A day of rain soon fills the water butts up. Storing 20,000 litres will help the hollyhock collection, and the cosmos in water throughout the Summer months.
Author: Jonathan Sheppard
Adventures in the garden.... plenty of hollyhocks and more than a few cosmos too.
Propagation continues apace
Lots of hollyhocks looking pretty good in the polytunnel. Not long before they can get planted out.
Sowing plenty of spares as suspect in the second year of the collection I will find that some of the varieties may not come back. All a learning experience – and logging what doesn’t will be helpful for future years.
Cosmos Corner getting started
The area where all the Cosmos will go is coming along. Just a few more bins to go in, then labels will go on the hazel rods cut to length. Finally I can then think about starting to sow in a few weeks time.
Getting ready for cosmos sowing
No joke that it was actually too warm in the polytunnel this afternoon.
Slowly getting ready. Compost in, labels in place, ready for the cosmos sowing. This week looks very warm – up to 15 degrees plus during the day by the weekend, which is quite a contrast to the last few days. Will look at the long range forecast which may convince me to bring the cosmos sowing forward a few days 🤔
Hollyhock talk – 26th Feb 20:00
What I have found wonderful is how innovative people have become in terms of using technology to push gardening and what they do to an audience that may not have normally considered it.
Today the snow has kept me inside – but I’ve finally decided to do it. Having gauged the opinions of people a few days ago – and got some quite positive comments I’m pressing the button so to speak.
OK – its not Gardeners World, but I decided to borrow one of their usual time slots – Friday Feb 26th 20:00 to do my Zoom talk on the National Plant Collection of Alceas.
I can’t guarantee there won’t be any mishaps, or that I can answer all the questions you may have about hollyhocks, but I know many of you said you’d definitely be willing to listen (which is hugely humbling).
Grab a brew or something stronger, get the date in the diary – and why not join me.
Do share this with anyone you think might be interested. 👍🏻👍🏻
Visit the talks section of this blog, or use the link below👇🏻
I’m no photographer
…. but these are my photos for entry to the RHS photo competition as I really should fly the flag for hollyhocks.
Sunday Telegraph and those hollyhocks
Nice pice as part of a larger feature on gardening in the Sunday Telegraph today on my hollyhocks.
New sign, new variety to grow
The official sign from Plant Heritage arrived so just got to get that put up outside somewhere. At the same time, Ive just put an order in for a new variety I’m going to grow next year. I already grow a mix of “Spring Celebrities” which are outside the scope of the collection as they are a mix, so it will be great to grow these Spring Celebrity Apricot ones from seed.
December hollyhocks still in flower
Garden News Hollyhock Coverage
