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Aquilegia
by ladybracknell
This recent sunny spell has really begun to warm the soil bringing along the Spring flowers and in my garden the daffodils are now beginning to go over, making way for tulips, bluebells and one of my favourite flowers of late Spring, aquilegias which often appear so late in the season that they allow the garden to move seamlessly from ... Spring into Summer.
Aquilegias are one of the most diverse cottage garden plants when it comes to flower shape and colour making it easy to find the perfect variety for just about every garden whatever its aspect or soil type. The bees love them, too, which has to be a good thing given the problems they're currently facing.
Aquilegia vulgaris is a native of Northern Europe and masquerades under so many different names it's hard to choose just one. In Britain, if you aren't into your Latin, they're better known as Columbines or Granny's Bonnets and the latter name is pretty obvious when you view the flowers from the side because they resemble nothing so much as an old fashioned poke bonnet. There are about 70 or more species of aquilegia and the hybrids developed and offered by seed companies are many and varied.
Propagation:
The best way to grow these delightful plants initially is from seed which is easy and if sown early enough, the plants will flower in their first season though probably slightly later than normal. You'll only need to sow the seed once, however, because once they're established, aquilegia will self-seed everywhere. These plants are very promiscuous!
Sow the seed indoors from March onwards and once the seedlings are established, transplant either into larger pots and harden off outside or plant straight into the ground where you want them to flower. The seed can also be sown in the Autumn and over-wintered in a cold frame which will give them a head start the following year.
Appearance:
The foliage shape is similar in all varieties and it's decorative enough to enhance the garden long after the flowers have gone and provide a backdrop to later summer flowers. The leaves are flattened fans and trefoil shaped. They're quite thin and delicate allowing them to blow about in the slightest breeze which gives the whole plant a light and airy appearance with the flowers blooming on taller stems above the leaves. The leaf colour can be almost as varied as the flowers. It's more generally a light to mid-green but some varieties offer a range of greens from almost acid yellow-green to a much darker shade and there are even some with variegation as well.
As for the flowers, the variety is almost infinite. This isn't just confined to flower colour, which ranges from purest white to almost black and all shades in between including bi-coloured varieties, but the hybrid flower shapes on offer are almost as varied. And once your plants start to cross-pollinate, you'll be discovering new shapes and colours every season. If you're more of a plant purist and want to retain your original flower type, you'll have to deadhead your plants to prevent them interbreeding.
Some of the main flower types on offer from seed companies are hybrids of aquilegia canadensis, which is the long-spurred North American variety; aquilegia vulgaris, our native variety; and Nora Barlow, a multi-petalled species which looks totally different from most other plants in this genus. Once allowed to interbreed, however, your garden will be filled with a profusion of plants in all shapes, colours and sizes. Every season will bring you new surprises.
Planting situation:
This can be just about anywhere. These plants do best in a slightly dappled shade as our native variety is a woodland plant but they'll thrive just as well in full sun or even deeper shade and as there's also an alpine species, if you garden high above sea level, there's even a variety for high altitude gardeners. These plants aren't fussy about soil type either and can cope with any ground from stony and sandy right through to heavy clay, making them just about one of the easiest plants around.
Aquilegias can survive quite a bit of drought, too, not that that's been much of a problem for a year or two in this country!
In a good year, the flowering season lasts about four or five weeks.
Pests and Diseases:
Most gardening books list aphids, leaf miners and caterpillars as potential enemies of the aquilegia along with powdery mildew as another possible problem but I've been growing these plants organically for well over thirty years without resorting to any pesticides and my aquilegias have never succumbed to any of these. In fact, other plants in my garden can be infested with aphids and my aquilegias have remained completely untouched.
Summing up:
I may be biased in my opinion of these beautiful cottage garden perennials but I think they enhance any garden. Some people may find the fact that they self-seed so readily something of an issue, especially if you want to keep one particular variety unsullied by cross-pollination but early deadheading can solve that problem. Aquilegias aren't very long lived plants, probably only lasting about five years but when they self-seed themselves so readily, there will always be new plants to follow.
One thing I should mention is that hybrid varieties may not come true from seed and many of them revert to type. When cross-pollinated, the colours can sometimes be pretty boring, largely an indeterminate pink but it's easy enough to pull these up, and amongst the duds will be some lovely and unique variations in just about every colour of the rainbow in single and double flower form.
A packet of aquilegia seeds will cost anywhere from around £1.50 for 100 seeds but as you'll never need to buy another packet, that's quite a bargain.
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Geranium
by Whizz11
We've recently been doing a lot of spring planting in our garden and one of my favourite bedding flowers is the Geranium.They are quite small but very pretty and bring a lot of colour into the garden. I also like the leaves on this plant too so when it is not flowering it still looks really nice in the garden.
According to an ... article I read, "Geranium is a genus of 422 species of flowering annual, biennial, and perennial plants that are commonly known as thecranesbills. They are found throughout the temperate regions of the world and the mountains of the tropics, but mostly in the eastern part of the Mediterranean region. The long, palmately cleft leaves are broadly circular in form. The flowers have five petals and are coloured white, pink, purple or blue, often with distinctive veining. Geraniums will grow in any soil as long as it is not waterlogged. Propagation is by semiripe cuttings in summer, by seed, or by division in autumn or spring."
We bought quite a big box of geraniums a few weeks ago and they were very easy to plant. We bought a box of orange ones called Semi double Okka. On the little information sticker that came with the plant we were told that this was a trailing variety that will produce orange and white bicolored flowers throughout the season. We have a few beds in our garden, some in the sun, some in the shade at different times of the day so these were the perfect place for us to plant these geraniums.
The plants were really easy to plant. I turned over the soil and then watered the area quite well before I planted them. Then I dug a little hole and popped them in, it was as easy as that. Geraniums will grow well and thrive in full sun or partial shade and you need to make sure that the soil is well drained too so obviously don't over water and don't bog them down either. I will make sure to feed them every couple of weeks too just to give them that extra boost they need although I seem to have quite good soil in my garden and my bedding plants always do really well throughout the summer.
I find that these plants flower for quite a ling while and I'm hoping that these ones I have just planted will last all summer. One tip for keeping them flowering is to remove the dead flowers now and again when they die off so that gives the new ones a chance to come through.
A really pretty plant.
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Chili
by Stewwydablue
INTRODUCTION
If you want a bit of heat in your cooking and want an alternative to the measly two or three varieties that are available to buy in supermarkets, then I'd recommend growing your own chillies. There are about two and a half thousand different types of chillies that can be grown, yet for some reason all we are ... offered in the shops are scotch bonnets, jalapenos and generic, long finger like red and green chillies. Why?, when chillies come in all different shapes, sizes and colours?
GROWING CHILLIES
For a better chance of a big crop, start them off as early as you can. Some people plant them in January, but they need special conditions at that time of year like warmth and light which wouldn't necessarily be provided by the average kitchen windowsill. If you've got a heated propagator, this would be ideal, but if not, I would say that the expense of buying one doesn't justify the return. I start mine off in March, and while this prolongs the time it takes them grow, there's a better chance of warmth and light in the autumn months of September and October than there is in the back end of winter at the start of the year, so I find it evens itself out.
Plant each seed in a 3 inch pot about a centimetre deep, and keep the compost warm and moist. Chillies are generally slow to germinate - it could be 3 or 4 weeks before they start to sprout so be patient! When the plants start to grow taller, they can be put into larger pots. These pots can be put outside if we have a spectacular summer, but there is more chance of Slovenia winning the next World Cup than there is of a British summer being hot so it's better to keep them either on a sunny windowsill or in a greenhouse - they need the warmth to grow and don't respond well to our grey, cool and damp British summers as a rule. After about three months, they will start to produce flowers - the chilli fruits appear from these flowers so it's a good idea to allow bees access to them in order to pollinate them and produce even more fruits.
When the flowers appear, give them a good liquid feed that's high in potassium - this will give the plant an extra boost to produce lots of good sized fruits. Liquid seaweed feeds are a good source of potassium. By September onwards, the fruits should be ripe and you can start picking them. The colours will change depending on the ripeness of the chillies - most start off green and darken through different shades of yellows, oranges and reds as they ripen - although you can get some that look almost black, but which are actually just a very deep purple. As the plant (hopefully) gets covered in chillies, it may need staking for support, although I've found that I've rarely had to do this as it's surprising how relatively quickly the trunk thickens up and looks almost like a mini tree.
PESTS AND DISEASES COMMON TO CHILLIES
Grey mould has the potential to affect chillies - it's a fungus which survives well in warm, humid conditions, which are unfortunately the sort of conditions found in greenhouses where chillies are often grown. It can be prevented by snipping off dead or dying leaves, not allowing dropped leaves to pile up on the growing surface, allowing plenty of air to get around the plant and generally keeping the area around your growing plants as clean as possible so that the fungus has nowhere to live. Grey mould is easy to spot - it looks as its name suggests and will eventually kill a plant if left unchecked. Any parts of the plant affected should be removed and burned, or put quickly into your council garden waste bin for disposal.
As chillies are related to tomatoes and potatoes, they can also be affected by the dreaded blight. Blight is a fungus spread in the air, and will settle on the leaves of plants until knocked off onto the soil by rain or watering. At this point, the spores develop and the fungus takes hold - the plant will turn brown and black and will literally look like it is dying - which it will be. Blight can spread very quickly, so if you see any signs then remove the affected plant straight away and burn. As a preventative measure against blight in my garden, I keep all my tomatoes, potatoes and chilli plants away from each other so that if I do get blight, then hopefully it won't take out all three of those different crops.
Slugs will quite happily munch through a young chilli plant, so I try to keep mine inside as long as possible before they go out into the little plastic greenhouse I have. If you are planting yours into a soil border (only do this in summer, and only then if we get a proper summer ie not like the last few years' summers have been) then be sure to keep the area free from things like big leaves on the soil which a slug will take shelter underneath during the day. There are lots of different ways to control slugs - you can go down the Ghandi route and be non violent, simply removing them by hand and putting them into a different part of the garden (or your neighbour's if you don't get on!) or you can go full on Saddam Hussein and try chemical warfare - very satisfying as you go round picking up the corpses of your enemies which will have blue metaldehyde pellets stuck to their slimy bodies. If you do use chemical slug pellets though, please consider other animals / pets which may visit your garden - they can ingest the poison when they eat the dead slugs.
Greenflies have in the past caused me some headaches with chilli plants, but they are easily removed by wiping them off the leaves with soapy water. Don't leave them unchecked as they will eventually kill the plant either by taking all the nutrients or introducing new diseases.
AVAILABLE VARIETIES
There is literally a couple of thousand types to choose from ranging from small round mega hot chillies to large, fat carrot shaped relatively mild chilli fruits. If you are mentally unstable, you could try growing one of the Naga types of chillies - although it would be easier to just set your tongue on fire and have someone punch you in the face. A chilli's heat is measured on the Scoville scale which goes over a million - a mild chilli would score about 10,000. Naga chillies have a rating which would be enough to retire on were that figure a lottery win.
If you're not into spontaneous combustion, I'd recommend something like the Fresno Supreme chilli which starts off green in colour and deepens to a dark red as it ripens. It has a small, chunky carrot shape and the plants produce a lot of the fruits, it's quite a heavy cropper. Seeds can be bought via the South Devon Chilli Farm, a Google search will easily find their website. These chillies only score about 6,000 on the Scoville scale.
For an in-between type chilli, I recommend Apache. These medium heat, easy to grow plants also produce a heavy crop of small-ish, cone shaped red chillies. Suttons Seeds sell a pack of 10 seeds for £2.45 - this might sound expensive but ten plants will give you enough chillies to solve world hunger so I think that's a fair price.
USING CHILLIES
They can be dried very easily and stored in an airtight container for around a year. When the fruits are ripe, I pick them all off, give them a rinse under the tap then pat dry with kitchen roll. I make a little slit down the side of the chilli, then do nothing more than leave them on a paper towel on the kitchen windowsill where they dry out within a few weeks. When fully dried, I crunch them up into flakes and keep in a jam jar, from where they are added to food as and when we cook it. They reconstitute very well when added to water (or a tin of chopped tomatoes in a pan for example).
They can be frozen, although in my experience they lose a little bit of their heat. To stop them clumping together in a freezer bag, freeze them individually first on a tray then they can be added together into a bag.
Another thing to try is making chilli oil. Take a washed chilli, then make pin pricks through the flesh with a sterilised needle. Place this chilli into a bottle of olive oil and it will flavour the oil and give it out heat. I don't like to keep a bottle of this for more than a month, as it will start to rot and go off. While it lasts though, it's fantastic as a salad dressing or for drizzling over food that otherwise would be bland without the heat.
Something I made last year and will be trying again this year is chilli jam - a way of preserving them which goes well with cheese or meat. Recipes for chilli jam are easy to find on the internet - you'll need chillies (how many depends on how much heat you want in there), some sweet peppers to bulk out the jam, and vinegar and sugar. We made more jars of the stuff than we could possibly eat last year, so ended up giving a few away as Christmas presents for family members. They're a good thing to have in the cupboard at Christmas time, as it goes brilliantly with cold cuts of leftover turkey or ham.
NUTRITIONAL VALUE
They are a good source of vitamin C and are also thought to be good for relieving a bunged up nose. They also contain vitamin A which helps boost our immune system.
SUMMARY
Provided you provide them with a warm growing environment, they are fairly easy to grow. Their heat isn't to everybody's taste, but if you don't mind a bit of tongue burn then they are very useful for cooking with. One plant will give most families enough chillies to last a year, which when balanced against the cost of a packet of seeds makes them really good value. Overall, I think they're worth five stars.
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