Thursday, May 04, 2006

Where did April go?

There is only have 10 weeks until our wedding and still so much to do, and flowers to grow- let alone start up an allotment!
Panic over, during my two-week break from work and the computer, I have been able to make some headway:
I planted up these trailing sweet peas to use at the wedding, but all the plants have now died! Lucky I have more pouches and spare plants






In the garden I’ve planted out a total of 52 climbing sweet pea plants for my bouquet and the bridesmaids, along with about 20 gypsophila plants that are already in bud! (Too early!)


















We’ve eaten all the rhubarb



Down on the plot I’ve weeded & mulched the raspberries and started to build a compost bin from free pallets.

3 comments:

lilymarlene said...

I expect you've already done this, but I'd pick off all the buds until about three weeks before the wedding. And I'd also start some new seeds of both the sweet peas and the gypsophyllia 8 weeks before just to be sure!

I love country style weddings....so much more romantic than the full blown regal style ones.

She Who Digs said...

Thanks for the tips! I will definately give it a go. I have some more gypsophilia in the green house that were planted in February and are about three inches high, but have some seed left so will do what you suggest. Will it really only take 8 weeks for them to be ready to flower? As you can probably tell, I'm rather nervous about it all! SWD

lilymarlene said...

As you seem to have plenty of room you could try some at twelve weeks before, and some at eight weeks before. It is very difficult to predict when annuals will bloom given our weather etc, and so the only way to be sure is to succession plant, and to ruthlessly pick off all flowers until about a month before. This is particularly important with the sweet peas. It is also a good idea to pick off a bit of leaf with the s peas as this will encourage them to fork and produce more flowers.

Actually it is years since I grew gypsophyllia....so I'd do succession planting with them just to be sure. I've forgotten exactly how long it is from seed to cutting flowers, and I've just spent ages on google looking for a chart of some sort....no luck. However you should be ok if you assiduously cut off the flowers until about a month before.