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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: dahlias

This month in the garden…

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by sallynex in kitchen garden, my garden, this month in the garden

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Tags

dahlias, hazel, Jerusalem artichokes, mulch, propagator, shallots, spring, tomatoes, Vitopod

snowdrops

Signs of hope are everywhere

Well. Hasn’t it got busy around here lately.

There I was, listening morosely to the tumbleweed (well, gales and splattering rain) and wondering if the winter would ever end. And then all of a sudden spring sprung. The frosts retreated, the snowdrops came out, and everyone emerged blinking in the watery February sunlight.

And all that sulking indoors has left a ton of stuff to do in the garden, so I’m already behind before I’ve even begun. And now that we can all agree it’s spring, there are garden articles to write and book proposals to hone and student assignments to mark and garden holidays to plan… Welcome to a new year!

Here’s what’s on my to-do list right now – all to cram into the remaining fortnight before it gets even more crazy in March. Wish me luck…

Hitching up the propagator: I think I actually love my Vitopod. It’s not often I say this about a bit of kit, but this has really transformed the way I can garden. It’s eye-wateringly expensive, but believe me: it’s worth it. The moment it comes out of storage each spring is the moment my year begins. 

Sowing tomatoes: See above. This wouldn’t be possible, this early, without a heated propagator – and a good one at that. I set mine to 20°C, and then once the seedlings are up switch the thermostat down to about 12°C to grow them on. Frost? What frost?

Sowing the earliest root crops: I like to get an early crop of the hardy stuff going as soon as I can (cue: heated propagator again. Sorry). It’s too cold to sow yet, even in an unheated greenhouse; my rule of thumb is 7-10°C day and night before I’ll risk it. But once the toms are finished, turnips, beetroot and kohlrabi go in at 12°C and germinate like a dream.

Planting Jerusalem artichokes: There’s planting to be done outside, too; this year I picked up some of the not-quite-as-knobbly Jerusalem artichoke, ‘Fuseau’, along with the seed potatoes. They’re tall, and have flashy golden sunflowers in summer, so they’re going straight into the ground in the exotic edibles garden. Just hope I can keep them in bounds, that’s all – I have tried (and failed) to curb their enthusiasm before…

shallots

Lovely fat Jermor shallots waiting to go in the ground

Planting shallots: Shallots go in earlier than onions, so mine are in the ground this month. As always, I’ve gone for a French variety, ‘Jermor’ – though I’d have preferred ‘Hative de Niort’, fiendishly expensive but the largest, most reliable and – most importantly – tastiest shallot you’ll ever grow.

Experimenting with new stuff: This year it’s Welsh onions – I never have any luck with spring onions, so I thought these perennial bunching onions might prove a useful substitute. Also Carlin peas, aka parched peas, thanks to a kind gift from skilled kitchen gardener and Charles Dowding‘s other half, Steph Hafferty. And tiger nuts, if I can keep them warm enough. All of which more at a later date.

Cutting hazel stems: You’ll find me swinging monkey-like among the thickets of hazel that line the back of our garden this month: they’re perched precariously on the side of the bank but produce some lovely long, straight stems. Cut at around 2″ diameter, just before the buds break, they supply all my beanpole and peastick needs.

Potting up dahlia tubers: What’s a dyed-in-the-wool veggie type like me doing growing something as fancy as dahlias, you ask? Well, dahlias are edible too, so they earn their place in my kitchen garden. Plus they’re dead pretty. I pot mine up in 2ltr pots this month to save them from the slugging they’d otherwise get in the open garden.

chitting

Ripe with promise: the potato crop chitting on my windowsill. Not strictly necessary, but I do like to get them out of their bags while they’re waiting to be planted.

Forcing new potatoes: The one time I bother with growing potatoes in sacks – otherwise an exercise in retrieving the minimum harvest possible from the maximum outlay – is in early spring, when I force a couple of sacks’ worth of new potatoes just for the smug value of eating them weeks before anyone else can.

Mulching & feeding fruit: The fruit garden gets a lot of attention this month: I’ve just about finished all the pruning, but right behind the secateurs are the spade and wheelbarrow. A good scattering of slow-release fertiliser – I’m a fan of pelleted poultry manure or Vitax Q4, but this year I have Carbon Gold to try too – topped off with a thick layer of mulch sets the whole fruit garden up for the rest of the year.

All tucked up

23 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in chicken garden, cutting garden

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Tags

cut flowers, dahlias, frost, frost protection, overwintering, winter

dahlias_overwinter1

Tuck dahlias up for their winter hibernation as soon as the stems are blackened by frost

I arrived at the Chicken Garden this morning to find the big, handsome dahlias hanging their heads, their lush leaves turned slatey black and drooping disconsolately.

Abbie – garden owner – grows dahlias by the armful to cut for guests at the B&B, and very gorgeous they’ve been for the last few months. So there are two whole rows of them in the cutting garden as well as a dozen or so in various spots around the main flower beds.

dahlias_overwinter2

If you’re leaving them in the ground, cut stems right back (if lifting, leave 15cm of stalk intact)

You can leave dahlias as they are till the blackened-leaf stage (and they’ll keep flowering, too, if you dead-head) but once the first frost has struck it’s time to leap into action.

dahlias_overwinter3

Mulch thickly – at least 15cm deep. Autumn leaves are ideal for this as they don’t hold on to moisture as much as compost.

I always prefer to leave a plant in the ground if at all possible, and in the balmy south-west we’re in just the sort of place where you can get away with it with dahlias most years. But you never know quite what the weather has in store: if it’s a really wet one, or possibly even a really snowy one, you could still end up losing the lot.

I decided to cut my losses: so I’ve left the bigger (and therefore, I reason, more hardy) border varieties in the ground and lifted any smaller plants and also those in pots and containers where the roots are more exposed.

dahlias_overwinter4

And finally: cover the whole thing with a layer of hessian (as here), insect-proof mesh, weed-suppressing fabric, old t-shirts… in fact anything that’s breathable. Two purposes: 1) it holds the leaves in place and stops them blowing off, and 2) it gives one extra layer of frost protection to the tubers. Pin down securely with bits of sturdy wire. And that’s it till spring (I hope…)

In the cutting garden, I have covered one whole row and lifted the other. They’re currently trimmed back to about 15cm and turned upside down to dry and drain, the shortened stalks poked through the slats of the greenhouse staging to hold them in place.

Next week, once they’re fully dry, I’ll pack them into boxes of damp-ish sand or spent compost and move them to the shed (drier than the greenhouse). After that I shall be going round with fingers permanently crossed till the spring warms up next year and I can pull back the covers to see if my luck has held. Here’s hoping…

Hampton Court in pictures: New varieties

12 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by sallynex in new plants

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Tags

agapanthus, cotinus, crocosmia, dahlias, eryngium, Hampton Court Flower Show, new varieties

hcfs_newvariety2

Agapanthus ‘Blueberry Cream’ from the Hoyland Plant Centre

hcfs_newvariety4

Crocosmia ‘Chrome Spray’ from Trecanna Nursery

hcfs_newvariety3

Eryngium ‘Neptune’s Gold’ from Hardy Plants: saw this one at Chelsea and still can’t make up my mind about it. That yellow foliage just looks… ill, somehow.

hcfs_newvariety1

Cotinus ‘Ruby Glow’ from Hilliers, celebrating their 150th anniversary.

hcfs_newvariety5

Dahlia ‘Bloom 50’, another new variety commemorating a special anniversary, this time the 50th birthday of the RHS’s Britain in Bloom

Plant of the month: September

19 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by sallynex in plant of the month

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Tags

amaranthus, californian poppies, dahlias

Amaranthus paniculatus ‘Marvel Bronze’

This was a bit of a discovery this year: I’ve grown the droopy Amaranthus caudatus many times, both the species and ‘Viridis’ which is an elegant shade of green, but they tend to be quite difficult to shoehorn into a mixed border, being one of those shapes that demands a space all its own. So then I was given a packet of seed for this variety last spring, and since I hadn’t got round to buying my usual Amaranthus, I bunged these in instead.

The species is the key: they’re a paniculatus, not caudatus, and this means they’re upright. And I do mean very upright: they’re currently marching through my borders like so many purple soldiers, waving those plum-coloured pipecleaners aloft: sometimes straight upwards in tufts like eccentric feather dusters, and at other times sending up individual spires which twist bewitchingly in all directions.

The extraordinary thing for something with such chutzpah of its own is that it goes with absolutely everything. I’ve got one patch next to some dahlias – that purple foliage is almost indistinguishable from that of a purple-leaved dahlia from a short distance, so they blend in perfectly and make excellent partners. Sadly the dahlias are having a little break from flowering at the moment – pesky earwigs – but I have one which is a pale pink-tinged white above purple leaves which looks fabulous with the amaranthus, like white dinnerplates among volcanic plumes of purple smoke.

In the same border are pink cosmos, made all the more frilly and feminine by all that brooding purple, and vivid orange Californian poppies which scramble around under their purple skirts with true pizazz. Actually I haven’t found a single thing they clash with so far. I’m a total convert: must sow more next year…

Flowers for cutting

17 Thursday May 2007

Posted by sallynex in cutting garden, herbs

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Tags

antirrhinums, asters, Chimnonanthes praecox, chrysanthemums, daffodils, dahlias, lavender, Rosa gallica officinalis, statice, sweet peas, wintersweet

I thought I’d say a bit about my cutting garden, as it’s this year’s project and very much at the front of my mind just now.

I’ve carved out a more-or-less square plot, about 19ft x 19ft, on the far side of my greenhouse where it’s pretty sunny most of the day. It’s overshadowed by a large goat willow, but not too badly, and I’m in the process of raising the willow’s crown so it doesn’t cast too much shadow.

The design is quite simple: a 2ft bed around three sides of the square (the fourth is for my greenhouse and coldframe), with two 4’6″ wide beds across the middle. It’ll all be enclosed in 1″ x 4″ pressure-treated timber to define the beds and make maintenance easier. There are also 30″ paths around the beds for access.

The area was previously a herb garden (a bit ott since I had it in mind once upon a time to set up a herb nursery – then realised how much work was involved). Result is I need to dig out large amounts of lemon balm, chives and lovage before I can plant. The good news there, though, is that the soil is in good heart as it’s already been dug over and improved once.

So far I’ve got lavender and Rosa gallica officinalis, also known as Apothecary’s Rose, along one long side, for drying as pot pourri; the short side will be for perennials for cutting – so far a clump of asters dug up from the main herbaceous border, but I’ll be adding bulbs (daffs and tulips), a statice (great for drying) and whatever else I can find. I’ve added a Chimonanthes praecox (wintersweet) in the corner – again rescued from imminent suffocation in the big herbaceous border – thinking I’ll cut branches if ever it gets around to flowering (they’re notoriously slow to settle). Along the front edge will be dahlias, chrysanths and any other late-season perennials I can think of.

In the centre beds, so far there are only sweetpeas climbing up rustic hazel poles: but my antirrhinums are chomping at the bit in the coldframe waiting to be planted out, and I’ve got plenty more coming on to join them there. It just needs me to keep up with them by digging out a home, and we’ll be raring to go!

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