The First Flowers!

The plants at the allotment are beginning to flower! This is cerinthe, a hardy annual with gorgeous grey-blue leaves, which are irresistibly thick and squidgy. I put the young plants out in the autumn but quite a few of them didn’t really grow. Mind you, I have more plants coming on, sown in the propagator a few weeks ago, so hopefully they will take over as the autumn-sown plants exhaust themselves.

 

The Lunaria (honesty) is also starting to bloom. This is ‘Munstead Purple’,  one of the biennials I sowed last summer, and I also have ‘Alba’ (white – natch). It’s supposed to be much taller and I think if it had been in the ground all winter instead of becoming pot-bound and slug-munched at the bottom of the garden, it might well have been 3 feet tall by now.  Still, it should get there. I hadn’t dug enough of the allotment to put them out until recently, but next year I’ll get them in the ground early, maybe keeping some back in pots to flower later. Successful successional planting is said to be one of the hardest things about gardening, but with me it sort of happens just by being a bit rubbish!

The biennials have really got me thinking about a polytunnel, as the few pots I kept in the shed all winter are in a beautiful condition, whereas the ones outside look really ratty. It’s amazing the difference just a little bit of protection makes. Also, it would really banjax those bleedin’ crows!

In the garden, the tulips are on the cusp of blooming, as is the Euphorbia oblongata, which is in its third year so getting a bit tired. With that polytunnel, and a few extra spring bulbs, this time next year I could be making up bouquets!