It has rained all day. The garden needed the rain, and I was happy enough to have an excuse not to do anything energetic while the last lurking remnants of my headache went away, so I was didn't mind, though the Systems Administrator was not served so well because it was chilly and dank in the workshop and glue took forever to set. All of this is by the by, since it will rain or not rain irrespective of whether we would like it to or not.
I spent much of the day ensconced in the upstairs sitting room going through a stack of old gardening magazines. My vantage point at the dining table gave me a clear view of the terrace (or patio) and set me pondering the success or otherwise of this year's pots. The Cosmos have been an unqualified success. Raised from seeds that came free with a magazine, they have cost me nothing beyond my time and the compost they were grown in (if you take the greenhouse as a sunk cost, that is). I was worried that the young plants had grown awfully spindly, but moved on into big pots and stood outside they have bushed out nicely. They are covered in flowers as I type, and there are enough buds to make me think they'll go on flowering until the frosts, as long as I keep watering and dead heading them. Apart from that they have required no attention whatsoever, beyond a couple of doses of tomato food and the insertion of the odd cane when branches began to fall over. Top marks to the Cosmos.
Not so the tobacco flowers. I grew two varieties from seed, traditional white Nicotiana sylvestris and the lower growing 'Tinkerbell' whose flowers are lime green without and soft brick red within. Look them up for yourself on Google images: they look divine. Sophisticated, subtle, but lively, definitely not bling. Both sets of seed germinated very quickly, demanding to be potted on and turning into lanky little plants that exuded suffering. Once moved on to nine centimetre pots, and then to terracotta pots for display, they cheered up and grew prodigiously, and the N. sylvestris acquired a dense peppering of tiny black insects that they kept for the rest of the summer. I thought they were some sort of small aphid that was feeding on the plants, while the SA thought they were thunderflies that had simply got stuck to the nicotiana's hairy and sticky stems. Whatever, they lowered the tone by the front door, and no handy ladybirds arrived to eat them.
I am not an organic gardener in the strict purist sense. I use Provado under glass and as a drench in emergencies against root aphid on things in pots. I use glyphosate sparingly, and a very few slug pellets, but I will not spray flowers against aphids in the open garden. If sap sucking pests and natural predators can't find a balance that doesn't leave the plant speckled with black insects than I'll grow something else. The Cosmos are not covered in aphids, bless them. Then the foliage of the N. sylvestris began to turn pale, though perhaps that's because they wanted more tomato food, and by now the flowers are nearly over, and it's only mid August. 'Tinkerbell' did better since it was not covered in black specks and there are still some flowers to come, but the overall effect was underwhelming compared to the picture in the catalogue.
The Systems Administrator revealed that his father always used to grow tobacco flowers, but the SA had never thought much of them. I think we've agreed then, that's one family tradition that can be knocked on the head.
My three tender fuschsias were wonderful, covered in flowers, but have run out of steam. Was that because they too wanted more tomato food? I did feed them, but maybe not enough. Or is their east facing position by the front door too shady for them? Or is it the variety? There are always specialist fuchsia growers at Chelsea, so I'll be able to ask a professional before it's time to put next year's pots out. My conversation with the man on the Tesco checkout who commented on the amount of sugar I was buying had got as far as establishing that his wife grew lots of fuchsias and they repeated well. It's a shame he doesn't work in our new local Budgens where I might run into him regularly, and could ask him to ask his wife for her advice.
The Calibrachoa by the front door are still going great guns. They look like miniature petunias. I've had them in that spot before, and they did well with less than full sun last time. They seem to be self cleaning, and I don't even dead head them. The impulse buy Ipomoea 'Trailing Black' has been great, producing lots of lush, dark, lobed purple leaves with a greenish metallic glint and a few lavender coloured bindweed shaped flowers that are slightly here nor there. In general foliage has been a success in front of the house. A multi-pack of three different spotty leaved Hypoestes from B&Q have been fun, one pinkish, one mainly green, and one with pale variegation, mingling gently with their neighbours. The B&Q label doesn't say what sort of Hypoestes, but I have a feeling they might be the common polka dot plant. Whether or not it would be worth trying to overwinter them, or take a fatalistic view and buy them again next year if I see them or otherwise grow something else, I haven't decided. The large, grey, furry, slightly pleated leaves of Plectranthus argenteus have been a total success. Raised from seed sown this spring they have made large, bushy plants, that seem equally happy in full sun or half shade.
Poor Lotus berthelotii, another impulse purchase, has only produced about three of its burnt orange, claw shaped flowers. I think it must need more sun. I could try moving it, except that I don't have any other groups of pots themed on orange flowers except the dahlias and it would look silly with them. Maybe tomorrow I'll move it to the sunny end of the conservatory, and see if it cheers up. It could be a friend for Dicliptera suberecta, another grey leaved sub-shrub with orange flowers that I fell for heavily after seeing growing in a charming, slightly ramshackle walled garden in Worcestershire that also had a double flowered pomegranate. I was extremely pleased to find that a nursery in Lincolnshire I was buying verbascums from offered Dicliptera, and snapped one up. It is growing and flowering in its pot but cautiously,not clumping up as much as I think it would if it was really happy.
One of the lessons from my pile of magazines was that to get a really good display from pots you may need to change them over during the season. The wonderful array outside the front door at Great Dixter is not static. Things are brought on behind the scenes, whipped out at their moment of glory, then taken away again. Alas, lacking a supply of eager horticultural students to help with all the potting and the heavy lifting I am looking for plants that last the season. Good old Cosmos.
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