“Carnations and Pinks for Garden and Greenhouse” by John and Eileen Galbally
This I bought after it was recommended by Brian Yates in his excellent Pinks Blog on the BNCS Website – thank you for that Brian it’s well read and thank you Eileen for helping to write it. It’s a shame that some of the varieties aren’t around now ... or maybe they are (plug for the Heritage scheme)
And the other one I got from a local Charity shop for £2-50 ( a tad more than the original 18/6d !!) but equally useful and that is
“Growing perpetual flowering Carnations” by Steven Bailey.
So armed with these and the others mentioned in the 1st part I worked out my plan of action ... or rather inactions due to the weather. I can’t remember when we had Snow, Frost, Fog and rain like this year. Anyway I have my two offspring well trained and they get me Gardening vouchers for birthdays and Christmas so rather than mix my own composts I usually buy it in. I don’t have the time to mix it and upto now the quantities are small any way. Also the last couple of years rather than the 5” or 6” of annual rainfall I normally get here in the Highlands of Warwickshire ( well 550ft asl is a mountain round here!) so I thought that I would use a similar mix to my Late Chrysanths as it is fairly open this is roughly
4 parts JI No.3, 4pts Miracle grow Multipurpose and 1 part Perlite and a dusting of calcified seaweed - maybe it’s not what you all use but I thought I’d start from here. Also I seem to get better results from Clay pots than Plastic so I dug out some of the spare’s and planted 3 plants in an 8” or 9” pot any odds left to be planted in 2 to a 3ltr plastic or singly in a 6” clay so we’ll see what gives the best results. This also helped out as I probably won’t have the spare room later on in the year so the 3 to a pot seemed the obvious course.
So what varieties am I trying to kill? Well, I’ll tell you.
Borders - 27 plants
Anne S Moore, Flanders, Hannah Louise, Irene Delatorre, Lord Nuffield, Pink Nuffield,Spinfield Grey, Spinfield Joy, Tamsin Fifield.
Cromptons Classic, Cromptons Princess, Cromptons Bride, Summer Bride, Clara, Clara's lass, Betty's delight, Linfield Annie's fancy, Joannes Highlight.
Pinks – 6 plants
Linfield Dorothy Perry, Oakwood Erin Mitchel, Anders Dora bryan, Anders serene, Anders Gemma, Magenta Gem.
Added to this I have some replacement cuttings of some of the older plants I grow Carmine Letitia Wyatt, Laced Monarch and Claret Joy to adorn the Garden.
Pinks still waiting to be potted up
Borders brought in out of the cold ... frame
a couple seemed to have suffered
As you can see a fair mix so hopefully I should get something all being well. The only thing to do now is sort out the bottom of the garden so I have somewhere to stand them till flowering time ... But that’s another story.
2 comments:
Hi, thanks for the kind comments on my blog, yep I am quite old fashioned in my tastes. Have you had a look at Malmaison Carnations? I met Jim Marshall who grows them in the NPCCG tent at Hampton Court Flower Show last year, and immediately fell in love. They are ancient and very fragrant varieties, that you might like too. Thought you would be interested to know about them anyway.
Zoë
I inherited pinks from my Great Aunt. Every year or so I have to pull up the plants and propagate. As I speak I still have pipings to pot up! I have found some great gardening books in charity shops over the years.
Post a Comment