Introducing Comet - or is it Winn Dixie ?

One day earlier than forecast (or possibly 2 as Peblo looked very shifty when I checked her yesterday) this little chick is the sole hatchee from our clutch of eggs.
Peblo vailiantly sat on the rest all today but has now given up and buried them in the sawdust like a penny fair brantub.
One out of eight is not exactly a great result - but then again, at least we won't have the problem of too many cockerells - this one gets to stay no matter what he/she/it turns out to be.
The girls have decided that it will be called Comet or Winn Dixie depending on the gender (I'm not sure which is meant to be male, which female). I'm not even sure what type of hen he/she is. It is very exciting. I quite fancy a Welsummer cockerell called Winn Dixie.

Just how long should they last?

I have been reading through Paula Pryke's new book "Flower School" which is very interesting - her style with its tall glass vases full of vegetables topped by tight domed bunches of flowers is now widely copied and very popular - it is useful to know how the mechanics work in case I ever need to emulate them.
One of the things that she discusses is how long a vase life customers should expect from a bouquet - she fixes on 5 days. This is one of the things that I often discuss with people - there seems to be a feeling that garden flowers will not have much of a vase life. I think that this may be partly the publicity from the Flower and Plants Association, the trade association for the cut flower industry, which promotes florist flowers and metallic solutions for conditioning. It is probably also due to people's experience of picking flowers while walking round the garden, probably in the heat of the day, and then putting them into a vase only for them to wilt soon after.
People who have bought garden flowers from me often go on about how the vase life is superior to flowers bought in a florists - I think that it is largely to do with how you treat them.

Tips for picking and keeping garden flowers

• Either pick first thing in the morning or last thing at night when the flowers are cool.
• Pick straight into a bucket of water - tepid water is ideal - if stems are hollow it is worth recutting the stems underwater to release air bubbles.
• Do not overstuff the bucket or heat will build up.
• Put the flowers somewhere cool and preferably dark for at least 2 hours.
• Recut the stems at an acute angle to give the largest area for stems to take up water.
• Make sure vases are really clean, use flower food, arrange flowers.
• Put flowers somewhere cool, out of direct sunlight and away from fruit bowls.
• If you really want to keep the flowers change the water every couple of days and remove any flowers that begin to wilt before they effect the rest.

The photo is of blue cornflowers - one of the few flowers that I would not expect to last a week - but then they are so beautiful (for 6 days or so) who can resist?

Dahlia bunch

The black dahlias "Chat Noir" and "Rip City" have been the most productive so far this year. I like them as they lent themselves to both bright bouquets, toning down the oranges and pinks, and to monochrome bouquets like this bouquet of white scented phlox, applemint and bicolour snapdragons.
I really must get myself set up to taking better photographs, rather than just plonking bouquets on the deck by the van and snapping them before rushing off to deliver.
I now always take a photo of bouquets as last month I got a complaint - in all my time of doing flowers I have only had 2 complaints so it was a bit of a shock. A man had ordered a bouquet for his wife and she later phoned to say that the flowers had been dead when she got them and that she wanted her money back. I think that she had perhaps assumed that I was a bigger outfit than I am and that I wouldn't have known what the flowers were like that she received. However I had made them up and delivered them - a large bunch of fennel, dark pink and green gladioli, alstromeria and eupatorium. I know that they were not dead and the flowers are all robust varieties that would take some killing!. Unfortunately I hadn't taken a record snap, so I just had to apologise and refund her husband (not her) his money.

Mad dahlia sale

I am fed up with the potted dahlias standing around making me feel guilty - I had intended to get them into the ground a few weeks ago and then realised that I haven't room so they have been languishing next to the greenhouse.
Therefore I am selling them for £1 a pot - all proceeds to the Tullochan Trust - this week only (or get me to reserve them) There is a lot of whites, a couple of purples and this bon bini.
There is nothing wrong with the dahlias that planting them in the soil would not put right.

Meadowy bunch

This bouquet was made today for someone moving into their new home - it is a mixture of white cosmos, fennel, cornflowers, tangerine crocosmia, lilac scabious, yellow alstromeria and through it, like a mad meadow, the giant oat stipa gigantea. It was very light and bright and airy - matching this sunny weather that continues here.
Stipa gigantea is one of the grasses I use most - partly as it gives an airy look without my needing to pick dozens of stems - it also lasts from late May until September in the garden
The best arrangement I have seen with it - and one I would love to copy for a wedding or party - was down at Perch Hill where Sarah Raven runs her flower courses. She had arranged it on its own in tall narrow glass vases along the table with shorter vases of quaking grass in between - very easy, very cheap, very stylish.

Anna Pavord Lecture - I'm so excited

The Autumn Lecture for the Scotland's Garden Scheme always gets some really good speakers - it is organised by Lady Julie Edmonstone and she obviously pulls some strings to these people up to speak in Stirling - this time she has excelled herself.
There are three speakers - 1. Anna Pavord, the gardening editor of the Independent newspaper and author of a fantastically beautiful book about tulips (my favourite image of tortoises with candles on their back iluminating a party in a persian garden comes from this book). 2. David Howard who is Prince Charles' Head Gardener and therefore experimenting at the cutting edge of organic and 3. Tom Hart Dyke, the young gun who got himself kidnapped while plant hunting.
The date is Tuesday 26th September, the venue is The Albert Halls in Stirling, the time 10.15 - 3.30 - the cost £40 including coffee, a sandwich lunch and wine. The proceeds are split 40% to The Sandpiper Trust; 60% to SGS charities.
Tickets are available from Lady Julie Edmonstone, Duntreath Castle, Blanefield, G63 9AJ - 01360 770 215

Working on the website

Today I have been working on my website. This morning I was at the IT centre at Stirling Enterprise http://www.stirling-enterprise.co.uk/itcentre.htm with the incredibly patient Colin Clark.
The idea is that he works with me for as long as it takes for me to design and set up the site. It is fascinating and I can see it beginning to take shape. It is a fantastic service and one which I didn't know about until recently. In theory it will enable me to update the site myself, rather than ending up with one of those out-of-date brochure type sites.
My problem is mainly in deciding what I actually want - I know that I want something fresh and uncluttered like Lisa Hector's site http://www.primrosehillinteriors.com but I need it to do more than sell one range of products. I am finding it ridiculously difficult to write the text - to condense my ramblings into a couple of succinct paragraphs.
This dahlia 'Fuschiana' is one of the photos which will make it onto the site - it is those almost sherbert backlit colours that I want.
But then I want so much.

Drymen Show

What glorious weather it was! The forecasts had all been for pelting rain and we certainly got soaked when we took the van down to the showground on Friday evening, but the day itself was lovely and sunny and all the stallholders sweated away in their boots and waterproofs.
I really like Drymen show - we don't do it to sell flowers - but rather to let people know that we exist and to put out some party type arrangements. This really takes the sales pressure off and lets us just chat to people about what we do, where we are and what a great year it is for dahlias We won the award for best small stall which was nice.
The photos above are of a couple of arrangements - on the left a domed bouquet of dahlia fuschiana, dill and poppy seedheads and on the right a segment of a large ring with ornamental cabbages, dahlias and sage. The centre of the ring has a bowl which can be filled with floating candles.
We are in Scottish Field this month - a lovely article with lots of photos p74-6.

Potting on

The most important thing I have learned this year is just what a difference potting on and planting out at the right time makes.
In June I had 60 artichoke seedlings in 9cm pots - I managed to get half of them planted out the day before we went on holiday, the rest waited until two days after we got back i.e. 16 days later. The photo on the right is of one of the ones planted out in the early batch - it is thriving - about 2 feet wide and has 3 healthy artichokes on it - on the left is a later planted example - about 6inches wide with no fruit. If I manage to keep them alive over the winter they will both be fine next year, but it is a good lesson. I tend to sow far too many plants and then struggle to keep on top of planting them all out at the right time. Next year will be different . . . .

Change of mood

As the days become shorter the cutting garden completely changes in mood - the plants that will flower as soon as they are big enough, regardless of the day length, give way to flowers that are triggered by short days. Most of the half hardy annuals/tender perennials are in this category - rudbeckia, salvia patens, cosmos, and dahlias - flowers that typically have deeper richer colours and more velvety textures. Overnight it seems the garden becomes venetian in its colours, burnt oranges, deep pinks, and lapis lazuli blues.
In the photos here are the dahlia Karma Fusciana and a rudbeckia "Autumn hues".
I am working out today what I shall make for our stall at Drymen Show which is this Saturday- we use it really as a way of letting people know we exist, rather than as a selling opportunity as past experience shows that people do not buy flowers at shows (I have rarely had worse days than a Saturday spent at the BASC show last year where I stood all day and only sold 2 bunches of flowers - and both of those were to friends, so don't really count!). I am planning to use all these rich coloured flowers along with fruit to decorate candelabra - a table setting fit for a Venetian Doge.

summery bouquet

I like it best when people order bouquets and leave the choice of flowers to me - that way I can choose what is looking its very best and also I get to use all the flowers that people wouldn't think of asking for as they are not often seen in flower shops.
This bouquet is for a birthday and the instructions were simply to make it summery. I am very pleased with it - the base foliage is Eupatorium purpurecens, an American plant also known as Jo Pye Weed mixed with applemint in flower, and the flowers are red/purple alstromerias, marigolds, annual chrysanthemums and pale orange crocosmia. It is a happy, sunny bouquet with a bit of depth!

Seed harvesting - giveaway

I am beginning to harvest seed from the garden and I am bound to get far more than I can use. It would make more sense to give away some of the seeds - particularly those which germinate best from fresh seeds.
I shall have the following varieties
1. Sweet william "sooty" - this is a deep purple/black sweet william with a good clove scent. It is a short lived perennial - it flowers in its second year, then gets better and better for about 4 years before collapsing - the foliage is attractive - green and purple neat mounds and is there right though the winter.
2. Daucus dara - a relative of the carrot, this has been bred by the cut flower industry to have reddish flowers - the plants are annuals but self sow readily in my soil. The flowers are pictured above, as you can see the redness of the flowers varies, which I think is nicer - the flowers are interesting, they begin flat, then hump in the middle as they mature before turning back the other way after polination.
3. Poppy "Black Paeony" - I mentioned this on an earlier post - it is a black opium poppy with a mix of single and double flowers which give way to beautiful glaucous seedheads.
Let me know what you want and the address. If you are unhappy about getting something for nothing I am happy to accept donations for the Tullochan Trust, the charity we support http://www.tullochan.co.uk.

counting my chickens

Peblo, the maran who survived the fox attack by flying up to the top of a Lleyandii tree next door, has been broody for a couple of days, stopping the other hens from getting into the house, stealing their eggs and pecking away at me.
We don't have a cockerell so all her efforts at hatching eggs would be doomed, so this morning my friend Jane brought round some fertile eggs and I prepared a broody coop for Peblo, put the eggs in a pile and moved her out of the hen house and into the coop. I am very pecked and scratched and wish that I had worn gauntlets - it is not for nothing that Peblo is a fox evader extrordinaire.
She has settled into the coop but I am a bit worried about the eggs not all being under her completely. We did hatch some chicks last year (Peblo was one) but I can't remember whether you could see the eggs under the hen. Time for a call to Jane I think.
Lisa Hector - who makes lovely doorstops and other things in Perthshire - is also waiting on chicks to hatch from under her broody maran - her blog about her life and animals is at http://primrosehillinteriors.blogspot.com.

Plume poppy

This dreadful photo is of the plume poppy - nothing to do with other poppies - a plant which loves the heavy soil and water which you get in our garden - it soars up to 8 feet tall with strong flat glaucous leaves and then plumes of parchment coloured seedlike flowers.
It is a flower that I am desperate to be able to sell - it has scale, unlike many tall things it doesn't droop and it looks wonderful on its own in a pottery crock or glass vase, fanning out against a plain wall.
The problem is that while the flower is a flower it sheds all over the place if you move it, fine for things like weddings (where I can transport it ever so carefully and then hoover up any dropped bits) but not much use for selling to the public.
I am hoping that when it develops into seedheads it will be a bit more robust but until then I have it at the van, taking up space but not for sale - though if anyone want to try it out and risk transporting it I will give them a stem or two.

Gullane Games 2006

The computer has been away for a few days having all the glitches taken out of it so I have been unable to post. I was also away at Gullane Games- the local gala day in Gullane, East Lothian where I grew up and where my parents still stay. I went to the games every year and now my girls and my cousin's girls join in the fun.
The afternoon is taken up with races - crab, sack, egg and spoon, that sort of thing - and the evening with a fancy dress parade. There have been a few years where the Disney Store seems to have contributed most of the entries, but this year people seem to have got back into the spirit of the thing and there was a fantastically crafted dalek and a very innovative bunch of grapes with girls in leotards with purple balloons pinned all over them. Our entry was The Four Seasons all put together by my Mum. From left to right we have Jayde, Katie, Zoe and Christine with a special photo of Jayde as Spring. These photos had to be taken quickly for as soon as the judges had been past Jayde and Katie were without their headdresses and Christine had taken off her furry cape. They won first prize in the group section which must have been a mystery to the people lining the streets for the parade as by that time they were a group of 4 (admittedly beautiful) girls in plain tabards, everything else having been discarded along the way.