Lupins 2013

I love lupins! But to be honest, not all of them. Those spindly tall wild lupins with few purple flowers aren't very pretty. But they do have a better side too as their foliage often is superb when compared to garden varieties. They form dense green bushy leaves unlike any of its pretty-bloomed cousins.

There are plenty of different garden varieties. And they almost never come true from seed. That's why most seeds are sold as colour mix seeds. There are dwarf varieties and large varieties. Red, yellow, purple, white and two-tone blooms.

For some reason it's very hard to find the exact colour you'd like to have, so my strategy so far has been to sow lots of seeds, let them all bloom and see what colour they produce. Theoretically I'm supposed to either transplant them according to their colour or just weed those I don't like. But that's just a theory. I just couldn't do it! When I saw them blooming I was so happy with the variety of the colours I just didn't want to interfere with anything by digging them up.

I would prefer having pale pink and pale mauve solid colour blooms. Don't ask me why, because it's just what I once saw somewhere and liked it a lot. But most of my lupins are two-toned. Or even three-toned.

Not even purple lupins are just plain purple. They usually have variety of purplish tones and the more closely you look the prettier they seem.

I have some "plain" pink blooms too. But they all grow scattered apart, and I would need to transplant them to make a nice collection of them. I'm not sure if I'm able to do it next year either. I would have to wait until they bloom and dig them up then. And of course they are of different sizes as well.

I had these red ones year before as well. Some of them died, but after sowing them again, I now have a corner in my garden filled with red lupins. Some are mixed with yellow tones, and some are just of different tones of red. 

2012 I even offered the seeds to my friends. I had one red lupin and it bloomed earlier than any other of my lupins because it was mature when I bought it, while others were sown as seeds. So the seeds should produce red blooms. Last summer I collected some more. So it seems I'm going to have loads of red lupins around...

Poppies 2013

I have so many favourites it's hard to put any of them on the first place on my favourites list. Poppies are definitely one of those.

This one had a fantastic colours of dark red and royal purple mixed.

Summer 2012 was lovely. I had sown some poppy seeds that were supposed to be mauve but they turned out red and gigantic. They were some sort of opium poppies Papaver somniferum, but I would have liked to call them "giganteum". 

These tulip-like poppies from 2012 were 130 cm tall and most of

them were red. An occasional light lilac flower appeared too.

Well. I wasn't able to repeat this trick. Maybe I watered them too much last year, or maybe they were just sown too tightly and didn't have enough space, but the seeds collected from these produced much smaller plants the following year. Furthermore, I scattered some seeds nearby where I live. It was very sandy soil, and when I went to check on them later in the summer, the result was this:

As you can see, all the common weeds are bigger than the poppies. Now I know that they do grow even in less optimal conditions, but even the greatest of plants remain tiny and pale in poor soil. And yes, this is the exactly same cultivar as in the photo above this one. 

Since these weren't actually mauve as promised, I decided to order some for the summer 2013. And these were successful. I had them growing in a very hot and sunny spot in front of  a window, and the colour of the blooms was so sweet! Don't ask me anything about the cultivar though as I can't remember them any more. 

This is the same flower bed as above, but the timing is a bit different. These are another cultivar of opium poppies, but I don't think it had any special name on it. 

I got all my poppy seeds the same way as other; buying from local seed stores, online shops and on eBay. Most seeds ordered form eBay produced something else than ordered, probably because the were collected from private gardens. Having said that, I must also said that most times the result was worth having in the garden, even if it was unexpected. The seeds purchased from seed stored produced blooms alike in the picture of the seed bag.

Full red opium poppy bloom (Papaver somniferum).

This is a random colour variation among red blooms.

This feathered cultivar is 'Flemish Antique'. 

This is a lovely colour variation amongst the red as well.

These are "black" opium poppies.  

'Black Swan' didn't appear black in 2013 either. 

Instead it's red and purple.

'Black peony' didn't appreciate the rain.

I bought these 'Apple blossom' pink California poppy

seeds from the local hardware store.

And these 'double Shirley' corn poppy seeds were bought

from the same place as well. Quality seeds, as you can see.

They make me hungry because they make me think of 

strawberry sorbet!

Sowing Seeds in Winter - Follow-up

If you have read my post about sowing seeds in winter, you might be interested to know, what was the result. Aren't you? ;-)

Well, it has turned out great! Everything sprouted, so I can recommend this method for those seeds that need to rest for a winter or two before sprouting. I had rose seeds, apple and crabapple seeds, various species of magnolias and some more I can't even recall any more, hidden in snow last winter.

Roses and crabapples have sprouted vigorously and have been growing fast too! Here are some of the rose species and cultivars, but unfortunately I have lost the name tags. I later recognised one of them to be a red-leaf rose, and most of them probably are seedlings of Rosa 'Juhannusmorsian' , but I remember sowing various kinds of rose seeds. Since I had no idea what I was growing, I just planted them randomly on the side of the yard. :-P It may be that I will have to dig them up some year if they happen to be some spreading cultivar though. Below you can see Malus purpurea 'Kadetti' seedlings.

Aquilegias 2013

Since I was too busy to write a blog last summer, I probably should have a look back at it and refresh some summer memories. After all that is what we all need, isn't it? :-) At least I do. Now that there's cold and monochromatic outdoors, I really miss the gentle weather and all the vibrant colours of summer!

I wasn't sure where to start, so I just decided to start with one of my lovely favourites, Aquilegias! They have at least two common names like granny's bonnet and columbine. Which one you prefer?

A pale pink Aquilegia, probably from Touchwood Aquilegias.

Some of my columbines are known cultivars, but most of them are not. And I love them! I have bought the seeds from seed shops and hobby gardeners, and I have collected the seeds form the plants I have encountered. I have bought some plants and I have transplanted some from my mother's garden.

All the seeds I have sown have been well labeled, but for some reason those labels have a tendency to disappear. And even if there were labels on the ground by the plants, I can't remember the names any more now that I'm looking at the pictures in the middle of the winter. But quite many of my plants have been sent as seeds by Carrie Thomas. You can find her Aquilegia seed list on Touchwood Aquilegias. She has the most impressive collection of cultivars I have ever seen.

Some of the blooms were injured by insects as they were 

among the first plants to emerge from the ground early in 

summer and there wasn't too much to eat for those nasty little creatures.

Double blossom 'Firewheel'.

Semi-clematis type Aquilegia. Some blossoms look funny like this. 

It hasn't decided whether to be traditional or clematis blossomed.

This one has a clear identity; large simple clematis blossomed.

This could be some sort of alpine columbine.

(At least I remember planting some of those in this

flower bed.)

This one looks like the midnight sun.

These funky twirly blossoms are semi-doubles. 

 Both are spurless double clematis flowered cultivars.

'Black Barlow' on the left  and 'Miss M. I. Huish' on the right,

if I recall it right. Could be vice versa though... Both  of them

seem black purple when you see them outdoors, so I brought

them indoors to have a clear distinction between the colours.

This is an unnamed cultivar that comes true from seeds.

I have collected them form my mother's garden, and I was

the one shoo originally gave her the seeds I had received

in a seed swap some years back. Truly lovely pink.

I'm not sure what is this. Could be Miss M.I. Huish.

Another beautiful shade of purplish pink.

Seeds from eBay - Know What to Expect!

I decided to come back to this subject. As a garden lover, I love to experiment with new plants and cultivars. I'm not one of those highly organised people who make a garden plan (even though I did make a plan as that was required) , buy a fixed amount of plants of certain sizes, plant them and then stick to that.

Nope. What I do is that even if I have a plan, I don't necessarily do everything I planned and in stead I leave blanks to fill them later with anything I find interesting. And believe me, I can find plenty of interesting!

Last winter I did a lot of seed shopping. I bought seeds from local stores, from different web shops (which sell very good quality) and then I also decided to give it a try and buy some from eBay as well.

The variety of sellers is vast on eBay. Some are professionals selling quality seeds and some are hobby gardeners selling their own production, which usually are open pollinated seeds resulting anything but the original cultivar. And then there are some selling what ever they can get their hands on even without knowing what it is and then claiming it to be something else.

Here's one case of the latter:

Just compare the seeds on the left to those on the right. 

"Southern Seeds" changed the name of the eBay store as soon as I sent  reclamation, as I noticed what they were doing as soon as I received the seeds. Because I have been growing pants for years now and I really like to collect the seeds too if I can, I'm already familiar with variety of seeds and I usually know what to expect when I'm buying something.

Papaver somniferum seeds definitely were not what they were called. And that was not the only "mistake".

California poppy seeds I ordered didn't resemble California poppy seeds at all. Actually all the seeds they sent looked like corn poppy seeds. Or some premature poppy seeds that wouldn't be able to sprout at all.

When sending my reclamation, I received a pitiful explanation saying that the seller herself hadn't been able to pack the seeds due to an illness and the family members had done it. And that they didn't know the seeds too well and of course they would send new seeds. Which they didn't do, of course, so I was left with the original purchase.

Well, since I had expected something like this to happen when buying from eBay, I didn't get too bothered. I will continue to buy seeds from those sellers that actually sent what they promised, and not buy anything from those sellers that are selling ambiguous seeds.

"Ambiguous" doesn't mean those people who actually are honest and tell you they are selling seeds from their own garden and there's no guarantee the result will resemble the mother plant, as that is to be expected with openly pollinated seeds. That's just exciting! You never know what kind of a new plant you will get, but at least you will know what species it will be.

I actually scattered the seeds sent by "Southern seeds" to a new flower bed I made last summer, and they turned out to be exactly what I had guessed - simple reddish corn poppies. None of the seeds I ordered were what they had promised.

Scary Cold Winter Silence

I should be ashamed of myself. And I am. I haven't been writing a thing for such a long time. Well, there are changes in life and adjusting to them apparently takes some time. Nothing bad has happened though, it has all been positive.

One of the new things is that I actually went back to school. No, I'm not a drop out, but I have been unemployed and a stay at home mother for quite a long time now, and where I live doesn't really offer too many job opportunities on my own field. So I started studying something else instead. I'm quite busy nowadays.

But WINTER. First it looked like there's not going to be any of that. It kept raining through Christmas and the temperatures were above zero°. And then came January. First it got only mildly colder, threw  some snow (very little though) and then suddenly the temperature dropped to -20 C°.

Today it's -25 C° (apparently that's -13 F°) and there's barely any snow at all! What this mess is that there's no snow to protect all the sensitive plants. :-(

This is a very depressing image of the Rhododendrons I

planted in summer. If this was a "normal" winter, they would be

totally covered in snow and not a leaf would be visible. But as

you can see, there's barely enough snow to cover the ground.

Many of my more "exotic" (anything that grows well in Southern Sweden is considered exotic to me) survived surprisingly well last winter - thanks to the thick snow cover! I was happy to find out in spring that my magnolias were actually alive! And even the one that had dead branches, started to grow new shoots from the ground as the summer went on.

This winter gives me headache! I'm so afraid to see what will be left after winter. Anyone else having the same experience?