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Category: Garden Highlights | Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:39 am

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My first Primula auricula is in flower! This is both the first of the season (I have about a dozen more, mostly with buds) and the first I have tried to grow. I bought four last year in the reduced section after they had finished flowering, split them up into single crowns, and overwintered them.


First auricula ( photo / image / picture from OrangeKing's Garden )

I can understand why some people become completely obsessed with this flower; the photograph doesn't do it justice. If you can find an Auricula Theatre near you, I recommend you pay it a visit.
Other items of interest in the greenhouse this spring:
The scarlet-flowered broad beans will soon need to go out into the garden. I start them in the greenhouse to avoid mice, squirrels, cats, etc disturbing them before they get established. And yes, those are toilet roll centres I've used as pots. I plant the entire thing, and the roots simply grow through the damp cardboard. Some are through already! French and runner beans will get the same treatment later.


Broad beans ( photo / image / picture from OrangeKing's Garden )

The peas, a heritage variety called Champion of England, are also up.


C of E Peas ( photo / image / picture from OrangeKing's Garden )

They are growing in folded pieces of old compost plastic sacks, arranged as mini-troughs in a normal sized seed tray. Four of these troughs - that is, the contents of one seed tray - will make a row across my narrow vegetable bed, and again I avoid pests by starting them in the greenhouse. Some people use lengths of plastic guttering for the same thing, but I find a four foot piece of guttering in a six by eight foot greenhouse is a bit unwieldy. The pea plants will slide happily out into a shallow trench in the garden with little or no root disturbance.
Tomatoes (Gardener's Delight and Purple Ukraine) and chillies (Bulgarian Carrot and Rocoto) are all at the seed-leaf stage, and the petunias I bought as plug-plants are growing nicely. They are destined for the hanging baskets soon.


Petunias ( photo / image / picture from OrangeKing's Garden )

These are growing in small pots made out of folded newpaper. We get several free local papers through the letterbox every week, and this is one way of recycling them.

Not all has been great. I lost my first sowing of chillies and celery to tiny slugs, and my physalis has not germinated at all. Overall, though, it's been a good spring so far.



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toni wrote on Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:10 am:

That's a great looking start to this years garden.

I love the different starter pots you used too. Very unique!!!

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