to move, a good deal of pushing and dragging meant I got the compost to its destination but I think Wellyman will have to sort out said tyre at the weekend. The weather hadn’t improved when I had finished but allotment-therapy meant I felt much better.