With extreme temperatures forecast for today and the start of the week, perhaps garden activities should be kept to a minimum. Make sure your pots are watered and do not dry out. Ideally water first thing in the morning and in the evening. Perhaps even take down hanging baskets in sunny spots and carefully put them in shade and water regularly. Make sure your tomatoes in pots do not dry out.
Keep out of the sun if you can and wear a hat and put on sun protection. And drink plenty of water. It is not the ideal day for heavy gardening work or spending lots of time outside watering. Do not underestimate the effects of hit sun and dehydration. Keep safe.
On to the regular weekly post.
As the wonderful display of foxgloves comes to an end it is time to sow more for flowers next year. There are various kinds of foxgloves but the most common and useful are forms of the native Digitalis purpurea. You can buy these in bud or bloom but be aware that they are biennials or short-lived perennials so they usually die after flowering. If you are lucky a plant may produce side shoots at the base after blooming but most will die, after setting seed pods and producing many thousands of tiny seeds.
This is why it is well worth buying and sowing seeds to grow a batch of foxglove seedlings. You can grow dozens, or hundreds, of seedlings of the price of one plant in bloom. You can buy seeds now.
All foxgloves need the same treatment but first a word about what to grow. If you want common foxgloves for a wild area then Digitalis purpurea, in the wild flower section of the seed display, is perfect. The cheapest foxgloves are usually the old ‘Excelsior’ hybrids which come in a range of colours, distinguished, like most garden forms, by having flowers all around the stem unlike on one side like the wild form. ‘Alba’ is one of my favourites with pure white flowers, ideal for lighting up a shady border. ‘Suttons Apricot’ (‘Apricot’) is another favourite in a wonderful pastel shade that looks good with almost any other colour. If you like traditional spotted foxgloves but want something spectacular, ‘Pam’s Choice’ is also my choice. It is a wonderful variety and I sowed some more of these last week. All these are very inexpensive.
Another great choice is Digitalis x mertonensis with dumpy stems of large blooms in crushed strawberry shades.
You can also spend more money on ‘fancy’ hybrids such as the F1 ‘Dalmation’ and F1 ‘Camelot’ colours which produce more compact plants with basal branching and will flower in one year if sown early but you only get a sprinkle of seeds in a packet so I would start with the less expensive kinds first.
You can grow foxgloves in sun or part shade. They will grow in any garden soil providing it is not waterlogged. Most foxgloves will grow to about 1.5m but much depends on the growing conditions and how long they have to get established in autumn. Sowing now is perfect to produce strong, young plants to plant out in September. In autumn they will produce strong rosettes of leaves and will bloom perfectly next May/June.
The key to growing foxgloves is to sow them on the surface of the compost and to not cover them with compost. In the wild, foxglove seed germinates when there is a clearing in the wood. If trees are cut down or a tree falls, masses of foxglove seeds, that have been dormant for years, germinate in the light.
So when you sow your seeds you must let light reach them.
Fill a seed tray or pot with multipurpose compost and water it well. Then sieve fine compost on the surface. When this has soaked up the moisture sow the seeds thinly over this. Put the tray in an unheated propagator. This will keep the seeds on the surface moist. There is no need to provide extra heat at this time of year. Make sure the seeds do not dry out. You should not need to water again for a while but if you do, then water from below – put the seed tray in a tray of water to soak up moisture. Once again – Do not let the seeds on the surface dry out.
The seedlings will be tiny at first. It is usually recommended that seedlings are transplanted into cell trays or small pots when the first leaves emerge from between the two seed leaves but foxgloves are much too small for this. Let them get larger and transplant singly, or in small clumps if they are too small to separate. The plants can be left outside to grow on ready to plant out in autumn. Protect them from slugs.
Foxgloves are not just beautiful, they are among the best flowers to encourage bumblebees in the garden. Bumblebees have a special method of visiting foxgloves, always working up the spikes from the base to the top. Having your own clump will quickly reveal this. It is the perfect example of plant and insect working in harmony and although I won’t go into the details here, you can find out all about it on my blog here.
Foxgloves are easy and beautiful plants that will bring bees to your garden and they are easy to grow. It tales a little longer to grow them from seed but it will allow you to plant them generously around the garden.
Now is also the time to sow lots of other biennials and some perennials like wallflowers, violas, sweet Williams, forget-me-nots, lupins and delphiniums.