Grow outdoors for beautiful indoor blooms
NOW is a perfect time to start growing blooms in your garden that you can cut and bring indoors. Gardener and florist Arthur Parkinson shares some tips with HANNAH STEPHENSON
DAHLIAS: These need to start off frostfree, so plant them in a greenhouse or on large windowsills.
For small numbers, plant the tubers up individually into two or three-litre pots using peat-free multipurpose compost. The tuber only needs to be a few inches below the surface. If the compost is moist to the touch you will not need to water the tubers until they send up their first shoots. Overwatering can cause rot.
The best way to pot lots is to line plastic crates with old, pierced compost bags and plant six tubers in each.
Once they are large and growing well, you can transplant each plant into large containers or the garden.
HARDY ANNUALS: You can sow calendulas, cornflowers and borage now, but wait until mid April for half hardy annuals such as cosmos. If you are growing on a windowsill keep seedlings cool and put them outside on mild days to prevent them getting leggy, bringing them in at night until they begin to grow adult leaves.
SWEET PEAS: Pinch out sweet peas if you sowed them over the winter. Once they look strong with several pairs of leaves, pinch out the growing tip. This will encourage the seedlings to grow sideshoots that will flower well.
If you haven’t sown sweet peas yet, there is still time. Those that are seedlings now will be ready shortly to be planted out in their final positions.
Dig in as much well-rotted manure as you can, sweet peas are hungry plants.