Saturday 16 August 2014

Hollyhocks and nasturtiums, crocus and dwarf narcissus.

We went out early this morning to a car boot sale that's usually just the first Saturday of the summer months but I discovered they have an extra one in August. It was more or less a waste of time/diesel because C found nothing and I just got a new tee-shirt for £1 and 3 packets of nasturtium seeds and a packet of salad leaf seeds for 10p each. The nasturtiums will be handy for the containers on my shabby chic ladder next summer and to fill gaps in the big flower border.

We were home again by 9.30 and after a coffee C went off to work for his Leiston customer, he came home at lunchtime with a bag full of Hollyhock seed heads. So they will be sprinkled around the flower border too. The Hollyhocks that I had all went rusty and I pulled them up, but I think someone said they could have been left and would have flowered OK.

A bit later the postman brought a small parcel of bulbs. I had sent for a few cheap plants from one of those catalogues that comes unasked for through the post. The Trailing Pansies came a week ago and some teeny weeny Polyanthus plug plants arrived yesterday. The pansies are also for containers on the ladder over winter and the Polyanthus will be to sell in spring. The crocus are called Cream Beauty and were on offer for £2.99 for 50 bulbs. This will be about the 10th time I've tried to grow crocuses here. Snowdrops and primroses are fine but crocus just vanish. Also in the parcel were 50 dwarf narcissus bulbs which were free with any order.  I shall probably plant them in pots and also sell  them later - that's the plan anyway.

While we were out this morning I wanted to nip into the nearby WHS for a copy of  Home Farmer Magazine. When it first started I subscribed for a few years but now I only buy a copy if we are somewhere with a WHS - nowhere else seems to stock it. I had looked at the contents list on their website and was interested in reading the articles on Dig for Victory and WW2 cookery. I also enjoyed the diary by Dot Tyne who is a VERY self sufficient smallholder now living in Wales. She seems to have more hours in her day than I do!

You know I've been huffing and puffing about everyone else having lots of blackberries whereas here we have none, despite having brambles all round the hedges, well we hope to have solved this annual problem by digging up some runners from a friends cultivated blackberry patch. That was a couple of months ago and they are coming along nicely so that C has put up stakes and wires to train them on.
Next year we WILL have blackberries right here on the smallholding - fingers crossed.




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