2013 has been a vintage year for seed collecting! The weather conditions have been perfect for producing fat, ripe seeds. By the end of the summer I had an office full of paper sacks of seed heads, I could hardly get in the door, let alone wade my way through to the desk.
It has been all ‘fiddly fingers’ on deck over the past few weeks to help turn this chaos into our first seed collection – twelve packets of fresh seed reflecting some of our favourite 2013 cut flowers.
I have concentrated on easy, productive flowers that can all be direct sown if a greenhouse is not on offer. There are cottage garden favourites like Sunflowers and Sweet Williams,
wild meadow-style flowers like Ammi, Scabious and Cornflowers,
scent from Sweet Peas and Dill,
novelty from pink Gypsophila and Larkspur ‘Blue Cloud’
and lots of white and green from Corncockle, Bupleurum and the amazing Panicum ‘Frosted Explosion’.
Sowing and growing instructions are included on the back of each packet.
With Christmas just around the corner we have one last task – drying off the dahlias for storage. Here are what I call my ‘mother tubers’ (for propagation next Spring) drying off on a heat mat, which my heat seeking whippets are taking full advantage of!
Rachel Siegfried