First post on my hybrids can be found here.

It’s now fifteen weeks, around four months, since my AV hybrid seed was sown.  The picture below shows the first seedling which germinated.  If you look at the leaves at 2/8 o’clock you’ll see they have a distinct serrated edge as compared to the older leaves which are mostly smooth edged.  It’s nice to see this trait in some of the seedlings as I prefer serrated edges to plain by far.  About 1/2 of them show some red colouring on the back of the leaf.  I expect that to go up as they only appear to gain red pigmentation at a certain size / leaf maturity which not all have arrived at yet.

The plantlets are getting bigger nearly every day – as soon as they are separated from the nursery bed into their own cell they seem to take a growth spurt.   Three weeks takes a plant from this size:

to this size:

I was surprised at the rate of growth given how slow ‘leaf babies’ can come on.  As you can see, there’s a wide range in sizes even amongst similarly aged seedlings.  All of the ones in the bottom row were the same size when planted but where the leftmost have filled out their cells, the other three aren’t even close.  It’ll be interesting to see if some are just ‘weaker’ or if they are genuinely going to be smaller plants – their smaller leaf size gives me some hope for the latter.

I was interested in how many would germinate and how long it would take when I first began.  It’d been mentioned that it was worth keeping a tray of seeds for up to or over three months due to the fact AVs have a wide germination window.  Thus, I logged how many plants had germinated per day since the first one.  It’s not too onerous as it allows me to have an excuse to peek at them ;)  At the weekend I made a table of my results so far, condensing the days down to weeks.  It was definitely interesting – I’d expected a bell curve of germination given the very stable germination conditions but it’s a wee bit more complex:

¹

Although the first seedling germinated within two weeks, and there was a good amount of germination for the first month or so, the peak in germination (so far) was after 9/10 weeks!  This really does make keeping your seed trays around longer a must-do if it’s a general trend (can’t rule out that it’s something to do with my growing conditions on this alone).

Even now, at four months, I’m still having a seed germinate most days…

Salad, anyone?

I really wasn’t expecting to see these cheery little flowers yet – I don’t think my dwarf irises showed themselves until late April or May last year because of the horrible spring we had.  This year, however, the weather’s been suspiciously mild. I say suspiciously as I can only believe that the Scottish weather is being nice so that when the almost-inevitable blizzard hits us it’ll feel so much worse!

I took advantage of that good weather, fleeting though it may turn out to be, to do something I’d had in mind for a while.  I knew, when I bought my little plastic greenhouse, that it likely only had a 1-2 year life in it – or at least the cover did and I had begun to wonder what I could do with the frame pieces.  It’s been spending more times on its side than I’d like, lately, so I decided to go ahead and use one of the ideas that had come to mind – to turn it into a flat coldframe.

I took the top curved section off to give me a square frame, removed the shelves and internal middle struts put the cover back on, lined the base with some bubble wrap and thick plastic, with a paving slab to secure everything.  I used cable ties to secure the ends of the cover to the bottom of the frame (leaving the ‘flap’ loose where the zip is) and filled it with some sweet peas covered in fleece.  I’m going to use the top piece, covered in netting or fleece, as a brassica cage, as well as using the shelves for either the same purpose or as a ‘tomato cage’ for my ‘litchi tomatoes’ (a spiny, hardier member of the tomato family which I’m told produces small, tart-sweet fruit).

Hopefully it won’t fly-away from this position!

Other than the iris, there’s not yet much colour in the garden – though there are a tonne of buds:

I was worried that my clematis wouldn’t make it, as I’ve never grown them before, but it seems to have a lot of big, fat buds so I’m looking forward to a show in late spring (I think that’s when this variety flowers!).

Talking of buds:

It’s time for potato chitting!  I felt sorry for the postman when he brought these to the door – he mentioned he was glad to get the box out of his bag.  I don’t know if he’d have been amused if I told him he’d been hauling potatoes around, hehe.  This year’s varieties are ‘Arran Victory’, ‘Kestrel’ and ‘Epicure’ – Kestrel being the only one of the three that I’ve not tried before.  I ordered them from alanromans.com – having seen the man himself give an energetic presentation at the Dundee Food and Flower show (also, JBA, another great seed potato vendor and the one I have usually bought my stock from, didn’t happen to have ‘Arran Victory’ and I had my heart set on them!).

Alongside these potatoes in the postman’s bag was 100 2 & 1/2″ pots.  I’m planning ahead for the seedling glut – something I’ll go into in my next post.

I’ve long suspected that something in my ‘regime’ is a little off for my smaller AVs.  Recently, after some chatting back and forth with various people,  I’ve come to suspect I wasn’t watering them enough – I was too used to my big plants, where I could go a week or even two without watering them and still expect to get good shows.  I’d also been a little worried about over-watering some of my plants as african violets are very susceptible to root rot in wet conditions.

Fortunately, I happened to have 5 plantlets of the same cultivar on hand which were all about the same age and size.  I decided to experiment to see which would grow better under different watering regimes – testing both soil density and watering. I promise the little green one is the same plant – it had mosaic leaves just before this picture was taken but I stripped them all down to ~4 mature leaves each for a more even comparison – I’m not sure if it has sported or just decided to be all green for a little while.

Plants 1 & 2 have 40:60 perlite to compost.
Plants 3 & 4  have 50:50 perlite to compost.

Plants 1 & 3 would be watered every four days (a little lower frequency than suggested as it’s still chilly here so they’re not drying out fast).
Plants 2 & 4 would be watered when I ‘felt’ they were getting dry (my ‘usual’ regime, probably about once every 8 days).

This would test whether a more or less retentive soil would do well under either condition and whether a plant watered more regularly would grow better.  I suspect the soil with less perlite will do better under the lower water conditions and the higher perlite might do better under the higher water volume – though if neither rot then it may well be the one with more compost comes out on top as both are still fairly well drained substrates.

Plant 5 is in a 50:50 mix with a wick. (I didn’t have a sixth plant to try out 40:60 on it)

I’ve had a member of one african violet community tell me that he found that his hand watered plants do better than wick watered ones so I’ll be interested to see if that ends up being true for me.

So far, they are all doing reasonably well with plant 3 (50:50, watered frequently) and plant 4 (50:50, watered less frequently) looking to have grown the most in relation to when they started but it’s only three weeks in, so far, so anything could yet happen.

Hopefully in a couple of months I’ll be able to update on these little plants and see who’s done best in the long term – especially as we’ll be moving into warmer weather and longer days – so their growth won’t be slowed by being on a slightly chilly window!

Post storm, at the beginning of January, my garden looked like this – the greenhouse had been tumbled over to the other side of the garden (amazed that it didn’t end up next door, to be honest), there were still a lot of random veg and ornamentals still growing and bits of debris all over.

I decided it was time to get my garden ready for the year ahead.  I seem to be starting a little earlier each year, though this year I could say that I never stopped – I have mibuna, mustard greens, straggly pak choi and a few larger brassicas of unknown type still scattered around the garden.  There’s also some spring onions, thyme and a few ornamentals which survived what has, so far, been a mild winter.  Unfortunately the mildness of the weather has also meant that weeds are popping their heads up rather early so I’ve been taking advantage any sunny days to get out my hoe.

I’ve also been grabbing the spade (as I have, sadly, no shovel) – making a start on my efforts to double the width of my main veg bed.  I’ve been using a narrow strip since I first cultivated that part of the garden and I want to move to a much wider bed – making use of the part of the garden which, on first look, seemed too shady for much but I have since realised that it would be a great spot for some of the more heat sensitive plants during summer.   It’d also allow me to have a lot more veg in, and given my burgeoning seed collection this is probably a good thing!

As you can see, I’ve added a path behind the graveled area – so I can actually get into the veg from the other side – though I also plan to leave small paths horizontally  to allow for easier access to each section.  I could only get about 3/4 of the gravel up as I only had enough old compost bags to put the overflow in.  Once those have been taken for recycling, I’ll make a start on the rest and hopefully get some chicken manure down to help the soil.  If it’s anything like the rest of the soil was when first dug up it should be pretty nice.

As well as the overwintered greens, I also had some other winter-sown seeds / bulbs in.

The garlic has gotten off to a slow start, though I’m glad it came up at all as I had invested my whole (small) garlic crop last year in replanting.  The broad beans are only barely making it through – they were badly attacked by slugs when they first came up as it was such a warm, damp winter they didn’t give up until well into November!  I’m going to replant more, for a later crop, but I am hoping a few pull through for some earlier plants.

I’ve also sown the first of this year’s seed:

Three types of sweetpeas.  Unfortunately this lot actually ended up on the floor in another high-wind accident with the greenhouse, but I potted up some more afterwards of the same type ;)  I also have some aubergines and hollyhocks indoors… which germinated in two days!  I had expected them to take a good while longer.

The first of many autumn planted bulbs are beginning to show now, too.  The tulips, daffies and crocus are only leafy bundles, as yet, but this wee snowdrop was raring to go!  Hopefully it’ll be joined by others in the coming weeks.

There’s still some green close to hand, though, as I’ve expanded my indoor jungle quite a bit this year!  I think, looking through my photo archives, that there were a few more of my violets ready to flower at this time of year.  However, most of those which did have been re-potted or restarted within the last few months or weeks and likely won’t be giving me a good display for a few more months or so.  One of my violets, ‘Rob’s Shadow Magic’ has decided to peek up and say hello, and my oddly white ‘Jolly Orchid’ is still giving its best but the rest are slumbering away.  There are a few tiny buds on some plants,  but I don’t expect to see much more from them until maybe late January or February.

On the other hand, the little seedling AVs are getting greener by the day – I’m up to 27 seedlings, now, with most of the older ones showing their typically gesneriad single-cotyledon expansion.  I can’t see any variegation for sure, yet, but I think that it will be less obvious on these ones as ‘Mum’ has a more buff variegation to my eye, with a little red, rather than a bright white like some other plants.  I’ve been peeking at them through my loupe, but it’ll be hard to tell until they mature a little.  Hopefully I’ll be reporting soon on some true leaf growth!

This year I also have a small bulb collection on the windowsill to brighten things up – though they’re also only sluggishly awakening.  One hyacinth is showing off spectacularly, with a lovely, gentle scent, and I’m expecting the ‘amaryllis’ (hippeastrum), given to me by a kind folian in promise of some AVs when the weather is warmer, to open any day now.  Lined up are, hopefully, the other hyacinth and a second amaryllis gifted to me by Andy’s mother.  I had to laugh when I opened it, as we’d just given her an almost identical bulb – great minds and all that… It’s a lovely double flowered cultivar called ‘Nymph’ and the bulb is massive.

I also took part in a European seed swap via Folia – I sent seed to Belgium and London and received some from Belgium, & Holland.  There was an interesting mix – quite a few plants I’ve never even tried before – chamomile, wallflowers, tulbaghia, and giant scabious, amongst others  as well as more varieties of amaranthus, to add to the ones I bought earlier in the year.

I also went a wee bit mad when I found out that Chiltern Seeds do gesneriad seed for sale and bought some Streptocarpus cooperi (an annual streptocarpus which produces one huge leaf and flower stalk) and some mixed Episcia hybrids.  I also grabbed some Drosera spathulata (sundew plant) to have a go at.  The sundew is currently in sphagnum in the propagator along with the african violet seedlings.  Once those are a bit bigger and ready to move on I’ll try the others!

 Mac’s Just Jeff (G. McDonald) Semidouble coral red pansy/variable darker fantasy. Mosaic variegated medium green, white and variable pink, plain, scalloped. Miniature .

Pixie Pink (L. Lyon) Single light pink/rose eye. Plain, ovate. Miniature trailer.

My first viable cross, the second one I attempted, was sown on 11/11/11.  African violet seed pods are said to require a maturation time of three to six months,with those ripening prior to four months having low or non-existent germination rates.   Word of mouth, though, I’ve heard that some people have had success with seed pods at around 2 months and given the very variable nature of violets it seems entirely possible that there would be outliers which produced their seed pods and seeds faster.  The plant will let you know when it has matured as the seed pod and stem will begin to shrivel and dry, so there are no real needs for guessing games – they’re ready when they’re ready.  For my particular pod this point was reached after exactly four months.  My failed attempt was removed from the plant at just over two months – it unfortunately rubbed against the marker which I’d put on it to show which plants had been crossed – and although it did have what appeared to be viable seed I could not get them to germinate.  I have a feeling that was a failing on my part, though, as I wasn’t prepared or ready for its arrival and had to cobble things together.

The first of the above pictures shows the seed pod not long after pollination – a few weeks or so, and the second shows them after around three months.  Not all AV seed pods are oblong like these – my first cross gave me a small ball-shaped seed pod (which ultimately came to an early demise!).

I dried this seed pod for ten days and it went from a mostly brown, still plump pod to completely dried and much harder.  I simply left mine in a cool spot with a piece of cotton wool over it to both reduce moisture and stop the tiny pod from falling out of the cup!  The seed pod, once ripe and dried,  can be cut open with a sharp knife or blade.  This is best done on top of a piece of white paper so that you can both see the seeds more easily and to act as a tool with which to sow the seeds.

The seeds themselves are tiny, slightly ovoid or round and a dark brown colour.  They are so small that I feared breathing on them in case I sent them flying across the table.  These seeds require a fine but loose medium in which to be sown, with fair humidity.  They need to be surface sown as they require light to germinate.

A tiny seedling, 8 days after sowing.  This little thing was around 1mm in length – from tiny radicle (seed root) to baby leaves.

 This photo shows four of the seedlings and is about twice life size to give you an idea of just how tiny these are.  They have fully formed little seed leaves on a miniature scale – much smaller than any of the plants I usually grow – even my alpine strawberries, which were minuscule, were bigger than these are.

By this morning’s count I’ve now got nine seedlings, with a few radicles peeking out here and there.  I have been keeping them in a propagator since sowing, but was worried the lack of light where it sits was not sufficient.  Luckily, the garden centre had a deal on one of the exact same type and my seedlings are now sitting under fluorescent lights and at a suitable temperature – I’m hoping this will help them grow more strongly and improve germination rates in our dull winters.

I’m still amazed at getting this far, if I’m honest.  Having managed to pollinate an african violet, bring it to maturity and get the seeds to germinate is a personal achievement.  I am hoping that I manage to get at least one to full size, but even if I don’t I know that, in the future I’ll be building on a stronger understanding of the process.  If all goes well, though, I’ll be able to update on good progress on here in the future!

Snow!  That second picture was taken on the 27th of November last year – almost a week short of a year ago.  Even the first picture shows the heavy frosts we were already getting.  So far I’ve not noticed frost on the ground during the day and even at night we’re rarely dropping to zero degrees.  Things are still green and growing – though I have a lot more junk lying around for ‘future plans’ ;)

I also have a lot more food plants which are actually growing – winter radish, kale, mustard greens; and a few flowers, carnation and cosmos, which are still going for broke – though the cosmos will likely fall over as soon as we get a good hard frost.  I’m holding off on cutting it back until then as its tall stems and feathery foliage still give a nice structure to the garden – acting as a ‘fence’ between the front and back portions.

Since the beginning of September, I’ve been attending one of the RBGE’s short courses – specifically ‘An Introduction to Horticulture’.  It’s been a really enjoyable course -  especially the last lesson, which was centred on soil properties and composition.  We were asked to bring in small soil samples from our gardens to do a pH test on so I brought three samples – one from the ‘oldest’ bed, one from this years newly cultivated bed and one from the newly dug back bed.  To say the results were surprising would be a gross understatement.  I’d suspected the soil at the back wasn’t great quality, and knew it would need a decent injection of organic material to get it off to a good start but I did not suspect quite how bad it was.

The tutor borrowed one of my samples to show us how to use the chemicals and it was whilst I was working on adding the bits and pieces to my second test tube that I heard an amused “what in the world do you grow in this soil?” .  I looked to the front of the classroom to see a red container.  Not just a wee bit red but BRIGHT RED.  The colour wasn’t even on the chart which the tutor passed around – she estimated the pH of my soil to be around 4.5!    pH 5 is considered ‘very acid soil’ and for those who’ve not done chemistry for a while, pH runs on a scale of 0-14 with 0 being the most acid and 14 most alkali (though it can go outwith those values, but for simplicity’s sake…).  It’s a logarithmic scale, meaning that a soil with a pH of four is ten times as acid as one at five – so it’s not even just a ‘wee bit more acid’.

What this means in real terms is that there are very few nutrients available to the plant – many of the nutrients plants use react with other things at lower or higher acidities – which most being available for the use of plants around the neutral range.  It completely explains why my hydrangea was having trouble, even as a plant which can usually handle both fairly acidic or alkaline soils.  I’m not sure, to be honest, how the daffodils planted there have managed to cope, but I can perhaps understand why they didn’t always flower – they probably just couldn’t get the required mineral nutrients for that kind of growth.

Action, then, was needed.  There are several ways to deal with acidic soil – as our tutor went over in class.  The first, and most basic, was to put in acid-loving plants – but this is rather limiting and with my soil even acid loving plants might have issues.  The second is to add organic material – preferably not too much leaf mould as that is fairly acidic, too.  This is slow-acting and I had already begun to do this as it’s my preferred method overall for improving my soil.  The third is to add lime – which will help increase the pH more quickly but need to be reapplied to keep the pH up.  I’ve also decided to go down this route – even if just to ‘sweeten’ the soil a little more, so that it’s not deadly-death to most plants.  I’m hoping that liming it now will help with the spring bulbs and give me a decent soil to plant into come early summer, and, thenceforth, I can plant a wider range of plants and continue to improve the soil to allow it to be a better growing environment.

The other big surprise, for me, was that my ‘good’ veg bed showed as fairly acidic too.  Not nearly on the scale of the back bed, but definitely acid rather than neutral.  This surprises me as I’ve grown a fair bit of veg in there – including some good sized brassicas which I’ve read prefer alkaline soil.  The last ‘surprise’ was at least a good one – the side bed, which I dug at the beginning of this year, has fairly neutral soil which bodes well for next year!  I may try adding a little extra lime to whichever area I decide to grow my brassicas in (which I’ll need to decide soon, to give it enough time to break down) to see if that gives them a boost of some sort.

In other news, this year is mild – I still have sunflowers (above) blooming in November!  My poor broad beans have come up and are growing away like monsters – unless we have a super-mild winter they’re doomed so I’ve planted some more, hoping that this lot will only just peek their heads above ground before harsher weather comes along.

Usually, in the winter, the patio is desolate – stripped of all of the bags of potatoes, gladioli and other sun-loving plants which I grow there.   I have wanted to reclaim some of the land under the patio since we moved on, but was held back by the fact that the patio is actually useful, and a nice place to have a barbecue, however, I decide there was a way to kill two birds with one stone – get more planting space and liven up the patio during the winter – removing some of the slabs around the edge.  This preserves the width of the patio but allows me to plant some shrubs!  If you can’t quite see them, the shrubs in question are buddleja!

I’m a big fan of these hardy bushes which are vigorous, attract insects and have a nice, fairly open, silhouette when not in flower.  These particular ones, too, were grown from seed – I have no idea what colour they are but of the three which I managed to grow to this stage they all have very different leaf colours and shapes and differing bark colours.  They are davidii, but beyond that?  Could be white, magenta or lilac!  I’m also hoping that by planting them in the ground now they’ll make it through the winter better than in pots.  They had already filled their pots with roots so they really should have been repotted sooner, but I’d been slacking a little on getting these new ‘beds’ done.

Behind the half-barrel is another mini-bed – not sure what will go there, yet! In the half-barrel itself is an Acer, which went straight from summer-colour to winter leaflessness.  I’ve heard that it’s common for Acers to drop their leaves all at once but I think this might have been a stress reaction due to being in a too-sunny spot during the summer and also being transplanted a little late.  The branches all have little buds, though, so I’ll look forward to it doing well next year in a shadier spot.  During winter it’s staying where it is, though, as our light levels drop so much that even the sunniest spot in the garden hardly gets much light all day.  The joys of living in the north, eh?

The rest of the garden is also still a little messy – I need to figure out what to do with the pile of decorative slabs!  The sunflowers are still doing pretty well and I’m even managing to grow some ‘small’ green stuff again.  The slugs must be starting to hibernate! Mwuhaha.

‘Dragon’s Tongue’ in the foreground, mibuna way at the back and I have no idea what’s in the middle as I seem to have lost the label – probably ‘Green Wave’ mustard greens.  Next to them is the late daikon I put in – it seems to be doing well and despite being grown outside of the cloche the slugs don’t seem to have looked at it much – guess they don’t like the taste!

This little geranium is still trying hard, despite the cool nights -

Oddly, it’s blooming pink – it was blooming deep red a month or two back!  Maybe the cold, whilst not killing it off, is affecting the colours of the flowers?  Or maybe the nutrients in the soil are less available in the cooler weather.