2016 Ayrshire Flower Farm Plans

Well the seed orders have all arrived and the new dahlia varieties have been ordered. The overwintered dahlias are about to be potted up.  That is a job that can be done undercover so no excuse, even if it does rain all week!  Although the beautifully sunny weather is making it frosty here this week.

Every year I like to throw in a few new varieties and a few new colours of favourites.  There really is too much choice though and not enough beds to put them in.  How do you stop yourself trying too many?  For example I received an order sheet from a bulb company, just four pages, no pictures and the briefest of descriptions.  I merrily ticked away and ended up with more than £50 of bulbs on my wish list and no thought about where I would put these varieties I was dreaming of filling beds with bountiful blooms.

I sowed sweet peas last week and on my carefully prepared spreadsheet there were 8 varieties so I prepared the necessary pots x8 varieties.  I got out the new sweet pea packets and there were 10.  Checked again, spread sheet says 8.  I swear a gremlin sneaked two more varieties in the online basket when I ordered.  As I sorted the seeds to save a job in the March Madness they were several more anomalies like this (Sorry Sarah, the spreadsheet was meant to be the Master this year).  When you are planting 20m of one variety you can’t just plant an extra 1/5 without running out of space!  Solution – dedicate a small area and plant a small number of each and call it the “pretty patch”.  I will let you know how that plan goes…

Here are some of the new varieties I am looking forward to seeing in bloom this year:

Jomanda dahlia

Jomanda RIMG0830-300x300

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo from Pheasant acre plants

Nimbus was one of the rogue Sweet peas:

SW040

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo from Nicky Nursery

and you can never have enough varieties of cornflower!

polka-dot-cornflower_4

 

 

 

 

 

Photo from Seedaholic

The ultimate sowing spreadsheet for 2016 is complete so please take my name off ALL the gardening catalogues that come through!