How young plants will grow to give thrills...despite those winter chills
It’s time to start nurturing seeds and cuttings and, says expert Agnes Stevenson, start placing your plants to create a fabulous show next year
After a summer dedicated to tomatoes, the greenhouse is beginning to fill up with other things. Seed trays filled with hardy annuals, fresh-sown perennials and autumn salads now occupy the top layers of staging, while under the bench the propagators are full of cuttings.
Here, shoots of verbena, euphorbia and hydrangea will have the warmth they need without being dried out by the sun before they can root.
This week I’ll also be taking pelargonium cuttings, but these won’t go into a propagator as they would most likely just rot. Instead, I’ll place them in a shady spot where they should root rapidly.
The secret to getting these small plants through the winter is to keep them just moist and no more, opening the greenhouse vents on mild days to allow air to circulate.And stick with them even if they sulk. There were times I considered consigning last year’s fuchsia cuttings to the compost heap. They never looked promising and I had no hopes for them as I shoved them into patio pots, alongside dahlias and calendulas. Surprisingly, they all flourished.
Fuchsias are reliable performers, providing lots of interest over a long period and among the other “good-doers” in my garden is Geranium “Rozanne”, which at the moment is scrambling through its neighbours in a haze of blue flowers. I have half a dozen pots of this squeezed in beside Hydrangea paniculata “Limelight”, but once the foliage dies down I’m going to spread these out around the garden.
“Limelight” is just one of the many hydrangeas in flower this month and I’m in the process of moving them around, finding homes for ones that started off as cuttings a couple of years ago and harvesting material from
ones I want more of, including the spectacular “Annabelle”, which has heads the size and shape of footballs.
As well as being spectacular and long-lasting – some plants in my last garden were more than 50 years old – hydrangeas have the advantage of being inedible to deer and rabbits, even when the leaves are young and tender.
That’s not the case with the sanguisorbas, which once again have had all their flower stalks nibbled to stumps. Meanwhile, the appealing baby rabbits from early summer have turned into huge thumpers and I’m feeling less indulgent towards them. Even the presence of a mink has failed to frighten them off and now my hopes are pinned on the giant black cat from the farm across the field, which occasionally prowls in this direction putting the wind up the local wildlife.
Fortunately nothing deters the honeybees from the hives at the bottom of the lane and one of my favourite pastimes is just to sit in the garden and listen to them buzz amongst the flowers.