Friday 10 June 2011

send in the dahlias

The dahlias that overwintered in the greenhouse in pots have mostly made plenty of top growth by now, so I spent part of the day staking them, three 3 foot canes to a pot, and moving them down to stand outside the conservatory for the summer.  I could have done this a couple of weeks ago, except that I was busy doing other things.  Views on when it's OK to put tender bedding outside seem to have shifted.  When I started gardening the advice was not to risk it before the end of May as there was still a chance of frost.  The weather forecasts were talking about the possibility of frosts in rural areas as recently as a few days ago, though they didn't make it clear whether they meant rural areas in Essex or Scotland.  However, we started stocking bedding plants at work weeks back, and they have been flying out of the polytunnel.

It seemed a pity to put the pots straight on to the beautiful new deck, so we hit on the idea of using the offcuts of cedar planking to make pot feet.  Cut into sections about 4cm wide, and with the edges sanded off, they blend in with the deck unobtrusively, and should do the job as well as bought terracotta ones.  At four feet per pot and 99p per terracotta foot, I would have been looking at well over a hundred quid's worth of pot feet, since I used 48 of them just for the Hamamelis and the camellias.  This is probably not an exercise to undertake unless you have a well-equipped workshop, or two days of your life to spare.  I wouldn't fancy cutting them and bevelling the edges by hand.

I haven't bought much in the way of bedding this year, as I've been focusing on trying to sort out the borders, but today I did get a pack of trailing petunias for the Ancestral Pot.  This belonged to my late parents-in-law, who got it from Heals, probably some time in the 1960s, so it is half way to being an antique.  It is a terracotta cone with neat drainage holes up the sides, that sits in a circular metal hoop on legs.  For the twenty-four or so years that I knew my mother-in-law the Pot always sat outside the sitting room window, generally unplanted.  When she died the family said with one voice that as we had a modern house, we should have the Pot.  Lat year it had Begonia evansiana in it, but they didn't survive the winter outside.  This is a tall begonia with small pink flowers and very handsome, exotic leaves with pink backs, which is almost hardy.  Some overwintered outside the previous year, but 2010-2011 was critically colder.  The begonia propagates itself lavishly by making bulbils in its leaf axils, which grow into new plants where they fall, so if you start with one then by the autumn you should have lots.

I could have been tempted by the packs of gazanias as well, which would flourish in the gravel, but I am trying to stick to the main project and not get side-tracked.  However, I did buy a spider plant the other day, because I was talking to a WI group about woodland conservation and they had them on the bring and buy stall.  I used to grow spider plants when I was a child, but I haven't had one for over three decades.  This one was two plants potted together, and already had a long shoot with babies on it.  Moved up into a 15cm terracotta pot it is spending the summer on the shelf in the porch.  I must remember to move it inside for the winter.  It makes me feel quite nostalgic, and I wonder where I could get a macrame hanging pot holder for it.

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