... and the ornamentals

My last post looked at my 2021 veg successes (few), failures (many) and plans (probably over-optimistic).  It wasn’t a great year for the ornamentals either, in fact they were probably even less successful than the veg.  Some of the reasons were the same as for the edibles, especially the general inattentiveness to feeding and watering, and the cold spring that caused a delay in planting out; but my indecisiveness about what to plant with what was also a factor.

Re-using compost, I think, may be to blame for some of my failures, combined with my not feeding the plants growing in it.  This would affect my ornamentals particularly, since most of them were destined for containers, but also the courgettes in the plastic tubs and those veg seedlings grown on for later planting out.  One thing I’ve learnt (from a magazine article) about peat-free composts is that they have lower levels of nutrients and they get used up more quickly than those in peat-based ones.  I have had a container of comfrey tea steeping away for fertiliser for over a year now, down in the dump corner, but failed to do anything with it; that’s another job to do before the growing season gets going.  Lack of feeding would explain why the courgettes in the tubs started off quite well and then fizzled out, presumably as the nutrients were used up.  Most of my other containers also used old compost with a little 6X fertiliser added, and the plants did very poorly.  I had been fired up by my success in 2020 with old potting compost; when, in the spring 2020 lockdown, I ran out of compost, I scavenged any old compost I could find or re-use, with some 6X added, which seemed reasonably successful.  Peat-free compost doesn’t ‘slump’ like peat-based ones, and when it all looked to be in good condition at the end of the year, I thought I might get away with another year of doing the same thing; which might have worked, if I’d sorted out my comfrey tea and made use of it.

The sweet peas, though, had the same treatment but were a big success. The 2020 sweet peas had been planted in two large pots up against the house wall, with some violas at their feet, and at the end of the season I pulled up the sweet peas but left the violas, and compost, in place.  In spring of this year I just planted the new sweet pea seedlings – both those overwintered and those sown in late winter – where the old ones had been, also adding a few seeds to germinate in situ in the hope of getting a good succession of flowers.  This worked well, and I was able to cut a posy of sweet pea flowers pretty much all through the summer.  Why did it work with the sweet peas and not with other plants?  The sweet pea pots, being just outside the back door, benefited from having the teapot leaves and coffee grounds emptied into them occasionally, but I doubt if that would have had such a big effect.  The re-used compost, of course, came from a wide variety of sources, and perhaps that in the sweet pea pots was better in the first place.  Anyway, I don’t think I should push my luck for a third year!  The sweet peas this year were so successful that I can’t resist another sowing in modules this winter/spring; the colours are lovely and the scent (I only buy seeds of scented varieties) wonderful.  I’m sticking with ‘Fragrant Skies’ and ‘White Leamington’, plus my own saved seed of ‘Matucana’.

One of my sweet pea posies

Old favourites that did well, and that I’ll sow again next year, are Lobelia ‘Cambridge Blue’ (a light blue, non-trailing lobelia that makes a good filler in pots and that was one of the few successful annuals this year) and pale yellow Cosmos ‘Xanthos’ (ditto).  My problem with planting up the pots, apart from the quality of the compost, is that I find it difficult to decide what to pair with what.  If I put three seedlings of this variety in this pot (or will I need five to make a good enough show?), will there be enough left over to put in another pot?  Will the colours work together?  Do I have enough compost for another potful?  And then I dither and don’t plant any of them.

I’ve decided that I don’t need to sow so many varieties as pot fillers.  I have a number of small perennial plants, mostly grown from cuttings or divisions, which can fulfil that role.  These include various penstemons, the Erysimum ‘Bowles’ Mauve’ which needs to be kept propagated from cuttings as it’s quite short-lived, and the white osteospermum which is descended (via cuttings) from a plant that grew for some years in the front garden with no protection, even though it’s supposed to be half-hardy.  This year I also tried a couple of cuttings from my variegated pelargonium, which proved surprisingly tough for a house-plant.

Some seedlings didn’t do well at all – the mesembryanthemums were an example.  Maybe I’ll give them a miss next time.  But you can never tell: the nicotiana barely germinated, but then in October a plant appeared, almost from nowhere, in the big pot by the summerhouse.  Will it survive the winter?  More to the point, will the pot survive? – it is badly cracked after last winter’s frosts.

There are a few plants that I’ve decided to give up on.  I still have some didiscus seed, but won’t bother sowing it.  The photos in the catalogues look enticing, as is its name of Blue Lace Flower, but really it’s not blue at all but a pale lavender, and the flower heads are small and sparse; the seedlings need to be pinched out so that they branch and produce more flowers, but I always forget and only get one bloom per plant, which looks pitiful.  Another no-no is tithonia, the Mexican Torch Flower.  I once saw a splendid plant in a sheltered walled garden in Worcestershire and thought it would be wonderful in one of my pots, but I have failed to persuade my seedlings that a cold and windy patio on top of the Cotswolds bears any resemblance to its Mexican homeland, and realistically there is not much chance of my getting a decent show from them.

Didiscus (in 2020), with barely-flowering tithonia behind

As mentioned in a previous post, I gave up on some of my 2021 seedlings when I realised that I had enough self-sown seedlings in the garden.  The Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus), self-sown from the large patch in the veg plot, did particularly well; I planted some of them out down under the hazel trees to grow on for next year, and had a good show of cut flowers from the more mature plants.  There are now rather too many of them, so I ought to steel myself to pull some of the older plants up!  The antirrhinums also self-seeded, admittedly producing a more limited colour range than I might have hoped for, but one can’t be too fussy with plants for free.  I ought to be able to keep some of them, and their progeny, for next year, perhaps supplementing with a few newly-sown seedlings if the remaining seed is still viable.  A third annual that I won’t bother sowing next year, but will rely on self-sowing instead, is the panicum grass which produces a lovely frothy effect in a border.  It’s supposed to be half-hardy, but there are so many seedlings that I doubt if that’s actually the case.

A vase of self-seeded Sweet William

If my plan to cut back on vegetable sowing works, there ought to be a little more space in the veg plot for flowers, especially those for cutting: the Sweet William, antirrhinums and panicum would fall into that category, as well as the dahlias.  And I might sow some amaranth if there’s room; I sowed some (for baby salad leaves) in 2020 but it ran to seed early, and instead I got quite striking flower heads for cutting.  I didn’t get round to sowing any this year, but I’d be tempted to try again with the remaining seed if it’s not too old.

A vase of red amaranth, with statice, 2020

Underoccupied veg beds might also be the solution to all the little pots cluttering up the path outside the back door.  These are cuttings etc awaiting a permanent home, which of course I haven’t got round to finding for them; meanwhile they dry out in summer and freeze in winter, labels get lost, some of them die off ….. They would do better plunged in soil where I can better attend to them.  I have several penstemon cuttings that would benefit from this; tellingly, the only penstemon flowers I had this year were on a plant that was popped into the edge of the veg plot, whereas some planted in the pots as foils for dahlias did nothing at all.  I also have two small cuttings of the big cistus that grew by the driveway, taken in autumn 2020 (after a couple of failed attempts: cuttings need to be taken after flowering, not earlier, it seems) as replacement plants for the original which needed removing as part of a total renovation plan for that area.  In fact the big cistus almost died in the winter of 2020-21, and looked so miserable that I dug it out anyway.  I need to keep those two little cuttings going so that I can replace the original – the veg plot is the ideal interim home for them!

Miserable-looking cistus

I’ve already covered my dahlia failure in a previous post.  The poor dahlias are still sitting outdoors in their pots, and I fear that some of the tubers will have rotted in this wet weather.

As for the larger perennials, the appearance of the cream-coloured camassias in late spring made me realise that the blue ones, which always flower earlier, had been a no-show.  I’m hoping they might make a reappearance next spring!