Six on Saturday – 21/2/2026

I had it on my to do list to sow some tomato seeds today and somehow or other it didn’t happen. I took some pictures in the drizzle this morning, then it brightened up so I chose to go out and take them again. What else did I do? Where did the day go? Now it’s Friday evening and I don’t seem to have achieved anything much all day.
I have the pictures though, enough in fact for two sixes, so I’m going to have to winnow them down by 50%. It’s not that the garden has suddenly come to life, but the slow build-up continues in spite of the rain and slugs.

One.
Narcissus pseudonarcissus, wild daffodil. I’ve bemoaned my inability to grow daffodils in our ground before; this being the one exception. Not that it has done more than tick over in roughly the same numbers as when I first planted it years ago. It seems to move about, presumably producing seedlings that only suffice to replace older bulbs that disappear. I just wish I knew what was killing them.

Two.
Cardamine quinquefolia is new to me in that I was given it last year, planted it in the autumn and have it flowering for the first time. It looks like it may be a spreader but it’s also summer dormant so will other things sharing its space later on and seems unlikely to become invasive. It may come to replace Anemone nemorosa, all of my plants of which are infected by some malaise.

Three.
My veg gardening is ticking over, I’ve sown seeds of a few things and planted out a couple of salad crops in my tunnel. My seed potatoes are chitting in the greenhouse. In a bit of a departure for me, I’ve kept some of last season’s crop to use as seed, in defiance of the voice in my head that’s saying I should be buying certified seed free of whatever they need to be free of. I’m keeping the ‘free’ bit, ditching the ‘of’. These are ‘Kestrel’ and ‘Java’.

Four.
Hellebores are for me somewhat like daffodils. They never seem to really thrive and slowly die out to be replaced by seedlings. Periodically I see something I fancy in a garden centre that isn’t too silly a price, which is what this is. I collected seed from this and grew some plants, none of which were as good as the parent.

Five.
It’s not entirely true to say you never know what you’re going to get when you sow seeds. F1 hybrids are highly predictable, one of the key reasons they’re so popular with commercial growers. For me there is nothing to compare with seeing a new plant flower for the first time from seed. I have a batch of Clivia miniata seedlings, sown in March 2021 and supplied by Hoyland Nursery, who hold a national collection. I’ve spotted a couple with flowers on the way, hopefully there will be more and that some will be outstanding. I have a camellia seedling flowering in the glasshouse too and as nice as it is, it’s a disappointment; I’d hoped for more. Sadly, with Camellias that’s almost always the case, who needs yet another undistinguished single pink?

Six.
Trachystemon orientalis is a great plant for really tricky places like right under Camellias but it is quite a spreader and also seems to have self sown in a couple of places far from the parent plant. It does its thing, in the flowering sense, very early in the year, so it is seen by very few save me.

I was told yesterday that our local weather station, Cardinham, had recorded rain on 50 successive days but not to get excited as its record was 73 days. Our nearest big reservoir is nevertheless still only at 86%, though all of the rest in South West Water’s list are full. Someone must have thought that putting a reservoir on the top of a hill was a good idea. There’s an abundance of rainfall but the whole catchment can only be a few multiples of the surface area of the reservoir. It gives us Brits something to obsess about I suppose.

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