by Caroline Broome | Apr 6, 2016 | Flowers, Gardening Posts, Your Stories
At last Spring is finally here! Not wanting to wish my life away, but it’s been a long underwhelming winter. I’ve been sowing seeds since February but now it’s all systems go: As one batch of seedlings needs potting on, it’s time to sow another batch. T&M plug plants have been arriving regularly. This year I decided that I would be well and truly geared up in the greenhouse: 9cm pots washed and stacked by colour (perhaps a little too obsessive?), new plant labels written up in advance with indelible pen (sick of guessing!), propagating lids washed (green algae tends to block out the light!), seed modules matched up with waterproof seed trays.
Ricinus from seed and sown seedlings
In preparation for the onslaught I moved all perennial divisions and bulbs outside into the sheltered gap between greenhouse and shed. The potted tree lilies were being nibbled by mice (ungrateful vermin, quite happy to accept the hospitality and shelter of the greenhouse over winter), now temporarily housed in the auricula theatre. My treasured tender salvias and cannas were allowed to stay inside, along with last summer’s T&M trial Fuchsia ‘Eruption’, which are showing signs of life, and of course sweet peas sown last autumn.
Seedlings in the sunroom
David is a huge chilli fan, so I have grown two each – an heir and a spare – of the following T & M varieties: Prairie Fire, Naga Jalokia, Tabasco, Tropical Heat, Padron and Cayennetta. Guaranteed to blow his socks off. Considering I have only just harvested the last of the 2015 chillies from two plants overwintered in the porch he is pretty much guaranteed to have chillies all year round. He was less than enthusiastic about the four ricinus plants that I have grown from seed, convinced that we will all be poisoned due to their toxicity. So they are growing like triffids in the warmth and sunlight of a high shelf in our sunroom, well out of reach of our seven cats. Eventually I shall plant them out on our roof terrace with grasses and exotics.
At the beginning of April I sowed Cucamelon for the greenhouse and Squash Patty Pan Summer Mix & Courgette de Nice a Fruit Rond for the allotment. We sampled the cucamelon at T&M’s Plant Triallists’ Open Day last summer. They were delicious and I can’t wait to snack on them in the summer.
Fuchsia Berry, Minitunia and Crazytunia plugs have transplanted well from their plugs into 9cm pots. I love receiving Order Despatch Confirmation emails from T&M so I can enjoy the anticipation of next lot’s arrival. Mail ordering in this way has become quite addictive!
Tomato Waterers
I have also been busy filling gaps in the borders. With slugs and snails so fond of fresh young growth I always use my plastic Tomato Auto-waterer collars as protection around newly planted perennials. Although I have never used them for their original purpose I wouldn’t be without them. To give the plants the best start in life I have also sprinkled Incredibloom® fertiliser granules around and am looking forward to reaping the benefits.
Cats in the rubbish and the compost!
And finally….not wishing to be overlooked is my Devon Rex cat Jitterbug who is showing green pawed tendencies. She does love to get involved in the garden!
Cat in the propagator!
Caroline Broome has been gardening for more than 20 years. Having passed the RHS General Certificate, she has since developed her East Finchley garden into a “personal paradise” that she and her husband invite the public to visit each year via the National Garden Scheme. Learn more about our contributor using T&M’s ‘Meet the experts’ page.
by Thompson & Morgan | Nov 9, 2015 | Gardening News, Gardening Posts
We are delighted to announce that Thrive has been chosen as our charity of the year for 2016!
Thrive is the UK’s leading charity using gardening to help bring positivity to the lives of those who have a physical or mental disability. Thrives dedicated staff and volunteers provide much needed support and respite for those that need it most. Gardening as therapy can help individuals accomplish many things that before seemed near most impossible. It can help to regain strength, confidence, and perseverance and can provide a purposeful activity for someone coping with a difficult time in their life.
Case study: Two years ago when Melanie came to Thrive just after her father died, she was, in her own words, a different person. Losing both parents (her mother had died some years before) had left her feeling upset and withdrawn and for Melanie, who has learning and mobility difficulties, it also meant leaving her childhood home in Norfolk to move in with her sister in Berkshire.
At this challenging time, Melanie’s love of gardening brought her to Thrive. She attended the charity’s Growing for Life project which became the starting point towards a new life for her.
“Speaking to people has done me the power of good. Thrive is a wonderful place. If I am ever on a downer, they will listen,” said Melanie.
We were so overwhelmed with the work that Thrive do, we wanted to give something back. We have launched Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ for 2016, with sales going towards Thrive training programs at the charity’s four regional centres and local community venue. Thrives supporters named this Sweet Pea to commemorate the late wife of the founder of Thrive, the late Rev. Dr Geoffrey Udall and we couldn’t have thought of a name better suited.
Thrive chief executive Kathryn Rossiter said: “We would like to thank Thompson & Morgan for choosing Thrive as their Charity of the Year. What a wonderful name for this very pretty sweet pea, and such a fitting tribute. I hope our supporters will buy lots of packets of Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ and we look forward to seeing pictures of the sweet peas in bloom. We will be selling packets of the sweet peas at Thrive via our website and through our various outlets with 100 per cent profits coming back to us. Please do buy as many packets as you can.”
We will be selling Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ in our 2016 seed catalogue and website, with 50 per cent of proceeds from these sales going to the charity.
We would be truly grateful to see Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ growing in your gardens, and we will even be running a competition for you to win a wonderful prize to say thank you. So watch this space!
Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
by Holly Taylor | Oct 1, 2015 | Gardening Posts
There’s nothing more rewarding than growing from seed. That moment where you see the soil surface just breaking with a fresh green shoot is beyond magical! So if you now buy your petunias and geraniums as young plants, I suggest you challenge yourself, and explore the plant world with my list of 10 unusual things to grow from seeds:
The newest salad leaf, which I’m sure will be filling the salad bags in your supermarket very soon. Fresh, crunchy, rocket-style leaves with a spicy after-flavour! But, don’t worry, it isn’t as strong as the real thing! So easy to grow from seed, at any time of year, and ready to eat in just 4-5 weeks from sowing. Grow some on the windowsill, so you can devour some with every meal!
This diminutive little thing has so many different names; from mouse melon to cucamelon to mini watermelon and even Mexican sour gherkin! The vigorous plants are great for screening or patio obelisks, and are decorative in their own. But, take a peek beneath the leaves in midsummer and you’ll spy the little striped fruits, which only reach the size of a large olive and has a cucumber flavour!
Banana (Ensete ventricosum)
If you’re a little bit impatient, then you should to grow a banana! Each plant will put on rapid growth and appears quite lush and exotic. With the right care, plants can product fruit in the UK too! Fun to grow from seed, you’ll feel all tingly from the moment that first over-sized leaf bursts through the soil!
- Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia)
Conversely to the banana, you’ll need a lot of patience for growing a Strelitzia! The journey from germination to flowering can take up to 7 years… Similar in appearance to a banana, but a bit more leathery, the Bird of Paradise makes a talking point in a conservatory and once that iridescent flower appears, you’ll want to invite all your friends round to have a look!
- Meconopsis betonicifolia Hensol Violet
The flower colour of this unique Meconopsis just cannot be described; it is metallic and shimmers purple or blue, depending on which direction you look at it from! A connoisseur’s choice of plant; perfect for damp, shady corners.
- Nasturtium Phoenix Mixed
Imagine a ‘garden-friendly’ Nasturtium and you have ‘Phoenix’! Smaller growth than the usual giant cabbage-like specimens, and the flowers are super decorative, with a serrated appearance, and in the case of yellow- FRAGRANT! Don’t forget, pretty much all parts of Nasturtiums are edible too, so jazz up your summer food plates!
- Carrot Purple Sun
Bump up your antioxidant intake with the only fully purple carrot! Purple Sun is purple right through to the core; in fact, it doesn’t look anything like a carrot! Simple to grow, really fun for kids and imagine what you could make with it; purple julienne carrots, purple carrot cake, and so on…
- Sweet Pea Turquoise Lagoon
Another glorious metallic flower, it’s hard to believe that Turquoise Lagoon is actually a reject from a breeding programme! The delicate flowers are iridescent, with mauve, blue and pink featuring. This is the start of some very different colours for the sweet pea family, so keep your eyes peeled!
Lisianthus nigrescens
Err.. sometimes called the ‘Flower of Death’, this cheerful Lisianthus is actually an amazing seed to be able to get your hands on, as it’s the blackest of any known flower! This plant is just all about the drama; would you believe it’s way more than a metre tall too; think Nicotiana sylvestris, but black!
- Bat Plant (Tacca)
This one has to be seen to be believed! Again, superb, beguiling black flowers and- when you look up close- the blooms do actually resemble a bat as well! Not only that, you’ll love the vinyl-esque shiny foliage too! A nice little challenge to grow from seed!
by Sarah Curtis | Jul 15, 2013 | Sarah's Technical Trials
As we gardeners know, there are many correct ways to do almost everything. However, whether experienced or amateur, we are guilty of carrying on unquestioningly, just because that’s how we’ve always done it. We all get into habits over the years, but it often pays to question why we blindly follow the gardening advice passed down through the generations.
I hope that by reading the reports of my technical trials you will gain some helpful tips and alternative ways of growing some of the exciting varieties we offer at Thompson & Morgan.
Diary One – Sweet pea: the ‘root’ of success
Sweet pea seedlings in the Root Trainer
With the best will in the world, transplanting seedlings can be difficult to carry out in a prudent manner without damaging the delicate root system. How do we know how well our precious seedlings will cope with the unnatural movement from their nursery haven into the final container?
At the trials site I was interested in how the home gardener can overcome this problem. The best solution is to buy pre-germinated sweet pea plugs with a strong tap root. Of course you may pay a premium for such a quality plant, but would the higher price mean in terms of overall plant quality?
The trial was pretty simple and has produced some staggering results to date.
Method
Sweet pea ‘Sweet Dreams’, selected for its outstanding fragrance, exhibition standard blooms and superb growing performance, was sown in a standard 40mm cell tray and again in our Root Trainer plug.
Four weeks after germination plugs were potted on to their final position. Containers with a 36cm diameter and a support structure were used. Five plants of each plug type were planted into two separate pots using a good compost and general fertiliser. The plants were maintained in a sunny position and controlled water and feeding regimes were used to ensure an unbiased trial across the two pots.
Results
Just two weeks after sowing it was clear that the extra space and form of the Root Trainer had resulted in a more vigorous root system. The seedlings were fuller and the roots double the length (plant on left).
All images in this report show a fair comparison of root trainer against standard plug. Both plug formats were sown on the same day and kept in the same environment throughout the trial.
Root comparison – Root Trainer on the left, standard plug on the right
The Root Trainer could be easily opened up for me to check on the development, great for the less patient gardener amongst us! It was clear to see by week 4 that the sweet pea’s natural tap root structure had benefited from the extra leg room of the Root Trainer plug!
Comparison of root lengths
With such overwhelming results, I was keen to get the plants into their final pots and continue to record the height and bloom count as the weeks continued.
11 weeks after germination…
Although both plugs grew away successfully the Root Trainer clearly provided the best start (shown below). The Root Trainer format reigned supremely over the standard plug. An obvious difference in overall habit, with several more stems which held the sweetly scented flowers. The height at week 11 was 110cm, twice the height of the standard 40mm plug.
19th June – standard plug (left), Root Trainer (right)
19th June – standard plug (left), Root Trainer (right)
Bloom count up to 1 July 2013
Sweet pea ‘Sweet Dreams’ – height: 1.8m (6’), spread: 30cm (12”). Supplied cell-raised with an average of 5 sweet pea plants per cell. Pinched and ready for planting straight out.
The results after 11 weeks
Wishing you a bountiful summer, happy gardening!
Sarah is responsible for assessing and trialling over 1500 varieties each year at the Thompson & Morgan trials site. This includes management of the technical area where fertilisers, cultural controls and plant formats are tested for their impact on some of your favourite garden ornamentals and edibles.
by Deborah Catchpole | Nov 19, 2012 | Flowers, Vegetables, Your Stories
Guest blogger Deborah Catchpole writes about her early and formative gardening experiences…
I’m a gardener. There; I’ve said it. It’s not always the first thing that a 28 year old is willing to admit, but for me, it’s something that has come to define who I am – or at least a huge part of who I am. Considering the upbringing that I had, it is perhaps unsurprising that I would have turned out to be a gardener.
Enjoying the gardens at Capel Manor
When we were children, there was never any doubt about where we would find mum or dad at the weekends – they would always be in the garden. This isn’t a complaint – don’t get me wrong, we had plenty of holidays, and they spent huge amounts of time with us, but mum and dad would snatch every spare moment in the garden. During the summer months, when dad would come home from work, they would take a walk around the garden together – she would be showing him the work that she had done in the garden during the day, and they would just spend time enjoying the garden that they had built together. They have about half an acre – some of which is lawn, but most of it is flower beds, with a chunk of very productive vegetable garden. When we were younger there were fruit cages too – it was a marking of the end of summer when we would be called out onto the front lawn to all take a section of the fruit nets for the complicated rolling and tying of the nets, to put into storage for the next year – we worked as a family, as a team.
I have one sister – she’s older than me, and we’ve always been very lucky to get on well. I wonder whether this is down to the luck of the draw, or whether maybe it has to do with the fact that we had to get on, to do the jobs that we were given in the garden. We each had a section of garden which was ours, to do with what we wanted – I remember that mine had a small holly bush in it, and we both had an acer which was ours, and we still refer to them as ours, now that they are huge, and take up a large section of the front border. In addition to our own patches of garden, we also helped mum and dad with the harvesting of the vegetables – they would pick hundreds of peas and beans throughout the summer, and we would sit either in the garden, or in the sitting room, watching neighbours with a saucepan in our laps, or the ancient blue plastic colander and shuck peas – this was a favourite job of mine – eating them as I went – nothing like the taste of freshly picked peas, and chewing the pods too. Beans were a messier job – the initial excitement of the soft velvety interior of the pod, replaced by the black staining on your hands! All of the peas and beans, and then the fruit too, got bagged up and frozen, and we feasted on it throughout the rest of the year. The main point of this time spent, didn’t register in my mind as being important for self-sufficiency, or for the money that it must have saved my parents in providing us with good, nutritious food from our own garden, but more for the time spent together, the memories that we were forging.
My courtyard
Another thing that I particularly remember, was the sowing of seedlings. Not only does my mum always plant hundreds of seeds for plants for their own garden every year, but when we were at primary school, they used to run a plant stall every year at the school fete – so she would borrow neighbours’ greenhouses, and fill our own, and the cold frames to the gunnels with tiny plants which she would sell for charity. All of these seeds had to start from somewhere though, and there were many hours spent by her side in the greenhouses, helping to fill seed trays with compost, or watering in the new seeds, and then weeks later, pricking out the thousands of tiny green seedlings – I never knew what they would turn into, but she knew what they all were – she could tell from the shape of the leaves. I expect much of this time was spent with me chattering away, and her working alongside me, but I like to think I helped a little bit!
Even then, I would never have thought I enjoyed gardening, I would have seen it as time spent with mum and dad. It was only years later when I lived at university when we had a scrubby, rat infested yard in our student house in Liverpool – but we spent a day clearing out the flowerbeds, and planting sunflowers. I realised that there was something hugely satisfying about making something from nothing.
When I moved into my own house, the bug really hit me, I realised that what I enjoyed most about gardening, wasn’t even the finished article, it was the act of gardening itself. Six years on, and I find that every spare moment I have, I want to be out in the garden. The inevitable has happened, I have turned into my parents, I have turned into a gardener, and I couldn’t be happier.
Read Deborah’s blog: theenglishrose.blog.com
I’m a 30 year old, writer, photographer, gardener, and sweetpea obsessive! I did a degree in English Literature at The University of Liverpool, and when I am not writing I’m often found in my garden.
Deborah has also written gardening articles for The Herts Advertiser
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