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ON THE GARDEN PATH by Carolyn Herriot
Biennial plants flower and go to seed in their second year, which means that you need to plant them now to get a colourful show for the following spring. Many wonderful spring flowering plants fall into this category, and two characteristics, in particular, make them even more desirable to grow. One is that if you let some go to seed, you’ll get lots of free volunteers the following spring. The second is that they grow well in either full sun or part sun just about anywhere in the garden.
Foxgloves
Foxglove seedlings should be planted out now. Tip: They are best planted in groups of threes. Try Digitalis purpurea (apricot beauty) or D. purpurea (alba) for an elegant show that brightens up shady areas of the garden.
Sweet William
For gardeners who love fragrance, sweet Williams are it! Lovely clusters of blooms will fill any room with their heady perfume. They grow happily in full to part sun and also work well in planters.
Forget-me-nots
Once you introduce this pretty blue flower to the garden, you’ll never forget it, as it’s a prolific self-seeder, which pops up all over the place. It’s particularly happy growing in part sun and moist soils, but grows easily anywhere. If you decide “enough already” just pull it up after flowering, before it sets seed.
Wallflowers
Wallflowers, Cheiranthus spp., sweetly scent the April and May garden, and make wonderful fragrant spring bouquets.
Campanula
Campanula spp. are rampant self seeders with big blasts of blue colour from soft blue to deep blue. They sometimes have white or pink bells too. Bellflowers also make colourful spring bouquets.
Clary sage
Everyone marvels when Salvia sclarea does its thing. This striking, aromatic plant wins admiration with silvery spikes of papery-purple bracts. It’s almost impossible to find this plant at garden centres, so you’ll have to grow it from seed. This plant does not self-seed, so shake a few seeds out before cutting it down, and grow them again next year.
Sweet rocket
Hesperis matronalis has got almost everything going for it. Its big clusters of phlox-like, purple or white scented flowers on three foot plants are a mainstay in early spring borders. Sweet rocket is easy to grow, drought tolerant, grows in part-shade to full sun, has beautiful fragrant cut flowers, and is a rampant self-seeder. What more could a gardener ask for?
Heritage hollyhocks
There’s no plant that typifies English cottage gardens more than hollyhocks. A stately perennial, Althaea rosea makes the finest of background plants in the border. It has the highest powers of attraction when grown as a showpiece against a south facing wall or along a fence, where it relishes the reflected heat. If seeds are sown early in the year, blooms may appear the same year, but normally the hollyhock performs as a biennial in its second year. On the temperate west coast, hollyhocks are often grow as perennials, and they also self-seed readily. Over time, you can expect many spires of splendid colours. The main drawback with hollyhocks is rust. Picking off the lower infected leaves as the plant grows stops the spread of this unsightly problem. Even if it’s necessary to strip off all the leaves, it will not affect flowering.
Luscious lettuces
There should be some room in the garden now for lettuces, as they make great follow-on crops to peas, garlic, favas, and early salad greens. Grow a row of luscious lettuces now to provide scrumptious salads for the rest of the year. Tip: Adding some winter hardy varieties to the selection will provide salads longer into the cold season.
Make a shallow furrow in the soil and thinly sow lettuce seeds directly into it. If the soil is dry, water along the open furrow first.
Rake along the length of the furrow to cover the seed, and use the back of the rake to press the seed into the soil. This ensures better and more even germination.
Water the row with a watering can.
When lettuce seedlings have grown two inches tall, thin them out to nine inches apart.
As soon as hard frosts threaten, cover the lettuce patch with a cloche to prolong the season of harvest.
Strip the tomatoes
At the end of August, all tomatoes need to be encouraged to ripen by removing the top of the plants with their trusses of immature fruit. These will not have time to develop or ripen now, so why leave them on the plant? After topping the plants, strip and remove all the foliage to expose all the tomatoes to the last ripening rays of the summer sun. This may seem drastic, but it doesn’t harm the plant and it does spare you from harvesting loads of green tomatoes.
Carolyn will be doing a book signing at the first Organic Island Festival in Victoria, detail at www.organicislands.ca and on page 18 of this issue of Common Ground.
From A Year on the Garden Path, A 52-Week Organic Gardening Guide by Carolyn Herriot. $29.95. Earthfuture Publications, Victoria, BC. Available from Banyen Books and Duthie Books or
www.earthfuture.com/gardenpath
Carolyn Herriot has been operating The Garden Path Organic Plant Nursery in Victoria since 1989, from which grew her organic seed business, Seeds of Victoria. Carolyn shares her passion for gardening by way of lectures and as a garden writer, and appears weekly on Get Up and Grow and the Go show on Global and CHTV.
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