Jane in a sweetie shop

The bulb catalogues have now all arrived so I have that "sweetie shop" time of choosing what I want for next spring. The problem is avoiding buying everything - I need to get a good spread of colours and flowering times and a mix of established favourites and new varieties.

It is important that I get the order in in the next week or so as otherwise varieties are often out of stock in the quality of bulb I want.

The job is made even more interesting this year as I have offered to provide the flowers for the Think Pink Ball which is at Oran Mor in Glasgow's Byers Road on 25th April 2008.

My favourite amongst the paintings that Christine McArthur did of my flowers last year was of a large bunch of pink tulips - each one a different shape and colour. My aim for the Think Pink flowers is to have spiralled bunches of as many pink varieties of tulips that I can get to flower at that time. I have marked up 25 varieties in my catalogues ranging from the elegant lily flowered "Mariette" to the bouffant peony tulip "Angelique".

As to non pink varieties - well I still have to decide. What is everyone's favourite tulip?

And then they were gone . . .

Because I plant such a wide range of tulips with differing flowering times I usually have flowers for 5-6 weeks.

Last year I did a school fair the equivalent of next weekend and had 12 different varieties blooming and some still to flower in the cutting garden.

This year with the warm sunny weather they have all flowered in one spectacular whoosh! and are now sold out.

The flower in the photograph is Blue parrot, misnamed really as it is much more purple than blue. It is an unusual colour, a bit like that bruised colour that you get in bearded irises (now that doesn't sound attractive at all and it is in reality gorgeous)

The alliums are beginning to flower to take over from the tulips - I just hope that there isn't too much of a gap.

What is it about yellow . . .

I don't really like yellow flowers . . .I don't really plant them . . . so how come, when I went to select flowers for a gift bouquet, I came back with this?

Is it the odes to yellow I have been reading on various blogs? Is it the fabulous sunshiney days? Is it because I am making an effort to become a mellowy yellowy person?

Or can we just claim that this bouquet is orange?

The tulips are - for those who are interested - Texas Gold, a yellow parrot; Dordogne, an apricot with good long stems, Ballerina, orange lily tulip that smells of freesias but has weedy stems which need to be supported in an arrangement like this, and Gavota rust/burgundy with a yellow edge.

They made me feel happy - I hope the person who got the bouquet feels happy too.

Shop - 27th April

We are very tulipy today - a medly of orange tulips, including the lily tulip Ballerina which smells like fresias, tall apricot "dordogne", deep purple "recreado", yellow parrot "texas gold" and the giganitically tall cream "purissima".

There are also baby moon narcissi and some anenomes, late hyacinths and love lies bleeding.

Here is Jasmine sunbathing and waiting for customers to pay her attention.

Tomorrow I shall be at Baldernock Garden Club's annual plant sale in Baldernock Church Hall, Balmore Road 11-1. There is usually a very good plant stall so I am taking my money. here are details of the garden club.

Tulips - how to stop them going bendy

One of the questions I get asked again and again is how to stop tulips going bendy in the vase. So here we go!

The bendiness is caused by 2 different things. A bendy stem is usually caused by an airlock in the stem, preventing the water from going right the way up. A bending over head is usually due to the tulip continuing to grow after it has been cut which along with the increasing weight of the head, leads it to bend over.

To cure the air lock - take your tulips, make sure the stems are bendy and lay them side by side, all heads level, on a piece of brown paper - them roll it into a tight straight parcel and bind it well with string - see photo.

Put the kettle on and pour an inch of boiling water into a mug, cut 1/2 and inch off the bottom of the stems and put them at a slight angle into the mug. You should see an air bubble come out of the bottom of the stem. Put them immediately into a vase of tepid water and wait 2 hours before unwrapping - they should be set in a straight position. This can be done both with tulips just bought and ones that have done that croquet hoop thing in the vase.

If you want to cure the twisting stem of the growing tulip (and I must say I like the elegant writhing of the parrot tulips) you can destroy the growing plate of the flower by repeatedly inserting a needle in and out of the stem, just below the flower. Seemingly people used to be employed just to do this in stately homes. The tendency of tulips to continue growing means that they didn't work well in the very ordered symmetrical arrangements of the C19th as within a couple of days they would be poking out an inch above the rest of the flowers.

Best Day Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We opened for the season this morning at 10.30. We had customers arriving from 9.30, calling in on their way back from vegetable shopping at France Farm. From then until 4 it just didn't stop. I am overwhelmed with people's support. One lovely woman travelled all the way from Broxburn having seen us at the CL Fair.

I was worried as the hot weather (see never satisfied) brought on some of the tulips and all of the fritillaries too fast so the garden looks beautiful but they are too far out to sell. Also deer got in while I was at the Country Living Fair (who did leave that gate open?) and ate over 800 tulip bulbs in one fantastic feast.

From Wednesday I have been prowling the garden. Would there be any flowers to pick? Would there be any customers? Would anyone want what I have.

But Sally and I found that when we looked, there were rather a lot of flowers out there. We filled the buckets with them and then was a rush of making up and wrapping all day. We have NO FLOWERS left and the stall is a mess of snipped stems and stripped leaves.

I am exhausted but very, very happy. Tonight we drink gin!

The photo is of Carneval de Nice - a double tulip, masses of raspberry ripple leaves forming a ball of a flower. It looks great in pots but is very bad at reblooming the next year.

Species tulips

I have never grown species tulips before. I have grown perhaps 100 different varieties of garden tulips but this is the first year that I have fallen prey to the charms of the species.

Part of the remit of our business is to grow things that you just can't get anywhere else. I could go to any flower wholesaler this lunchtime and come back with trays of Muscari armenium (grape hyacinth), Narcissi tete a tete and white, pink and blue hyacinth. So could any florist.

But you can't go anywhere, bar perhaps a specialist nursery, and get pots of flowering species tulips. They are the complete opposite of the lowest common denominator plant.

The tulips in the photograph are Tulipa turkestana about 6 inches tall with up to 7 flowers on a stem. They are not one of the parents of garden tulips as breeders have so far failed to get them to hybridise with other varieties (think of the flowers you could get if you could get an elegant multi headed version of Queen of the Night) but rather grow in the wild on stony slopes in the Mediterranean and central Asia.


I sold almost all my flowers last week but have saved a few for myself and have planted them into an old enamel nursery mug to enjoy in the dining room.

Yesterday Di Overton at Designer's Block did a lovely post about us. She is an even more avid blogger than I am and is putting together a really great archive of inspirational pictures and contacts.

Biting the bullet

It has continued to rain - this morning when I went out to the field my flower beds were still under water - the tulips were still snug in their paper bags in the ambulance.

I decided that I had to do something.

I dug up the two long beds in the tunnel - where we usually grow our early salad - and have crammed in some of the tulips bulbs.

1000 bulbs , 100 each of 10 varieties, are now planted.

I don't normally grow any of my flowers in the tunnel - it is really there for starting off and overwintering seedlings - I am a bit worried that mice might eat the bulbs or that there will be an aphid problem when they flower. Still there doesn't seem to be much of an option.

Very poor crop management!

Now I am off to sort out a list of products for the Country Living Fair - it is creeping up quickly and I have no stock left over from Christmas.

Mud

This is the bed where I am meant to be planting my tulip bulbs.

Obviously that is not going to happen and I am trying not to get histrionic about it.

The tulips are always a problem - 3 years ago we got tulip fire - a fungal disease which attacks the gardens of people who are too greedy when they read through bulb catalogues. It causes twisty leaves and ugly mouldy spots on the petals - not really something you can live with.

This means 2 things - firstly that we plant the tulips into a new piece of ground each year so that there will not be tulip fire spores about - secondly that I pull all bulbs and do not keep them year to year.

When we began laying out the raised beds we began with the level part of the field which has quite light soil and have gradually moved north towards the heavier slopey part. Six weeks of almost constant rain has put these beds under water and if I am to get any of the bulbs into the ground I shall have to plant them elsewhere.

That means that I shall have to plant them where there were tulips last year. This warm wet weather is just the kind that tulip fire loves.

As I say - I am TRYING not to get histrionic about it.