End of season

Suddenly we are at the end of the cut flower season and into the build up for Christmas. I can always tell when it is about to happen as I start to play hooky from the flower-van. This morning it was left with an honesty box while I went up to set up a stall at Rona Chollerton's coffee morning raising money for McMillan nurses and next week the same will happen as I am off to see the school harvest festival service.
The weather is awful and it is becoming a chore to pick out the lovely flowers from amongst the rain damaged ones. Subscriptions will run for 1 more week and I am still able to arrange gift deliveries.
The first official Christmas Fair is tomorrow at the McLintock Halls in Balfron - I will be there with what remains of the tulip bulbs (goodness they were popular!) and gift type things like the washable linen garden kneeler pictured above, glass cloches, children's watering cans, etc. etc.

I have been reading round blogs for the past 1/2 hour or so and found a piece about the firms that take orders while pretending to be a local florist http://blog.amystewart.com. Amy has written a book called Flower Confidential which I am keen to get when it comes out. It is an investigation into the cut flower world, where flowers come from, how they are treated, how the markets work etc.

Now I am off to package up tulips for tomorros's fair.

SGS Talks

The talks in Stirling were all fantastic. Anna Pavord gave suggestions for combining plants in a garden so that they would work as a "relay race", giving a long season of interest - e.g. celandines planted under crambe, or so that they complimented each other - e.g. catmint hiding the scruffy leaves of allium christophii. The only pity was that she was cut off when she went slightly over time. I am sure that most people there would rather have cut 10 minutes out of the lunchbreak and heard her whole lecture.

The talk by David Howard about the gardens at Highgrove was interesting as I had always assumed that it would be a very formal place, whereas the reality is quite different with tulips in long grass, a very Alice in Wonderland Black and White garden and the beginnings of experiments with perennials planted in long grass.
This last is something I am keen to do - we accidentally grew the Scotch thistle onopordum in our long grass and it loked fantastic - as have the few columbines and allium that I have tried. I think that the problem will be in keeping them for more than a couple of years.
Tom Hart-Davis,( a young mockney orchid collector who was kidnapped in the Darien Gap and held for 9 months) was a great success with the ladies of a certain age who almost gave him a standing ovation. For me the highlight of the talk was hearing about how his 2 pigs cleared a walled garden of perennial weeds. When I get my next field I shall definately try that!
All 3 talks were excellent - the SGS will have to pull the stops out next year to better it.

Anyone for a puppet party

The bunting went up - we got Laura from Party cats to come round and Katie celebrated her 6th birthday making puppets - finger AND hand - with wild wooly hair and googly eyes. Unfortunately my pics are useless but I promised Katie that I would post shots of her (washed out figure on left of 2nd photo) and her friend Helen (with puppet) .

Marketing tulip bulbs

I am in a bit of a quandry about the tulip bulbs I am selling. Last year a number of people asked if I sold bulbs, so this year I ordered extra of my 9 favourite varieties. Part of the problem is that my cut flower season is about to finish - so I will not have the van open in October/November so I do not have the option of my regular weekly customers. I do have a few fairs over the next few weeks so I shall be taking them there.

As I am paranoid about spilling the bulbs in my car and ending up with a mixture, I have decanted some of the bulbs into baskets but packaged most of them as sets of 10 in hessian bags.
This brings me onto my second problem - perception of price. I have a very simple pricing formula for all the non-flower stuff I sell - it usually brings me in under most other sellers - but because I am small there is a perception amongst potential customers that prices may be high. I worry that the hessian bags may increase that perception. In reality a friend ordered the bags for her soap business last year then felt they were too rustic and didn't use them. This year she needed to clear her storage space so I took them off her hands for very little money and they cost me about the same as my paper bags.

It is an interesting one- the bags cost practically nothing - they are practical for me as they stop the spill risk, they are practical for customers as the bulbs can breath and be cool. But will they make me look too chi-chi garden boutiquey?

The bulbs I have are priced as follows
Ballerina - £1.80 for 10; Blue Parrot £3.10 for 10; Gavota £1.80 for 10
Green Wave £3.60 for 10; Mount Tacoma £2.40 for 10; Queen of the Night £2.10 for 10; Rococo £2.10 for 10; Spring Green £2.90 for 10 and White Triumphator £2.30 for 10. All bulbs are size 12 or over - A quick trawl on the web shows much higher prices for them.
Any sugestions would be welcome. If I don 't sell any of course I shall just have to plough up some more ground and sell the flowers next May.

Wedding event

Ages ago I had promised Lorna, of the events company In all Events that I would make up an arrangement for her stall at this weekend's wedding exhibition at Braehead in Glasgow.
The business's colours are lavender and white and I was intending to do something very classic with a candelabra!
Then I began to worry about her having to transport it and the problems of oasis drying out under hot lights. Instead I have gone for a simple tied bunch of lavender coloured asters, pink white and burgundy dahlias, fuschia and trailing silver falls.
The bunch will be perched onto of a tall conical vase filled with dried lavender.
http://www.inallevents.co.uk

Do not read this post if you are Christmas-phobic

It is still horrendous weather here today - one of those days where you can see the rain blowing across the garden - so I have been looking for inside jobs to do in between the necessary flower picking.
I am intending to make some Christmas wreaths this year that are suitable for porches and tenement stairs - not quite dried flowers like the hop and hydrangea wreaths which don't like any dampness - but not fresh wreaths which don't like heat.
I am also wanting to incorporate textiles and trimmings into them. I have bought some wonderful Liberty damasks in red and silver grey which I have bought to make up stockings but thought that they would also look stunning in door wreaths with purply greys and silver.
So I have spent time today harvesting, trimming and bunching up purple sage to dry in the airing cupboard to see if it works. I think that it should as it is a dried herb that keeps looking good in a damp steamy kitchen atmosphere but would be robust enough to keep from year to year if necessary.
Sage is obviously a herb that I shouldn't handle too much - my mouth feels wierd, as though it is slightly burnt and my hands are itchy. I shall have to look out some gloves.
All this Christmas stuff feels ridiculous - I am designing decorations and Euan has begun pantomime rehearsals and we are not even out of September.

Rain - a hurricane on the way?

I was talking to a very nice builder today who may be building our extension if we ever get the money together to mak it a reality. He is working on an extension in Killearn at the moment and kept getting weather updates from a friend of "Heather the Weather" - according to her we are going to get the tail end of a hurricane this week. Brilliant.
The rain and the still warm weather has done a lot of damage to the flowers - the gladioli are worst effected as their petals seem to be very easily spotted by raindrops, and all those tightly packed petals in a bud are very prone to rot. The very large dark dahlias - like Rip City in the photo - also have a tendency to go mushy.
On the other hand the orange Bon Binis, the pink Fuschiana and the dark red Tam Tam are all perfectly rain proof. It is useful to know as I have been lulled by the beautiful summer into forgetting that we live in a very wet part of the world.
The other lesson is - STAKE THE PLANTS PROPERLY - I never do it, I always have the illusion of getting away with it and then a gale comes along and batters branches off the cosmos and flattens the sunflowers. But it is such a boring job

The bulbs are here

This is my absolute favourite time of year - the spring bulbs have arrived and are sitting on a pallet in my drive.
The majority of the boxes are full of tulips - 25 varieties in total - but there are crocus, fritillaries, iris and hyacinths in there as well.
This year I have bought extra bulbs of my favourites so that I can offer them for sale.
These are
Rococo - pictured - an early parrot tulip which is short enough to go in pots and has a scent;
Blue parrot - in reality more purple than blue but good and strong, long lasting in the garden and very weather resistant;
Mount Tacoma - a white double peony flowered tulip, very full, great for vases & pots.
Green wave - a wonderful vigorous parrot in pink and green;
Spring Green - an elegant green and cream viridiflora which is the most perennial tulip I have grown, if you want them to come back year after year this is the one to grow - it was also the one used by Gardener's World last year to track spring;
Queen of the Night - glossy almost black single tulip;
Gavota - elegant pointed tulip is a deep rusty burgundy with a yellow edge:
White triumphator - a white lily tulip which lasts for ages in the garden - it looks wonderful mixed with queen of the night for a black and white border.
Ballerina - an orange lily tulip with a strong scent of freesias.
I buy nice large bulbs - all at least size 12 - rather than the smaller size 10/11s that you get in most garden centres. This gives a larger flower and - more importantly in the Scottish wind and rain - a stronger stem.
I shall have these bulbs at the van this Friday, then at the Scottish Garden Scheme's lecture in Stirling on 26th, and at Rona Cholerton's fair on 29th.
Or give me a call - 01360 660 903. Prices vary depending on the variety - from 18p - 35p a bulb. There are pictures of most of these elsewhere on the blog or at Sarah Raven's Cutting Garden http://www.thecuttinggarden.com

Brownies bunches

It was great fun at Drymen Brownies last Tuesday evening - they all put together beautiful posies for parents and teachers - this photo shows the flowers all wrapped up and waiting to go home.

Party cats

On Tuesday when I was helping the Brownies with their flower arrangements I was told by Aimee of that Zoe's party had been really "cool" and that reminded me that I had meant to post photos and a bit about how great I had found it as a parent.
Zoe's birthday is during the summer holidays when lots of people are away so, rather than having a party with everyone from her class, she tends to have a lively mix of ages and I have always found it a challenge to make sure that everyone is included.
This year we got Laura from Party Cats to do the activity part of the party and it was fantastic. Ages ranged from 4 - 11 and she had them felting covers for soap, making bath bombs and rolling beeswax candles - all of them were able to join in and make things, chosing their own mix of scents and flower petals to make their bath bombs unique. All the products were neatly packed into boxes and put into party bags so that all I had to do was provide the sausages and sandwiches and cut up the cake.
The best thing was that the children were so absorbed in what they were doing that they were really calm and quiet which meant that the adults stayed headache free!
It is Katie's birthday party in a couple of weeks so Laura is coming back to take charge of that - as she has many themes available there is not the problem that you get with many children's party people where they provide a specific thing - magic or disco or clay modelling - and you can really only use them once as you don't want to have the same party over again. Laura is also really good at ensuring that children within the same group of friends all have different parties so that they don't get a surfiet of bathbombs.
At Katie's party where all the children will be 5-6 they are going to make animal finger puppets and listen to animal stories. I can't wait.
Laura can be contacted on 01877 389 126 or luckycats@bigfoot.com.

scented leaf success

I have one regular subscription customer to whom I deliver flowers ready arranged in a vase. She has limited mobility and uses a wheelchair to get about so her house is kept on the warm side and, as she has active children, the vase is placed high on the windowsill in the sunshine. If flowers survive well in her house they will survive anywhere.
This is a photo of the vase that I delivered last week - and I must admit it was a bit of a gamble - I had some long stems of scented leaf geraniums and I thought that they would be lovely to have in the house, the sunshine bringing out the scent of the leaves. I had never used it as a cut flower before so I seared the end in boiling water, crossed my fingers and gave it a go.
Well it is fantastic -the whole vase was still looking good when I went to deliver this week's flowers this morning and I could smell the slightly lemony/herby scent of the leaves when I went into the house. I still have a few pots of the geranium left over at the van and I think that I shall try putting them in the tunnel and see whether they will overwinter and grow large enough to use regularly.

Tricyrtis - can you get it in a different size?

Just as every season seems to have its own colours, they also have their own scale. The garden at the moment is fabulously blousy with eupatorium and cosmos interspersed with gladioli and dahlias - the asters and helenium are about to flower in amongst the fennel. Everything seems to be at least 4 feet tall.
And then there is the toad lily - Tricytis formosana - which grows to about 2 feet tall and has flowers about the size of a 10p piece. It is beautiful - rather orchid like - with recurving flowers, white spotted with purple, even the stamens are spotted. It is also a fantastically long lasting flower - I have had a stem on my mantlepiece for over 2 weeks and there are still 4 or 5 flowers to open. The problem is what do I sell with it? Not that many people buy bunches of a single type of flower unless it is dahlia or tulips and all the foliage that is out at the moment completely dwarfs the delicacy of the toad lily flowers.
The photo shows a bucket of flowers that I have picked to take along to Drymen Brownies this evening - the brownies are all going to try their hand at flower arranging so it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Anyway the toad lily is a great plant to grow around here - it likes water, and richish soil - if you can grow hellebores you can grow these, and they are useful as they flower late August - October when there are no hellebores to look at!

Know your farmer and be happy.

The Food Programme on Radio 4 this afternoon was about how being in contact with where their food comes from makes people measurably happier. They interviewed the academics who are doing the research along with a variety of people who rent apple trees and get to pick the fruit, allotmenteers, and members of a CSA food scheme where people part pay for their meat and veg by doing a bit of weeding or packing. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/foodprogramme.shtml
It is a good idea - but then all the people interviewed had ample leisure time, were increasingly fit due to all that digging and had enough spare cash to pay for all their apples in advance. These things would all help on the road to happiness I think.

Buggy white dahlias

I was giving white dahlias away free today as they had become infested with midgies overnight! Free Scottish dahlias. I don't know why and I don't know why it was just the white ones.
Submerging the flowers underwater until they swim out or drown seemed to work but I just didn't have time.
I found this chilli and garlic bug repellent recipe on the blog http://inmykitchengarden.blogspot.com
and thought that I might give it a try.

"One thing that I have found to work on most garden pests is real easy to make at home, and it may help with deer. I found that mixing 5 cloves of garlic, 4 tablespoons of red pepper flakes, 1/4 cup of dish soap and 2 gallons of water in a garden sprayer work quite well. I use all natural dish soap which is detergent free and organic garlic and red pepper flakes."

Autumn tints

The colours in the garden have changed again - the asters have just begun to bloom and with the dahlias, the felty purple applemint flowers and the cosmos the effect of this week's bouquets is like a rich antique brocade.
This photo was taken of today's delivery bunches in the car boot and ready to go.
Three days and no more deer damage - touch wood

Big critters

I have finally had to admit it . . .something is eating my plants . . .and it is something big.
Over the past 10 days or so I have begun to notice plants shrinking rather than growing - (well I thought it is transplanting in the hot weather, what do you expect?) - lots of stems without flowers - (well, I thought, how untidy, I really must get better at deadheading down to a branch in the stem) and a few decidedly short roses - (even I couldn't think of a suitable excuse for that).
I tried to blame rabbits for a few days- we even bought a humane trap - but today I have had to own up to the fact that WE HAVE DEER.

This is such a big deal because when we moved here I looked at the houses in Aberfoyle with their 12 feet high prison like fences and said "I am NOT having a deer fence", we will find another way. We put up a short fence 4 feet in from our boundary fence to the north - where the deer can be seen - the idea is that they can't jump over the full 4 feet and they can't land in the middle either. We just sort of ignored the rest of the boundaries and crossed our fingers - or more accurately put our fingers in our ears to drown out the sniggering of more experienced farmer neighbours.

I am still walking around saying "I am NOT having a deer fence" - a bit pointlessly as to be honest as we can't AFFORD a deer fence - I have spent the evening neglecting the children and draping netting around the plants which might expire if eaten any more while I think of a more attractive solution.

Neighbours say a gun and a freezer full of venison! I think that the deer are walking along the road and coming in the front gate. They love delphinium, euphorbia and white willowherb.

The glass is in . . . only 63 miscellaneous jobs to go.

The glass is now all in the greenhouse - Euan finished the last panes at the weekend in time for us to have a celebratory meal (Zoe and Katie's special chicken pie) inside it.
I am very excited - it looks even better than I had thought it would - I had worried that the new glass might not look right and that the slight warps would make it too difficult to get the glass in anyway. Euan is worried that there is still a lot to do (painting the putty, putting up the copper gutters, panelling the interior and doing something about the floor) but I am already showing an alarming tendency to move my bouquet making out of the kitchen and into the greenhouse.
Fantastic - today is our 13th wedding anniversary - I made a lucky choice.

Go on - treat yourself

Most of the flowers that I sell at the van on Fridays are bought as gifts - to take to a dinner party or to say thank you. Very few people are buying for their own houses.
This is what I would like to change - I would love more people to buy flowers as an everyday treat for themselves. I'm not talking about large bunches or great expense, just a little something to bring the outside into their home.
One of the problems is that people tend to have large vases - vases bought to put gift bunches in - and filling these every week would be expensive. What is needed is small vases give the effect of a larger arrangement.
I am a great fan of those 1930s ring vases made of pressed glass. This one is an opaque matt glass and I have filled it with fennel and marigold flowers - the flowers would cost less than £1 from my van.
The only downside is that as the ring is quite shallow you have to remember to top it up every couple of days - though this will also have the effect of keeping the water clean and the flowers will last longer.

Blogging about

On Fridays I need to keep vaguely clean so that I can serve any customers who turn up and I tend to spend any spare time on the computer doing invoices, making lists etc.
But then again there is a point when I slide into doing things which are not exactly work, but slightly connected so that I don't feel that I am slacking too much. It is a good job that I don't work in an office or I suspect that I would waste all my time buying enamel jugs on ebay and feeding my amazon addiction problem.
So for past half hour or so I have been browsing through blogs - with cut flowers as a search - usually this just turns up mentions of being given flowers or cutting food on a flower patterned chopping board. Today however I found a really great blog by Amy Stewart - she has written a book about earthworms (now on order with Amazon - see what I mean) and has just finished one on the cut flower industry so her blog has masses on gardening, cut flowers, chickens and worms - almost a precise match for my interests as I would list them in Whos Who. It also has a lot of links which I will follow up when I have time.
The blog is at http://blog.amystewart.com

The dahlia is Cherokee - nice and hardy, fantastic colour, not many flowers at a time.

Gladioli - not just Dame Edna

Last week the flowers that I put in Drymen bank were a dark cerise gladioli caled Plum Tart - pictured on the right.

The women who work in the bank are always very good at passing on feedback to me and said that the flowers had been particularly admired that week and that they had been commented on by a lot of men.

I love gladioli - particularly in dark velvety colours or green - and I have always thought of them as a very female flower. Thinking about it though - at the farmers markets in Partick it did tend to be men who bought gladioli and I suppose that, as a traditional allotment flower, they would have been grown by men for the house.

I have been very disappointed this year as all the black jack gladioli that I ordered have come up peachy pink - the colour that you get in supermarket bunches. It is a mistake at the bulb supplier so there is not much I can do now except ask for a refund. I was looking forward to the black gladioli though.

One variety I am trialling this year is ovation which is described in the catalogue as burntorange but is in reality more of a tangerine colour. It is shown in the picture on the left. It is slightly later than the other gladioli and only just beginning to come out - I think that it will mix well with yellows, lime green and a vibrant blue if I can think of anything blue with enough stature. Or perhaps I shall try it with bronze fennel and rusty coloured rudbeckias.