My Cut Flower Patch

Quite a lot of my favourite blogs reviewed The Cut Flower Patch by Louise Curley. Every review I read gave a flowing account of the book and many followed up their review with a giveaway. I lost count of every draw that I entered. Time after time someone else's name was announced as the lucky recipient until eventually Snowbird over at Gardens and Wildlife drew my name.

Even then it seemed that I was not meant to have a copy as the book went out of stock just before my name was sent to the publisher. I was offered a substitute but I decided to wait until a new batch arrived and this month my copy arrived.

I haven't had a chance to read the whole book but have enjoyed what I have seen so far. From the cover photograph I think Louise has been sneaking onto our plot.

Our sweet Williams are at their best. These are biennials flowers and as I am picking the ones on the plot next year's plants are at the seedling stage in the garden greenhouse. I sowed wallflowers at the same time - one lot for the plot and a shorter variety for tubs in the garden. 

The wallflowers have germinated better so I wonder whether I should buy some fresh seed. The sweet Williams were last year's seeds.

Last year I also grew sweet rocket which is just going over but gave a colourful display. It was a purple variety which I hope will produce seeds but I am thinking of adding a white variety next year.

I also sowed ox-eye daisies which are flowering in many verges at the moment. I've always liked them so decided to have some on the plot. I'm hoping this will grow as a perennial. 

So at the moment this I can enjoy vases of flowers like this one.

The old raspberry bed has been turned into a flower border and is planted up with campanula persicifolia, verbena bonariensis, gladioli, native primroses and dahlias. We were not going to grow dahlias this year but ended up buying one or two tubers. Interestingly the slugs seem to prefer the green leaved planys to those with brown leaves

I'm also experimenting with annuals as last year's attempt at an annual flower bed was disappointing and full of weeds.

I'm hoping for a better effect this year and will report back later. As we are renovating the rose border on the plot I may also add some perennials for cutting too.

Just one thing though, Louise writes that larkspur is a really easy annual to grow and yet it seems to be the one that is causing me most of a problem being reluctant to germinate and when and if it does germinate it is slow to grow. 

The seeds in the pots below were planted a full month after the top photo of the larkspur. The later sowing of larkspur is highlighted inside the yellow box. All these pots were sown at the same time.

Is it just me that has difficulty with it?

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett