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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: spring bulbs

This month in the garden…

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

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

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Tags

autumn, borlotti beans, drying onions, green tomatoes, John Keats, putting the garden to bed, spring bulbs

img_4123

Almost dry… onions on a rack in the greenhouse

It’s about this time of year I start to resist writing anything about seasons, mists or mellow fruitfulness for fear of falling prey to the ultimate garden writing cliche. But there’s no denying that John Keats caught autumn firmly in his poetical fingers with this one: we haven’t got vines running round our thatch-eaves (we’ve been told not to grow stuff against the house as it causes damp on the inside) and the squirrels nick all the hazel shells long before they plump, but basically that’s autumn, right there.

What Keats failed to mention was the frantic gardener racing around like a thing possessed underneath the moss’d cottage trees desperately trying to get everything done (and catch up on all the stuff she didn’t manage in the ever-hectic school summer holidays) before it all gets too cold, wet and depressing to want to be outside any more. Here are just some of the things I’ve got on my jam-packed to-do list this month:

Drying off the onions: In my greenhouse, right now, turning a lovely coppery shade of brown. They take around two weeks of regular turning before they’re cooked and ready to plait.

Sowing sweet peas: My sweet peas were an abject failure last year, so I’m trying a different method this year. I’m reverting to the old-fashioned method of six seeds to a 10cm pot, planted out as a clump – and I won’t pinch out till spring.

Clearing spent crops: It’s that time of year when you have to admit things are definitely, undeniably Over. So it’s with a little sadness that I’ll be cutting the beans off their poles and carting them off to the compost heap. Sniff.

Mulching, mulching, mulching: Another relentless tick of the clock: each veg bed gets a thick coating of compost or soil improver from the local green waste people the moment it’s cleared, then I cover with black plastic. End of the year: full stop.

img_4122

Did you ever see such a shade of red? ‘Firetongue’ borlotti beans ready for drying

Drying borlotti beans: Gorgeous brilliant red ‘Firetongue’ climbing borlottis are my comfort and joy right now: every time I see them on the poles I think how beautiful they look. But they’re now ready to hoick out of the ground and dry under cover.

Sowing overwintering broad beans: Aquadulce Claudia are the only ones for me: they may be ungainly, but they’re prolific and rock-solid reliable. It’ll be my only crop – overwintering broad beans avoid all the pests and diseases that afflict spring sowings.

Putting in my bulb order: It’s the gardening equivalent of a trolley dash: you have till the end of this month to go mad on daffodils, species tulips (my latest obsession), posh tulips and reticulate irises. Happy sigh.

img_4124

‘Oy, you! Turn red!’ There. That should do it.

Speaking sternly to my tomatoes: They have another four weeks to ripen, then that’s it, so I’ll be reading them the riot act this month (and praying for some late sunshine). Failing that, there’s always green tomato chutney.

Clearing greenhouse borders: In the other greenhouse the cucumbers are sighing to a yellowish end, and the peppers are picked. Let’s not mention the aubergine. Not sure what to do with the cucamelons which have awkwardly decided now is the time to start pumping out the fruit. They’re in rude health and not going anywhere.

Planting winter salads: In the coldframe are dozens of winter salad plants: this season I have mizuna, American land cress, pak choi and ‘Winter Density’ lettuce, all destined for the emptying greenhouse borders, or a cloche outdoors. Time to plant.

Wordless Wednesday: Spring flowers

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by sallynex in shows, wordless wednesday

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

iris reticulata, rhs spring flower show, spring, spring bulbs

springflowers.jpg

As seen at the RHS Early Spring Plant Fair

Of trouble-free tulips

11 Saturday May 2013

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bulbs, collections, species tulips, spring bulbs, tulipa sprengeri

tulipa_sprengeriJust look at the colour on that.

These are my Tulipa sprengeri – a first foray into the world of species tulips for me, but I have lost my heart to them. They’re in the raised rock garden that runs along the front of my house and the sun just catches them at the right angle so they seem to glow.

I have them planted with small daffodils (I would put a wider shot here of both in their dazzling yellow-and-red brilliance but my camera battery ran out) and the combination is one of those ones that makes you smile every time you see it.

The daffodils aren’t quite the right type – they’re WP Milner, which is a lovely daffodil but ever-so-slightly too early for the sprengeri tulips, so they’re almost over as the tulips get into their stride. You have about a week when they’re both looking perfect, then the daffodils start looking tatty. I’m thinking I might hunt down a later miniature daffodil for next year.

The lovely thing about species tulips is that they come back year after year without any fiddling about digging them up for overwintering, and they never flop. They even self-seed around if they’re happy.

I feel a collection coming on. The list on my phone now reads as follows (in rough order of flowering):

  • Tulipa biflora
  • T. bifloriformis ‘Starlight’
  • T. humilis
  • T. turkestanica
  • T. clusiana var. chrysantha
  • T. kolpakowskiana
  • T. orphanidea ‘Flava’
  • T. praestans ‘Fusilier’
  • T. saxatilis Bakeri Group ‘Lilac Wonder’
  • T. urumiensis
  • T. linifolia
  • T. orphanidea ‘Whittallii Group’
  • T. tarda

That should fill up the front garden nicely!

March flowers

15 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Narcissus, spring bulbs

Not much happening – and most of it yellow.

That’s been my general verdict on this month’s flowers: though tinged with a great deal of relief that our ‘false spring’ in the unseasonable warmth of a couple of months ago hasn’t, after all, kiboshed the real one.

Was there ever such a spring-like colour as yellow? It shines out at you wherever you look: gleams and sparkles and cheers the soul. Perhaps that’s why it’s so much more welcome at this time of year than, say, in mid-summer when yellow flowers just seem brash: after all, we all need a bit of cheering up after the winter.

So now is the time of the spring bulb: there isn’t much else peeping out just yet. But bulbs, above all, should have the place more or less to themselves anyway: that way you can admire them without distraction, to your heart’s content.

Some of the hosts of golden daffodils
cheering up the slope at the back of the garden at the moment

Ranunculus ficaria

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

Another mystery daffodil: could be ‘Jetfire’?

Chionodoxa forbesiae (I think: lost the label. Again.)

…and the flower buds of the same:
almost as exquisite as the flowers themselves

Primula vulgaris

Mahonia japonica

Leucojum vernum

Narcissus ‘February Gold’

Viola odorata

Eranthis hyemalis

Muscari armeniacum

Crocus tommasinianus

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

Wordless Wednesday: Early

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

alpine strawberries, daffodils, Leucojum, nasturtium, nicotiana, snowdrops, spring bulbs, unseasonal weather

 

March flowers

15 Tuesday Mar 2011

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anemone blanda, celandines, Chionodoxa luciliae, daffodils, Leucojum, mahonia, primula, scilla, spring bulbs, spring-flowering shrubs, viburnum

Spring has sprung: and all over the garden flowers are spangling lawns and peeking from borders. I’m not sure why spring flowers are almost all tiny: perhaps it’s to do with the energy involved in getting to flowering stage before most plants are even waking up. But they’re all the more exquisite for their diminutive size.

I can’t take credit for the flowers in these pictures, or indeed for most of the flowers in my garden over the next few months: I’m taking the softly, softly approach this year as I really have no idea what I’ve got just yet, having only had the acquaintance of my garden since last September. And big fat buds are emerging from the ground in the most unexpected places so I suspect there will be more than a few surprises. So far, it’s all looking very promising. Very promising indeed.

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’: still going strong, but now joined by sumptuously pleated leaves in a brooding shade of slatey-green just breaking their buds

Primula vulgaris – or a selection thereof: these have rather deep yellow centres to be a wilding (though there are plenty of those in the banks hereabouts) but they are close enough not to offend

Scilla sibirica: this is one of mine, one of a few big wide pots I planted up with bulbs the autumn before last, and still going strong. The blue of the scillas backlit with sunlight is enough to stop me in my tracks every time I walk past. They play havoc with the school run.

The early bumblebees are enjoying the last of the Mahonia japonica flowers

and the slugs have been munching my Anemone blanda – though there are plenty more buds coming through

Chionodoxa luciliae: another star of the big sunny pots of bulbs that lift my heart

One of my favourite daffodils: Narcissus ‘February Gold’, small, early to flower and with a deep tangerine corona which glows in low spring sunshine

Leucojum vernum: I was wondering what the big clump of healthy, strappy leaves just outside my back door were: then they started producing lovely clear white flowerbuds about a week ago. Never been able to grow them before (they like wetter soil): I’m chuffed to bits.

Yes, I know. It’s a weed. But you can almost forgive lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) its rampantly invasive nature and infuriating ability to thumb its nose at your efforts to weed it out when it sprinkles the lawn (and the borders, and the hedgerows) with its lovely droplets of pure sunshine.
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens – thanks Carol!

Good tulip, bad tulip

22 Thursday Apr 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

bulbs, complaining, spring bulbs

Right, that’s quite enough cheerfulness, time to start complaining again.

My tulips are lovely, and I feel a little mealy-mouthed saying anything but delighted things about them, but they are not as they should be.

As usual I popped a slew of extra tulips in last autumn to back up what might or might not have survived the winter: I have pretty good tulip-overwintering soil, being sandy and free-draining, but you never can tell.

However the tulips I put in were not, you might say, the tulips they purport to be.

For example:

Tulipa ‘Apeldoorn’

Good tulip:


Bad tulip:

Tulipa ‘White Triumphator’

Good tulip:


(with thanks to Crocus for the pic)

Bad tulip:


And even worse tulip:


Tulipa ‘West Point’

Good tulip:


(Crocus again)

Bad tulip:

The ‘Queen of Night’ are looking like they ought to at the moment, but there is an ominous streaking to my ‘Orange Cassini’ buds. And the ‘Ballerina’ and ‘Spring Green’ aren’t open yet so I shall be interested to see what we end up with there.

It’s not that I’m complaining exactly: I still have a spectacular display of rather lovely tulips (except the split ‘Triumphator’ – I really do detest those). But they ain’t what I ordered.

To their credit the bulb company have apologised profusely and I shall be enjoying a free supply of 450 tulip bulbs this autumn. But I do have to wonder what happened.

Did they think most people wouldn’t know their ‘West Point’ from their ‘President Kennedy’ and don’t care anyway (‘it’s yellow, innit?’)

Or is there some wierd virus mutation thing going on here? Is the purity of tulip bulbs becoming muddied by the endless hybridising and the multiple-million bulb turnovers of the big Dutch companies?

Answers on a postcard, please…

A little update

08 Thursday Apr 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bargains, spring bulbs

You may, or no doubt may not remember that I went shopping in January and cleared out the entire stock of past-sellby-date bulbs at my local garden centre.

So I thought it’s high time I let you know how they all performed. And besides it’s a good excuse to post some pretty spring flower photos.

Pot 1: Chionodoxa luciliae followed by Oxalis adenophylla

No sign of the Oxalis yet but I’m sure they’ll make their presence felt shortly.

Pot 2: Puschkinia scilloides libanotica and Narcissus lobularis

Happily overlapping, and I have lost my heart to N. lobularis: such utterly heartbreaking delicacy.

Pot 3: Chionodoxa again, mixed colours this time, followed by Anemone blanda

The first colour mix I’ve ever actually liked!

Pot 4: Crocus chrysanthus var. fuscotinctus followed by Scilla siberica with a final flourish from mixed Ixia

The crocus flowered through March: wonderful they were too, and the Scilla were just budding up as they faded. What a combination, and I’ve got the Ixia to look forward to still.

And pot 5: Anemone coronaria ‘St Brigid’ possibly but not probably overlapping with Tulipa ‘Rococo’

No overlapping going on just yet, but I’m so excited about these. And who could fail to be with such intriguingly wierd buds unfurling before your eyes.

By way of conclusion: they’ve all flowered at the end of the stated flowering times (i.e. if it said on the label “Flowers from Feb-April” they started in April) – but they’ve all, amazingly, flowered.

This is so what I’m going to do next year as well. I do love a good bargain!

Plant of the month: March

04 Thursday Mar 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Crocus, Crocus 'Snow Bunting', spring bulbs

Crocus chrysanthus ‘Snow Bunting’


Like jewels warmed by the sunshine, the crocuses are waking up.

I have many in my garden: deep purple and profligate Crocus tommasinianus, purest yellow C. chrysanthus, pale violet hybrids of uncertain descent.

But the most beautiful crocus in my garden is one which I only planted for the first time last year, despite many years of coveting its silky white blooms. I now wouldn’t be without it.

C. chrysanthus ‘Snow Bunting’ was bred by the legendary E. A. Bowles, who was something of a crocus buff in his time and produced about 14 hybrids, all named after birds. Most can be found in the National Collection, held at Myddleton House in Enfield.

I have a dozen ‘Snow Bunting’ in a deep blue ceramic container just outside my back door, rather fancifully planted with some dark bruise-coloured pansies in a vague sort of black-and-white concoction.

Never mind the cliché: it looks utterly fabulous and has me smiling every time I walk out the door. Even when the sun isn’t out (i.e. most of the time) the crocuses still look elegant with threads of purple running up the outsides of their closed buds.

But the other morning, the sun came out and hit them full on. I think the only things more excited about it than me were the bees: they couldn’t get enough of those joyous butter-yellow throats. And nor could I. The scent filled the air – I’ve always had to get down on my hands and knees for that exquisite perfume before, but not this time.

It’s moments like this that spring was invented for.

Upside-down tulips

09 Tuesday Feb 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

bulbs, mistakes, spring bulbs

You know all those dire warnings always to plant your tulip bulbs (and indeed any other type of bulb) the right way up, so the pointy end goes upwards and the basal root plate is pointing down? Ever had a crisis of confidence over those fiendish corms like ranunculus or cyclamen when it’s sometimes impossible to tell which end is up?

Well I thought I’d put your mind at rest. Last autumn my little girls were given a packet of tulips (praestans ‘Fusilier’, in case you’re interested) and we had a lovely muddy session in which they enthusiastically planted them all in their little gardens outside the wendy house. I did tell them which way up to put them, but, well, when you’re seven you get a bit carried away sometimes.

So – I was weeding that bit the other day and accidentally dug up one of the tulip bulbs (a bit of an occupational hazard at this time of year I find). And this is what I found.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel better? No matter which way up you plant a bulb, it seems, it manages to sort itself out perfectly well, thank you very much. So next autumn, sling ’em in and as long as they’re not waterlogged or pulled up by squirrels, things will turn out just fine.

I re-planted this one right away. Upside down, of course: it seems to like it that way.

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