Midsummer Madness

This Wednesday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year marking the middle of the summer season here in the UK.

Some naysayers and pessimists now start with comments such as 'it'll soon be Christmas' or 'the nights are drawing in now, it won't be long before the big coats are back out!', when in reality we have months of glorious weather and lovely long days to look forward to yet.

As a gardeners/ flower growers it would be remiss of us to not take advantage of these hot summer days to start growing more plants!

Before I started this journey, I didn't think there was much to do in summer except watch things grow and wait to harvest them, along with watering and weeding, but I was very wrong.

Therefore, I find myself (on my day off work as a florist) on midsummers day, out in the garden by 8.30am ready for action.

I had 2 planting areas that I wanted to cover in weed membrane, in order to plant out my flowers that were still in the greenhouse. The bed that I'd direct sown in to had only germinated 5 cosmos plants in between the multitude of weeds, so that all got hoed over and covered. I wanted to plant out my Cosmos and Achillea plants, with a spacing of 12"/30cm so I used a blow torch, heatproof glove, and a baked bean tin to melt circular holes at these intervals (the hot tin cuts the hole and seals the membrane, eliminating any fraying of the edges!)

Planting out Cosmos

I rather handily found out that my trusty bulb planter was exactly the right size to fit in the hole I had cut out, facilitating easy soil removal and the resulting hole was exactly the right size for the plant to drop straight in to!!! I couldn't have done it better if I'd tried!

I will certainly remember this little trick for future reference.

Midsummer Seed Sowing

This is a thing, apparently. Well known in growing circles as a good day to do a last flush of summer flowering annuals which will keep going until the weather turns in Autumn, and as the day (or somewhere thereabouts) that you sow your biennial flower seeds.

I've got the Higgledy Garden Biennials Bundle, which you can buy here

It has 10 packs of fabulous seeds including Sweet William, Foxgloves, and Wallflowers, which will happily grow for the remainder of the summer then pause (possibly dying back a little) over winter, then race away in spring to give you early flowers next year.

Sow them in seed trays, prick them out when large enough, then either plant them out in the garden in autumn or overwinter in their pots.

Unfortunately, by the time I'd got round to this part it was 1.30pm, I was sweating buckets and ready for my lunch. I didn't quite get going again that day, but over the course of the week I've sown them all, and will share the progress in future blog posts.

It's not too late to sow your biennials for early flowering next year, I'd love to know what you've sown and how it's going - either reply on this post, or come over to the Facebook page and join in there.

Until next time,

With Love,

Sarah

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