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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: sweet peas

This month in the garden…

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by sallynex in this month in the garden

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apples, blackcurrants, broad beans, compost, fruit, garlic, kale, onions, quince, raspberries, red onions, sweet peas, winter, winter vegetables

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I left my overwintering broad beans and sweet peas outside this winter and they’re doing much better, far less leggy than usual – so as I suspected, it pays to grow them hard.

I have definitely been having a bit of a slump in the garden just recently. This occasionally happens, even to obsessive gardening types like me: you just sort of get out of the habit, somehow.

It’s usually in the dog end of the year that I lose heart. December is a prime month. By the time I’m home from work it’s getting dark anyway; the mornings are cold and dank and there are grumpy teenagers to boot out of bed. More often than not it’s raining, the ground is soggy and all the jobs that need doing at this time of year are easily put off till later.

January, though, is a different matter. I’m not sure why, as the weather is still foul – worse, if anything, than December. Maybe it’s just the symbolic beginning of a new year. And the turning of the solstice has a lot to do with it: it’s as though the extra few minutes on the end of every day tinge the ends of my fingers a deeper shade of green as the month wears on.

So I begin to steal half an hour after work, or just after the kids have left for school, to catch up on all that is left undone and stir into life the embers of another season. Here’s what I’ll be up to this month:

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Still plenty to pick: this is my ‘Dwarf Green Curled’ kale, and there’s sprouts, leeks, kohlrabi, cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli too.

Climbing apple trees: Not for fun (though it actually is, quite a lot) but to snip back last year’s growth and encourage as much fruit as I can. I only have one apple tree at the moment, my beloved Devonshire Quarrenden, and it’s a very early one so must be guzzled straight off the tree. Which is why I shall also be…

Planting new trees: I am planning three new apples for the top strip, where my orchard is sputtering into existence at last after several livestock-related setbacks. I’m after a cooker, Warner’s King – in tribute to a legendary apple tree which grew in my mum’s garden once – plus James Grieve, my all-time favourite storing apple, and Egremont’s Russet just because I adore russet apples.

Pruning blackcurrants: And autumn-fruiting raspberries: the fruit garden is in for a stern talking-to this month as it got well out of hand towards the back half of last year and became more impenetrable thicket than chi-chi fruit potager.

Sowing onions: An experiment this year, as I feel like having a go at some really good red onions, the kinds with pink flesh rather than just the red skins. Carmen sounds like a good one; or perhaps Red Brunswick. I haven’t yet found a good red onion from sets, so I’m thinking seed is the way to go.

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Freshly-turned compost, covered with cardboard to keep weeds out and moisture in: this will be ready to use come March.

Turning the compost: A great job for a frosty day, as you invariably end up in t-shirt sleeves and glowing pinkly: not only good for the circulation but also very cheering as it makes you feel like the weather’s much warmer than it actually is. I turn my bins about every four months, using the compost as mulch at six months old: the next batch will be ready just in time for the March feed’n’mulch routine.

Mending greenhouse glass: The football club next door has been using my greenhouse as a goalpost again and I have two or three panes to replace. I am determined to get this done now, in the quiet stillness of January, rather than leaving it till I’m filling up the greenhouse in May and everything moves into panic mode.

Building new beds: The very last corner of my veg garden is proving stubbornly difficult to get around to finishing. I’m at that pesky 90% done, 90% left to do stage: all it needs is three boards fixing into place and I’m there. This will be the month I manage it. I hope.

Raking up leaves: The otherwise robust and rudely healthy quince tree in the chicken run developed a nasty case of blight last year and I didn’t get a single quince off it. So this year I’m paying particular attention to raking up the leaves after they’ve fallen, to try to scoop up at least some of the overwintering spores in the hope that they won’t come back again next year.

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Garlic seedlings ready to go out: but how will they cope with the rust this year?

Planting garlic: I have had my little garlic cloves growing away in a module tray since I sowed them in November, and now they’re bursting out of the drainage holes in the bottom so I think they can go into the ground. These are the cloves I saved from the plants that held out for longest against garlic rust last year: with luck, they’ll have a smidgen more resistance this season and I might have half a chance of actually eating some.

Planning, planning, planning: The great veg garden plan for 2017 is well under way. I am religious about using the colder months of the year to plan in detail what I’m going to do next season. It’s a good way of keeping yourself optimistic through the dead days of December; and it also saves a lot of trouble next year, too, as you know what to sow and how much of it. It is the gardening equivalent of a hot chocolate by the fire while leafing through a holiday catalogue. You just know things can only get better from here.

June flowers

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

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

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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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Of sumptuous sweetpeas…

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by sallynex in seeds

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Mr Fothergills, new varieties, seed companies, sweet peas

Last week I trundled around the North Circular at slightly less than walking pace (being a country bumpkin these days I’d forgotten to think this through: Olympic Lanes plus standard rush hour traffic equals journey demanding nightmarish levels of endurance) on my way to East Anglia. It took me four hours to get about 20 miles.
But anyway: I put all that behind me as soon as I walked onto the modest but treasure-filled trials grounds at Mr Fothergill’s (also home to Johnsons Seeds and DT Browns, so you get three for the price of one, so to speak).
I was there on my annual pilgrimage to East Anglia (where for reasons buried in the mists of horticultural lore most of the seed companies seem to be based) to get a sneak peek at this year’s new varieties.
There are dozens of them, too: the results of years of labouring behind the scenes to select flowers and veg which are just that little bit different. This year there were mini cabbages (container gardening is a rich seam for breeders), a handsome stripey courgette that hadn’t even got a name yet, and several of the new long, pointed sweet peppers which look more like big chillies.
Courgette ‘TZ 9308’
And there were sweet peas. Row upon row of them, brilliant with colour and a breathtaking sight. Mr Fothergills has declared 2013 the Year of the Sweet Pea and it’s introducing 25 sweet pea varieties to its range including six new ones.
They are quite sumptuous to look at, too, with lots of the deep clarets and burgundies I find so ravishing. My only quibble is that the breeders seem to have left most of the scent behind them on the lab bench: most of these are somewhat fragrant, but it’s a pale shadow of the rich scent of a ‘Cupani’ or ‘Matucana’. Perhaps they’d be best grown with a few of the old favourites threaded among them, just so you don’t forget what a sweet pea ought to smell like.
I adore sweet peas: this year mine have been something of a disappointment (pesky slugs – again) but luckily the school garden I’m currently looking after has two big wigwams of them which nobody’s picking at the moment, it being summer holidays, except me.
It won’t be long before I’m planting next year’s seeds, in loo roll inners, to overwinter in the coldframe. This has been pretty much a foolproof method for me for years now: the overwintered seedlings don’t like being moved around and are a little sulky at first but get going eventually, and I back them up with a second sowing (direct) in about March or April to flower well into summer.
So if you’re poised with your box full of compost-packed loo rolls just itching to get the seeds in – here are a few new pretties to whet your appetite.

‘Beaujolais’
One of the best colours of them all, I thought, though I do have a little thing about this particular shade of flower. Lovely big plant with sturdy straight stems: very little scent though
‘Chelsea Centenary’
Guess what the big fuss is going to be all about next year? You couldn’t really have a Year of the Sweet Pea coinciding with the 100th birthday of the world’s most famous flower show without naming one of your new varieties for it. It’s a multiflora, producing lots of blooms on the same stem, and pretty in a lavender sort of way.
‘Eclipse’
An old-ish variety bred in 1974 and the perfect cutting flower, with long, straight stems and a good clear colour. It was a little more perfumed, too.
‘Fire and Ice’
I liked the two-tone effect you get with this one: mauve, pink, cream and the occasional flower with say a dark purple edging to the petal.
‘Juliet’
I found this charming: flowers the colour of clotted cream just splashed with the most subtle of pink tinges. And hallelujah: it smelled wonderful. Very spicy, perhaps too rich for those who like their sweet peas sweet, but I loved it.
‘Wiltshire Ripple’
My prize for the most intriguing colouring, with flowers the colour of bruised plums. No scent, though.
‘Air Warden’
This one shouted to be noticed with those bright cerise pink flowers: a plant to leap out from the border and demand attention. A little perfume to this one, too.
‘Almost Black’
Mmm…. just look at that colouring. Sex on a stem: sultry, sumptuous, gorgeous. I do love a black flower.
‘Pandemonium’
Last but not least, another of the new varieties: large flowers with those raspberry-ripple blooms gambolling around the ramrod-straight stems.

Flowers for cutting

17 Thursday May 2007

Posted by sallynex in cutting garden, herbs

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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!

You learn something new every day

18 Sunday Mar 2007

Posted by sallynex in seeds

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lupins, propagation, sweet peas, Ventnor Botanic Garden

It’s amazing – no matter how long you’ve been gardening, there’s always something new to try.

I’ve been sowing seeds for my cutting garden (a new development this year), herbaceous garden and of course the tropical bit around the pond courtesy of Ventnor Botanic Gardens.

The tropical seeds were the ones I thought would be trickiest, but in fact they’ve turned out to be pretty straightforward and in many cases don’t even need a propagator. It’s good old lupin seeds that have got me trying something new.

I’ve always heard about sanding seeds and often wondered “what’s all that about then?”. Certainly I’ve never bothered with it – sweet peas, the usual candidates, always germinate fine for me without any special treatment at all. But for once I read the seed packet on my Lupin “Morello Red” seeds for the cutting garden, and was a bit surprised to find they needed sanding and soaking before you sow them. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never had much success germinating lupins before – I always thought it was the slugs…

Anyway, so I’ve taken an old emery board and gently sanded one end of each seed (ooh so fiddly… ) and they’re now soaking in tepid water for a couple of hours before I sow them. Let’s see if it makes a difference.

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