A Couple Of Surprises…
April 19, 2009
..On the allotment recently. The first was under some overgrown grass that I was making a half-hearted effort at clearing:
Disappointingly, not a snake but - almost as exciting - a slow-worm! There were two of them, but I only managed to get a shot of one on my mobile before they disappeared, hopefully to somewhere romantic where they could get on with creating lots of slug-eating babies. They’re a protected species and apparently fall prey to domestic cats so I will leave that corner uncleared for a bit (the excuse I have been looking for) and keep my fingers crossed for them.
The other welcome surprise:
I suppose I shouldn’t have been that surprised that these tulips were out, as I’d noticed the previous week that they were budding up nicely. But in my defence, they are called Maytime, which sort of implies… Well, not the middle of April anyway. For selling, they should really have been picked still closed to give them the maximum vase life. But there was no way I was going to waste them, and besides the customers would need to see how fantastically fluorescently pink they were. So, after a night packed tightly in tall buckets to keep them straight, they looked like this:
And now they’re all gone until next year. It’s heart-wrenching stuff, this flower selling!
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1.
Camellia | April 20, 2009 at 10:54 am
Wow, a whole line of romance. I can see the pain for a devoted lover of flowers, having to cut them off to give them away to someone else…
2.
jwblooms | April 20, 2009 at 11:23 am
Hi, Camellia. Yes, ideally I would plant enough to have a little of everything left over for myself, but space is tight and at the moment my main worry is always, “Have I got enough flowers?” I’m hoping that one day I will have so much of everything that I cease regarding absolutely anything that blooms as a potential sale! Btw do you have slow-worms in Sweden? If so, what’s the Swedish word for them? J
3.
Barbara | April 21, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Nice tulips! what are they? Hopefully I shall plant some this Autumn ,if I have room.I was so afraid of not having enough flowers that I sowed lots of stuff and now worry that I will not have room for them all. Do you know anything about pinching back snapdragons and salpiglossis?Just thought I’d try and pick your brains.
4.
jwblooms | April 22, 2009 at 6:21 am
Hi, Barbara. The tulips are called Maytime. I know what you mean about sowing too much and then not having anywhere to plant everything out! But tulips, of course, can be planted underneath your annuals, so they are a good bet. I find people like the more unusual ones, especially parrot tulips, which they won’t find in the supermarkets (and which are difficult to compete with price-wise).
As for antirrhinums, I pinch out a few but leave most of them. If you pinch them out, you do get more flowers, and they appear a few weeks earlier, but they are not as long-stemmed or as strong as the ones that haven’t been pinched. It’s a bit like growing sweet peas as cordons – the plant puts all its energy into a few strong flowers, rather than masses of smaller ones. I’ve never grown salpiglossis but assume it’s the same principle.
Jan