BIENNIALS

If you have been busy in March & April, you probably have plenty of annuals either growing in the ground or ready to be planted out. If you don’t, there is still plenty of time, but I am going to add biennials to your to-do list.

Biennials fill in the ‘May gap’ between the end of the tulips and the start of the ‘proper’ summer flower season (yes, roses) and they are worth giving a bit of time and space to, even in this busy month of May.

Usually by May, the soil is warm enough to direct sow (just scrape a drill with the end of a hoe, scatter like pepper over scrambled eggs, cover, water and wait) but the chances are, the places that you will want biennials next year are already full of hardy annuals which will be coming to full glorious abundance this coming summer. The solution is to sow into plugs or pots. However, do not do what I did a few years back, and leave them in a greenhouse over winter. Biennials generally need a bit of a chill to trigger flowering, which they don’t get under cover. I must have been the only person who took three years to get an honesty plant from seed to flower…

My favourite biennials

• Icelandic poppies

• Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ (Black cow parsley)

• Nicotiana

• Foxgloves – I am sowing woolly, chocolate, apricot and strawberry

• Honesty

• Sweet rocket (Hesperis)

• Aquilegia (Technically a short-lived perennial and I do sow seed in January, but they work well as a biennial too)

• Hollyhocks (also technically a short-lived perennial but growing as a biennial minimises rust)

• Teasels

The biennial shop is fully stocked and they have replaced the sweet peas as the seeds on sale. Although you might be able to sneak one more sweet pea sowing under the tape.

Late summer annuals

There is still time for late summer annuals, (hardy, half-hardies & tenders). Which is lucky because I lost my first two cosmos sowings to the ubiquitous slugs:

• Cosmos

• Ammi

• Calendula (Scatter in the vegetable plantings as companions)

• Helichrysum/Strawflowers

• Sunflowers

• Cornflowers

• Briza media & B. maxima

• Phlox, just, if you are prone to late, warm summers where you are

• Weld

• Viola – Tiger Eye for pots, and the native Heart’s ease as a pretty green manure

• Corncockle

• Ox eye daisies