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...