Allotments 4 All

Want to grow these up the allotment this year... any tips?   :-*

You will have to wait until next year for the flowers, unless you already have the plants. Otherwise slight shade they are edge of woodland plants.

Foxgloves are bienniel so if you grow them from seed they will not flower till next summer. 2010. Seeds can either be scattered where they are to grow or sown in a pot and transplanted to seed trays and on to final positions when large enough. These could be good practice for anyone new to the transplanting business.

   Just a reminder, I won't grow them as they are poisonous  --  have grand children

   and anyway --  OH may get ideas !     :o

   floss xxx

You could always buy a few plants from the local GC that will flower (and seed) this year. After that you will have free Foxgloxes forever.

Don't bother buying the fancy unusual colours, as the seed will revert back to the natural purple colour, with the occasional white one.

I sowed some last spring. They are slow developers, and by September were hardly bigger than a primrose. They are now as big as a medium sized lettuce head.................can't wait to see what happens soon!

I have them in my garden, the children know better than to play with plants but we have had that discussion here before.  Once you are lucky enough to have them, you should have them forever more as each tall head produces thousands of seeds which you can either leave to mother nature to scatter, or once the heads are dry and rattle, cut them down and sprinkle the pepper pot of seeds around.  I have Digitalis Lutea in my front garden, lovely tall spikes with tiny yellow/brown flowers, so delicate and up close the flowers are like orchids.  I have the woodland fave in my backgarden and it springs up everywhere and is a joy as the bees and other buzzy critters love it.  It tends to do well in my garden as it is a woodland garden with lots of shade.

Aaaarrggghhhh... can't wait till next year for flowers, was just gonna grow them for a laugh in a bed I've got spare this year...   :(

We had some once, they seeded themselves everywhere.
Be sure to remove the old flower heads early enough if you don't want them all over the place.

I went to B&Q today, and as well as picking up loads of packs of primroses for the garden (6 for 10p!!) I noticed that they had a few multpacks of foxgloves reduced. I think they were £2 for 4 or 6. If you really want them this year may be worth looking in the garden centres.

I always used to have strawberry crush , luter, apricot and flashing spires. I noticed that one of the flashing spires  threw a sport with variagated leaves. So I banished all the others from the garden to stop any cross polination and just concentrated on the flashing spires hoping to make a fortune with a new variety. Trouble is I cannot get them to stay variagated for more than 3 years before they all  revert. So now I shall go back to all varieties, and just sell the variagated at shows as one off sports.

Lovely Ace....will you be flogging any at Chelsea??

I wish! I usually just sell them at local shows as all the plants we take to the RHS major shows have to have a plant passport. Mainly to show that they were ethically sourced, grown in a certified nursery, these are from my garden, not my nursery and we can be subject to a snap inspection. Also no pots to be reused and composts to be peat free and all the social responsibilities that go with gardening. Just imagine a deseased plant laying spores on a couple of million gardeners and getting spread all over the country.

Now you can realise why  the prices at these shows seem over the top, just think how much it costs to grow compared with the inferier plants you can get elsewhere.

Or, to put it the other way round, Ace, how do the garden centres have the cheek to charge what they do for the plants they sell without (presumably) all those safeguards?!

To b e fair, some of them do try, but the temptation of a containerload of plugs straight off the ship is so cheap, all they need is a quick re-label. Some of the really upmarket nurseries sell to people with more money than sense, so some of the lesser ones jump on the bandwagon. But what is expensive to you, might be cheap to me. Knowing the oncosts of some of these plants and the amount of time they have to grow them to a presentable size helps me make up my mind. I have paid over £100 for a plant(quick look over shoulder, else she would go mad.) and I know I got a bargain.

Before you ask, it was a Wollemi pine.