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Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: poppies

August flowers

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anemone, antirrhinum, coriander, cut flowers, daylilies, edible hanging basket, fuchsiaberry, gladioli, hyssop, inula magnifica, mallow, parterre, poppies, self-sown seedlings, wildflowers

August is a funny old month. All the splendour of June and July has overreached itself a bit and, in places, frankly flopped: yet it’s a bit early to start on autumn just yet. The kids are still on summer holidays, for goodness’ sake. And besides, the crocosmia are only just waking up and cannas are still in bud. There is a definite pause: a moment for the garden to catch its breath, so to speak, before the next big push.

That’s not to say there aren’t any flowers: you just have to look for them with a bit more determination. Here’s what I found in my garden this month.

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I’ve been experimenting with some ‘Fuchsiaberry’ plants – bred for their edible berries. All fuchsia berries are edible, but most varieties major on flowers (understandably) so the fruits are a bit on the small side. The wild fuchsia, F. magellanica, is your best bet for jam-quality fruits, but earlier this year Thompson & Morgan started experimenting with fuchsias with berries as big and fat as the blooms. At the moment I’m just growing on the plug plants, so they’re still a bit on the small side, but what I hadn’t reckoned with was the lovely flowers – every bit as good as a bedding variety.
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The poppies on the top terrace are looking as lovely as ever: but the wildflower mix I had in here just hasn’t really worked this year. Sporadic is probably the kindest way to describe it. It’s partly because I haven’t kept on top of the hedge bindweed that infests this bit of the garden; partly because a lot of the seed mix simply didn’t germinate. Hm. I’m thinking of doing something more formal here in the long-term: if only to stop it looking so messy.
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In the same patch is a lovely clump of hyssop – all that remains of a batch of seed-sown hyssop I was hoping might become a hedge. Unfortunately the seedlings got swamped by the (then) exuberant wildflowers so this is the only survivor. It is, however, robust enough to have lots of promising looking greenery for cuttings: perhaps a better way to make me a new hyssop hedge. I feel a parterre coming on.
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On a more positive note, the cut flower garden – one terrace down – has been coming into its own beautifully with froths of wallflowers this spring followed by willowy cosmos in lots of different colours. And this month we’ve been treated to stately gladioli: it was a mixed pack so I don’t have variety names but I particularly like this deep maroon.
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The antirrhinum (excuse the fuzzy pic) were a giveaway from spring and I had no idea they’d turn out this raspberry ripple colouring. I can’t decide: some days I think, wow – that’s special; other days I look at them and think…. meh.
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In the rockery the ‘Honorine Jobert’ are in full flouncy flower: this area used to be overrun with them (they can be quite invasive when they’re happy) and I’ve dug out most as it’s meant to be a herb garden here. But I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of them altogether as they are so lovely. And they don’t like being moved, it turns out, so I have them here or nowhere. So I just have to pretend they’re herbs.
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I am so pleased with my hanging basket. It’s pretty simple: just a ‘Tumbling Tom’ tomato, some seed-sown basil from spring, and a cluster of French marigolds (you can see me planting it up earlier this summer in this video for crocus.co.uk). Tomatoes now slowly ripening: red on yellow and orange is going to be quite some combination.
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This little mallow (Malva moschata, I think) arrived all on its own: nothing to do with me. I thought it might be a buttercup at first but something stayed my hand: I’m so glad I let it grow.
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And here’s another voluntary resident: my giant and very handsome Inula magnifica must have arrived courtesy of a bird (I do buy some plants occasionally, honest!) and has been with me, growing bigger by the year,  for about three or four years now. It’s a glory right now: eight foot tall, well above my head, and covered in huge spidery yellow daisies. Bees love it.
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My orange daylilies have been under a stay of execution for some time now, saved only by the fact that I haven’t got around to digging them up yet. The buds are yummy – a bit like lettuce – and the flowers are quite nice, especially this time of year, but my goodness it is a thug. And there are so many nicer daylilies I could be growing instead.
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So often flowers are an afterthought when you’re growing veg: but blooms are a big thing in my garden even though it’s mostly edible. Here one of the three troughs of coriander (one just sown, one growing and one to pick) has burst into bloom: even though it brings the leafy harvest to an end it’s still a welcome sight as it means seeds are on the way, for flavouring curries and resowing for the next crop too.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens – thanks Carol!

June flowers

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, my garden

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

flowers, garden bloggers' bloom day, poppies, sweet peas

Bit busy lately! So I’ve missed this month’s GBBD but the garden is looking so lovely (well, the flowers are: I’ve got to develop better blinkers as I can’t not see the galloping weeds, which is a bit annoying as with poppies and sweet peas around you don’t want to be staring crossly at the festoons of goosegrass bedecking the hedges). And I’ve taken the pictures. So I thought I’d share anyway.

Happy June!

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A seedy sort of day

26 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by sallynex in seeds

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

poppies, poppy seeds, seed saving

Poppy: not white, but full of seeds, more usefully than you’d think

It’s funny, isn’t it. There are days when one thing just keeps popping up, demanding your attention, in lots of different and usually unrelated places.

Today it’s been seeds. First I was researching a seedy subject for an article I was writing: saving seed from your best plants (always a good idea: you save money, you ensure you’ve got stocks of your favourite variety for next year, and if you do it over a number of years you end up with a strain uniquely adapted to your own conditions: a sort of micro-local heritage variety. What’s not to like?).

In this case I was looking into how much better polytunnels are for isolating veg like carrots or chard which would otherwise cross-pollinate all over the place. My friend once ended up with pumpkin-butternuts because her cucurbits got busy and re-seeded the resulting mongrels all over her veg patch: quite tasty but very odd.

I digress. Just as I was putting the finishing touches on the finer points of cross-breeding calabrese, my daughter – on holiday therefore terminally indolent – called me in to see something she was watching on the telly.

It was indeed, as she emphatically informed me, epic: Neil Buchanan, failed rock star, Scouser, and hyper-bouncy presenter of the CITV series Art Attack (which almost – almost – reaches the heady heights of Vision On, and from me that is high praise indeed) was creating an enormous and finely detailed snake, twice his own height, out of poppy seeds. By the wonder that is video on demand, you can see the whole thing here (from 7 minutes in). Poppy seeds as art material. Who knew.

And that reminded me of the thing I was reading last night in this month’s copy of The Garden: it was an absorbing and rather wonderful visit to the private garden created by Sybille Kreutzberger and the late Pamela Schwerdt, erstwhile head gardeners at Sissinghurst Castle.

The bit that stuck in my mind was their painstaking pursuit of the cultivars they regarded as the best possible selections. They fell in love with a white form of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, they saw in a picture taken in Afghanistan: it wasn’t available in the UK, so they wrote to a bakery which decorated its bread with poppy seeds sourced there. The white poppy is now growing in the White Garden at Sissinghurst. Now that’s what I call dedication.

And then just to round it all off, I reminded myself to sign up for Carl Legge’s seedy penpals scheme: thanks go to Zoe for the timely blog post. I think seed-swapping penpals is quite the loveliest idea I’ve come across for a long time. I always have a few spare seed packets kicking about the place and can’t think of anything nicer than sharing the love with someone (and hopefully getting some interesting bits & bobs I’ve never tried before in return).

I urge you to join in, if you haven’t already: we could all do with a few more seeds in our lives.

Dead plants

12 Friday Dec 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

cynara cardunculus, Perovskia 'Blue Spire', poppies, seedheads, Verbena bonariensis

At this time of year it’s a blessing that some plants continue to look good even after they’ve turned up their toes. You have to experiment – I find a lot of the plants supposed to hold on to their seedheads, like Rudbeckia, Echinops and many grasses, actually collapse sideways into a soggy heap around November, which hardly counts as winter these days. But when you find the ones that work, they really are worth their weight in gold (which is the colour many of them are on a frosty winter’s day, too).

Spiky seedheads of Cynara cardunculus towering overhead against a December sky.

Verbena bonariensis is one of the best for looking good all winter – as long as the bluetits don’t tear the seedheads to bits first.

Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’ puts up a forest of ghostly silver stems.


And of course poppy heads: many of these do collapse sideways but there are always a few left standing. I wonder what critter chomped its way through the side of this one looking for seeds?

Frosty morning

28 Tuesday Oct 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

eucalyptus, frost, frost damage, Melianthus major, nettles, nicandra, poppies, Verbena bonariensis

I know frost is meant to be the gardener’s enemy. I, like no doubt many others in the vicinity, spent much of yesterday running around frantically squirrelling things away in my greenhouse as the weather forecast got gloomier and gloomier. This morning, I still found I had several casualties when I woke up to find it went down to minus 2 or so. But oh… it was so beautiful.


This was one of my casualties – the Nicandra physaloides, now reduced to a sodden mess in the corner. But didn’t it look lovely as it died.


I thought this Goliath poppy was being a bit optimistic, producing flower heads this late in the season!

Verbena bonariensis is, I often think, at its best after a good frost.

The frost melted pretty quickly but even that sent me into rhapsodies – this is Melianthus major which holds onto the droplets like jewels. The little spider was up early, too.

Another one that’s looking good as the frost melts off it – this is Eucalyptus gunnii, kept coppiced for that glaucous, rounded young foliage.

And even the nettles were pretty. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Back from Chelsea

04 Monday Jun 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Isle of Wight, poppies

I’ve just spent a couple of weeks away from the garden – at the Chelsea Flower Show (fantastic!) where I have had the privilege of a press pass for the last couple of years now, and then on my hols in the Isle of Wight.

More of Chelsea later if I get a moment… but what is it about going away even for a short amount of time that makes your garden suddenly decide it’s going to romp away and grow for England? Since I last looked at it, the Goliath poppies have burst into action, to say nothing of several self-seeded orientals – some are a beautiful clear orange, the first time that particular colour has turned up, and really unusual. My roses are blooming fit to bust (Dublin Bay – a scarlet climber – is particularly lovely), and several smaller shrubs have simply disappeared under the mass of vegetation that’s suddenly burgeoning from every corner.

Not that I’m complaining: June in my garden is fabulous, and the peak of the whole show. It’s so lovely to look out of your window and just stare, transfixed by something that’s in your own back garden. What a privilege.

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