Busy with my show daffodils
Grows a huge variety of spring bulbs in his Northern Ireland garden.
My main job recently has been planting my show daffodils. They’re planted in two, 1.2m (4ft) wide beds in rows of seven bulbs. The rows are about 30cm (12in) apart and each bed is about 12m (40ft) long. They’re the beds where my potatoes have been harvested, so the soil’s nice and friable.
When I’ve finished planting, I’ll spread the beds with a general-purpose fertiliser at about 40g to the sq m (about 1.5 oz to the sq yd).
The early-flowering Narcissus romieuxii hybrids have been repotted and watered after their summer rest in dry conditions. I layered the cordon-grown sweet peas for the second time and they’ve responded with vigorous growth and more flowers. Hopefully, they’ll go on flowering until the first frosts.
The peas and broad beans are nearly finished and have both produced good crops.
I’ve shown dahlias and sweet peas at the local late-summer shows. The dahlias continue to flower as I’ve deadheaded them regularly and did a bit of disbudding to ensure blooms are
a reasonable size. I also managed to get a first with a dark-blue double delphinium. The plants were divided in late spring and moved to a new bed. As a result, they flowered later than usual and I was able to cut three good stems in late August.
The lilies in pots have almost finished flowering but I’m watering them with a liquid tomato fertiliser to ensure good bulb growth for next year.
My favourite rose is a miniature named ‘Magic Carousel’. It has small, Hybrid Tea-shaped flowers – the petals are white with a broad, reddish-pink band at the edge. This rose has been flowering all summer and only needs deadheading from time to time. My white-flowering schizostylis has increased in size since last year. I planted it beside the tunnel and it gets plenty of water runoff from the plastic cover. This suits it because it can be grown as a marginal close to a pond. A number of years ago, a friend gave me a climbing aconite. I found it, still growing, late last summer and moved it to a more favourable spot. It has now started to flower at a height of 2m (6ft 6in). If autumn is mild, it may even produce some seeds!