Readers’ gardens
Every cold and frosty morning when I open the bedroom curtains my eyes are drawn to the greenhouses in the garden. I expect to see one greenhouse – the heated one – with clear shiny glass and two looking cold and frosted.
The other morning when I looked out of the window I was very dismayed to see three greenhouses looking cold and frosted! With some trepidation, I quickly went to investigate and found that the heater had failed.
Luckily I had a spare to put in the greenhouse. There was some damage to a couple of the fuchsia baskets hanging up but everything else seems to be OK, thank goodness.
Two panes of glass in the big greenhouse have been replaced as they were damaged in a storm. This greenhouse is now up and running and I’m busy potting on plants and sowing seeds. I’ve sown peppers, chillies, aubergines, onions and shallots and taken lots of fuchsia cuttings from the plants I saved from last summer. The coleus cuttings on the spare bedroom windowsill are looking good and will be potted up soon. I’ve ordered some lovely plants and seeds I haven’t grown before – radishes named ‘Bluemoon’ and ‘Redmoon’, nasturtium ‘Troika Spotty Dotty’ and some small plants of a dahlia named ‘Lubego Power Tricolor’, which has a mixture of colours – red, yellow, orange and touches of white. Petunia ‘King of Diamonds’ with white-magenta flowers and ‘Miss Marvellous’ with plum flowers edged with white also took my eye. I love growing the tall cleome ‘Helen Campbell’, with its beautiful white flowers, and was interested to see a variety named ‘Kelly Rose’, which only grows to around 60cm (24in) so I’ll be giving some of these a try. The garden is gradually getting more colourful, with bulbs, primroses, violas and pansies all starting to flower. Hellebores are blooming, the skimmia buds are about to burst, there are big fat buds on the Clematis armandii and Magnolia stellata ‘Leonard Messel’ and M. soulangeana all have beautiful furry buds and will be a real picture in a few weeks’ time.
The veg garden revamp has started. The strawberry tub outside the greenhouse has been moved and we’ll probably be growing a wigwam of ‘Pantheon’ climbing French beans in its place or maybe cucumbers ‘La Diva’ and ‘Crystal Apple’.
I was watching a programme on TV the other day and a farmer was saying how he’d never grow his sweetcorn without planting some sunflowers in among them, as both plants were good friends and would help each other to grow well. Well I never – I’ve been unknowingly doing this for a few years and always had good crops. I researched why and found growing cucumbers, sweetcorn and sunflowers together is a good idea as it’s very beneficial to all three.
I have a very busy few weeks ahead of me keeping up with the seed sowing, pricking out seedlings and potting plants up. Bring it on!