- #True autumn vs dark autumn how to
- #True autumn vs dark autumn full
- #True autumn vs dark autumn trial
A second spring sowing of the annuals provides another burst later in the season. We categorise plants using terms like annual and biennial but they sometimes have other ideas: many hardy annuals grow biennially if sown in late-summer or autumn, flowering early next year. Because I’d grown them in labelled rows initially, I recognised the seedlings when they sprung up in unexpected corners. Many of the self-sowers on my allotment started life in straight cut-flower bed lines, breaking ranks themselves the following year. Thinning also breaks the line for a more natural look (nowadays I make the line curved or squiggly to aid this). Sowing seeds in a straight line also allows you to thin the line when plants are established, with six-to-eight leaves, and remove plants to the desired spacing listed on the seed packet. By using rows you can be sure the seeds that come up are the ones you sowed, whereas broadcasting the seed all over the place in the first year leads to the seedling in a weedstack problem. If you’ve never grown a particular self-sower before, the easiest way to start off is to grow some in a pot of peat-free compost or in rows in the soil. Opium poppy, for instance, has a pale green-silver colour and jagged leaves easily identified. Best then, is to get started by getting your eye in: by seeing the plants grow from seed yourself, you’ll spot them more easily in future years. Looking at photos of seedlings online and in books is largely useless because so many look similar and you need to spot tiny differences such as the shape or shade of a tiny leaf.
#True autumn vs dark autumn how to
Among hundreds of tiny seedlings, how to spot which are weeds and which are desirables? Instead, they plant themselves, grow themselves and flower themselves with tremendous ease – not bad for sustainability credentials.Īll we have to do is remove excess numbers at the seedling stage, which is when that feeling of “too much effort” might creep in. No seed trays, no compost, no pots and therefore no potting on. Self-sown plants can make our lives easier, but the key is to grow them direct in the soil with barely any intervention. Borders grow fuller while reducing the use of pots and compost, which in theory should have saved some money, if I hadn’t used the savings to buy more plants… How to spot prized seedlings for your garden
I explained that that was exactly what I wanted to happen – while trying not to draw attention to the far more virile Nigella damascena ‘Green Pod’ between our feet.įamiliar now with seedlings of many plants, I happily leave or move some to fill bare spots while pulling out unwanted numbers with ease.
When its progeny came into flower a passer-by kindly warned me to cut the seed heads off lest they produce hundreds of seedlings. It may not be the deep black I’d hoped for – but I’d steered the poppies down a more appealing path. Ripping all the others out as soon as I saw red (internally and on the petals) to prevent cross-pollination, the pink one had a chance to self-sow true to colour and sure enough this year it largely did pink poppies everywhere. Then, last year one unexpected pink poppy emerged.
#True autumn vs dark autumn trial
I love poppies so much that I sow the seeds in many gardens I’ve designed their flowers complement most plants and are loved by various bee species.įor years I’ve been trying to establish the purple-black ‘Black Single’ on my allotment, where I trial plants, but after five attempts only one black poppy emerged among a sea of gaudy red petals from seeds held naturally in the soil. The plant that convinced me otherwise was the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, with delicate petals in hues of purple, pink and white above glaucous stems and foliage. Better instead to stick with perennials and shrubs that stay put, I thought. Previously I’d felt they’d create more fuss than they are worth, all a little too unpredictable. It’s only in recent years that I’ve come round to the virtues of self-sowing plants and their generosity in multiplying.
If the plants like the conditions, they’ll self-sow in a year’s time, repeating the cycle for ever more. So that's plenty of time if you get started now.
#True autumn vs dark autumn full
You can have an entire garden full of flowers for less than a tenner by sowing seeds of hardy annuals and biennials before the end of September.
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