Tag Archives | grow your own cut flowers

A Year in Pictures

January

Cutting back perennials and making pots (by Harriet Coleridge).

 

February

Hellebore appreciation and plant dyeing silk to make into ribbon.

 

March

 

Seed sowing, picking the first Anemones and the first wedding of the year.

 

April

Ranunculus time and a collaboration with Jo Flowers for a Spring Florals workshop.

 

May

May in a bouquet and the latest addition, Jesse the Whippet.

 

June

Our second Wedding Flowers Intensive workshop with The Garden Gate Flower Company and the Roses are abundant.

 

July

Sweet Peas picked on the vine now, Snapdragons start to flower in the tunnels and Ammi begins to set seed.

 

August

Zinnias and Dahlia ‘Cafe au lait’,  enjoy the heat and the berries begin!

 

September

 

Dahlia time and so much to go with them.

 

October

Chrysanthemums for the first time and I am converted.

 

November

The first frosts and it is time to lift the dahlias.

 

December

Keeping warm saving and storing seeds for 2017.

 

With thanks to photographic contributors Eva Nemeth, Clare West and Imogen Xiana.

Love Rachel and Ashley – Wishing you all the best for a happy and peaceful New Year. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cultivated Palette Series – Hellebores

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I have been cutting back the old leaves on my Hellebores this week followed by a quick weed and mulch. My favorite tool of all time the Japanese Razor Hoe does a great job at getting all those pesky weeds out that like to colonize around the crown of the plant.

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I don’t think they have enjoyed this mild winter, there is a lot of black spot around so I think a good mulch will help keep the spores from being splashed up on to the emerging flowers.

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Hopefully in a months time they will be looking something like these which were photographed in March last year by photographer Clare West. We got together a few times last year and focused on just one flower on each occasion, so I thought it would be fun to share these beautiful images with you over the coming months in a series of blog posts called The Cultivated Palette. I will include lots of growing tips and recommendations for sourcing stock plants and seeds and I will share some thoughts on why I choose to include them in my ‘palette’ of plants for cutting.

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I am going to have another go at hand pollination next month. I will have to select a mother and father plant from each variety, based on stem length, good flower shape and general vigor. This Harvington double pink is a good example, the plant has formed a big clump relatively quickly with long stems and well you can see heart-breakingly beautiful flowers.

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So on a sunny day I will set aside ten minutes and go to my Hellebore bed armed with a pencil and some odds and ends of yarn. Firstly I rub the end of the pencil over the anthers of a fully open flower on the father plant, then I will select an almost open flower bud from the mother plant and tie a little bow of yarn around its neck.

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It is important that no others pollinators have been there first. I then transfer the pollen from the pencil to the stigma.

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That is all you have to do until the seed ripens around the end of May, the shiny black seeds should be collected and sown on a loam based, gritty compost whilst nice and fresh. They do take a few months to germinate, so keep the seed tray in a cold frame and hopefully by September you will start to see some signs of life.

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All my hellebores were bred by Hugh Harvington whose nursery Twelve Nunns, now run by his daughter Penny Dawson in Lincolnshire, has recently been featured in the January edition of RHS magazine The Garden. They do supply wholesale plug plants, as long as you order ten or more of a variety, they can be potted up and grown on for a season before planting out. Harvington hellebores have a purity of colour which I find very useful for my wedding work. This one below is Harvington single smokey.

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Hellebores are an investment but I cannot resist them, I think they add a subtlety to the more flamboyant and bold spring bulbs and have a good long harvesting period from February to April. Once you grow your own from seed you realize why they are expensive, it takes two years from pollination to the first flower.

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I have found the double forms hold better so I have just placed an order for some more including blush, apricot and double speckled cream…yum! I am establishing a new bed under a line of mature beech trees which should give them a bit of shade in the summer months.

Vase life can be rather fleeting especially before they start to set seeds. I don’t think searing the stems does make much difference, but scoring a line down either side of the stem and then plunging the stems in a deep bucket of water up to their necks overnight seems more successful. I have to confess most of mine are picked in April when my season is in full swing, they are very ripe by then and happily hold for up to two weeks.

The next instalment will be on Anemones which I have just started picking, the earliest harvest recorded here at G&G.

 

Haygrove Hotel

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After an article in the Organic Grower last year I started dreaming of more protected cropping and I started talking to Haygrove Polytunnels. I had never approached them before as I thought they would be way too expensive, but I was proved wrong and wish I had done so earlier.

Their range, specification and technical info is impressive, and it’s all built on the direct experience they have with fruit growing all over the world. The caterpillar tunnel I have had for 2 seasons has been great, but I had to take it down for most of last winter as it was so so stormy. At 20mph winds the caterpillar looked like it had a life of its own and was going to turn into some kind of winter moth and fly away.

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Moving all the metalwork took a while

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Auger action!

 So the Super Solo tunnel I have opted for (NB., other profiles are available!)  is 26m long, 8.5m wide and cost £2500. That includes a metal top bar along the entire length, additional bracing (windy kit) and roller doors. It has some straight profile at the edges (essential if you want to use all the space) and the potential for some major ventilation come summertime. As you can see, it’s like a Spanish tunnel that goes down to the ground, but is roped up the same way.

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I did have to borrow my Dad for half a day to screw in the ground anchors (70 0mm) with a hired auger, but apart from that it was straighforward enough for one person to do. I even skinned it myself when I could see a quiet day forecast, although it would be much more preferable with more. It therefore has some great advantages in cost (no concrete or timber or outside contractors), probably some planning advantages as it is clearly a temporary structure, it can be closed down for the worst of the winter (spring bulbs!) and still grow summer crops because of the ventilation. I estimate it is probably 4-5 times cheaper than a twinspan polytunnel covering that size, all things considered.

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The handy see-saw ring for roping up, definitely easier with two..

 The only slight niggle is with the plastic for the doors, which tends to billow in a bit in windy weather, due to the enormous tractor access opening. Haygrove do sell a stiffer door material which I would well recommend getting delivered with everything else. Their instructions, manuals, technical information and after sales support were all really good, you can find them on the world wide web of wonder here www.haygrove.co.uk.

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Ashley Pearson