Sweet Peas - The Sweet Smell of a Mammoth

The sweet peas are coming to an end.
The stems are getting shorter and there is more than a little late infestation of green fly, but they have been magnificent and as they say “owe us nothing".
I have always loved sweet peas. They have been an annual highlight and the first few blooms are always eagerly awaited and their scent inhaled with a pleasure and nostalgia.

Mammoth Mixed

We are the only nursery I know that sells sweet pea plants in individual sweet pea tubes and in individual colours.
Until this year we have always planted the left overs. By that I mean that after we have sold some thousands of sweet peas, the ones left are those that have lost a label, taken a knock or are an unfashionable colour, and so, in they go, supported by a few hazel branches.

This year Donald experimented with a variety bred especially for poly-tunnels and they were planted in an orderly row and wired up. As reported, they have been wonderful.
The variety is called Mammoth - not a pretty name. The plants are vigorous, the stems have been long and straight, the flowers have been huge and have kept coming, but the most wonderful thing has been the wonderful, pleasurable fragrance. The scent of these sweet peas meets you at the door and is a rare pleasure as you cut the blooms.
In water the flowers have lasted almost a week, a long spell for sweet peas , and we have had a big enough crop that we have been sending bunches to market. We will certainly be growing them again next year.

Honeymoon

Mammoth is, as I said, especially bred for indoor, poly tunnel cropping. Outdoors we are still recommending the old Spencer varieties as they are the hardiest and have the best colour range that we know.
My favourites have to be the lovely white Honeymoon, and the deep crimson Winston Churchill.
In addition to the Spencers we grow Old Spice mixed, smaller flowers, with a heady, almost tropical, spicy scent. We also grow a single old variety called Matucana. This has deep purple and red flushed flowers and the most remarkable scent of all.


Winston Churchill

Most folks in the north of the United Kingdom plant their Sweet Pea seed early spring. We often get them in late February/ March ..... but you can plant in autumn on the hope of an early start and early flowers. Always keep your seedlings up and away from mice; they seem to smell them a thousand yards away. Early spring means the day ends with a patrol of many mouse traps.

The seedlings are very hardy and do not need cosseting. However this past spring was so cold in April that it certainly put them back and they were looking very pinched for a while, before they grew away strongly.

Matacuna

Sweet peas love a rich soil and if you are organised enough to know where you will be planting them next year, then this an excellent time to dig a trench and fill it with as much homemade compost and animal manure as you can get your hands on. They will love the rich diet and will reward you with months of undiluted pleasure.

Secrets of the selling beds

BEHIND THE SCENES AT A FAMILY PLANT NURSERY

No. 1 - SECRETS OF THE SELLING BEDS

We run the bathroom tap all winter to ensure the pipes do not freeze, (don't panic, it is our own water source, we are not wasting a drop, but it does still stress out Australian friends when they visit and watch all that precious water gushing endlessly down the drain) so when the day comes when we can turn off the tap and feel with 95% confidence that it will not freeze again that night, why then, it must be about time to begin the season and start to fill up the nursery with the plants that have spent the winter cosy in their poly tunnel homes.

The frosty winter of 2010 hit us hard, very hard, and we lost a lot of great stock plants that had come through many winters before. We have learned from our mistakes, and this last winter we invested in more bubble wrap, fleece and polystyrene insulation to ensure we were doing all we could to protect the plants if the thermometer hit -15 once again.
Thankfully it did not and with a relatively mild winter, the losses were far less.
Another change we made, which turned out to make a marked difference, was simply moving certain plants between poly tunnels to conditions that seemed to suit them more. For example, I took all the Bellis plants from the smaller tunnel, to the larger airier tunnel and they have thrived on it, preferring to have more air flow around them and less of a tight environment.

We have also been lucky to survive without a great deal of mouse damage, and more sadly; with the loss of West in November; there was no vizsla damage either. His horticultural impact was never intentional; it is just inherently tricky to bury a venison bone underneath a tray of crocosmia without there being a few casualties.

So, we walk the stock beds and select what is to be first out into the nursery, then hoist up some trays of plants and take them to the shed; which is marginally warmer and has marginally more chocolate hobnobs than the poly tunnel; and there we do any required weeding, cutting back, removal of old foliage and generally ensuring it is looking its best before sale. Some plants will at this stage get potted up to a larger size to go back to the tunnels for sale later in the season.

A new label is written out by hand for each plant, (yes, by hand, we are still old school, and unless the original seedlings came with some snazzy coloured labels, we still get hand cramp from writing out ‘Persicaria affinis campanulata £3.50’ fifty times) and then I channel my inner Theroux to write up an evocative label to describe the appearance of the plant, explain its growing habits, soil preferences, size etc.

Being eco-conscious, we recycle and reuse many of our pots, labels, trays and other materials necessary for running a nursery, and in this we are ably assisted by Shelia our fabulous employee, who dedicates her own time to collecting and cleaning off plant labels for re-use. (We also have a collection point where customers are encouraged to bring in all the plant pots they have accumulated over the years, we will use what we can and pass on the rest for further recycling.)

After the prettification step, the plants go out onto the nursery selling beds. As the nursery has grown, so to have the number of tables, and we now have a substantial amount which require yearly winter maintenance by means of a scrub down with a wire brush to remove the grime and moss, followed by a fresh layer of special varnish which protects the wood from rotting and prevents moss growth. A very tedious task I'm sure you can appreciate, so one I do my best to delegate.

Now comes an attempt to delve into the psychology of the plant buyer - look into my eyes, you are feeling an irresistible urge to buy 17 meconopsis.

We do not have a bag of tricks like the evil genius's at the supermarkets, and i'm not going to give everything away, but we have been known to watch customers out the corners of our eye to see which routes they take between the tables and which areas are the focal points, or 'hot spots'. Into these spots I position those plants that are looking particularly great, are in full flower, or which are enjoying a season of fashionable popularity.

Next out, some complementary plants - texture, colour, size, planting conditions - all come into play when laying out the table.
Delicate marking displayed at eye level for maximum appreciation, big pots on the ground so they don’t have far to fall on the windy days. Climbers not too close to the trellis or you will never be able to untangle them........

Then a few more mind games - the removal of a couple of pots from each tray, (A full tray is too intimidating), position the descriptive label at a readable angle and job done.

Smoko time?

GUEST POST BY HAMISH DAVIDSON

The Polytunnel Saga

At around 11.30 on New Year's Eve over ten years ago, while I rugging up in preparation for going out first footing on the Abriachan hill, Dad was in the bottom polytunnel tucking in some of the more delicate plants with fleece.

There was a hell of a gale blowing and the wind was roaring down the Loch and through the trees, whipping up the snow and slamming into the house. We have several huge fir trees that grow tight together in the wee Kilianan graveyard that nestles at the bottom of our garden, and they were being whipped back and forth by huge gusts of chilling wind until one huge breath caught one of the firs of guard and snapped the huge trunk sending the whole top half of over 30ft crashing down right on top of the tunnel where Dad stood.

He avoided being squashed like a pancake by only a few feet, the branches tore through the plastic of the tunnel and crushed the metal struts all around him, leaving him unharmed but a little surprised in the remains.

Years on, and the tunnel had been well patched up and repaired, though it was never quite the same again. This year, the hard wearing plastic was once more full of holes, though this time from age and weather more than sudden storm damage. So instead of replacing the plastic once again, Dad has decided to relocate the tunnel up the hill to a fresh sunny spot where he will be able to fill it with plants that require a little more light and warmth.

The trees in the graveyard now have a gaping hole where the tree fell, though as you can see in the lovely photograph above, it still looks rather grand.

So, for the last week, my fabulous Australian boyfriend and Dad have been flattening out a fresh spot, digging the required trenches and then rejigging the whole shebang to fit into the new spot.