After what seems like one of the longest, greyest and coldest winters we can remember, let us hope that spring and sunshine are not far away.  Even the snowdrops seem to have been deterred by this winter and while they are now in full bloom they are around a month later than usual.  Local gardens which open for their ‘snowdrop season’ and regularly attract thousands of visitors have had to delay their openings this year.

There are plenty of half hardy annual (bedding plant) seeds which can be sown throughout March and into April.  Petunias, marigolds, impatiens, salvias, begonias and nemesias are just a few of these flamboyant summer performers which can be sown in ‘gentle heat’, as the old gardening books used to term it.  That gentle heat can be provided by an electric propagator or just a warm kitchen windowsill.  If you are using a heated propagator, germination can be very rapid indeed, but remove the seedlings from the heat as soon as possible to prevent them becoming stretched or ‘leggy’.  Small pots or trays of compost sown with seeds and placed in a warm, light windowsill give excellent results and the seedlings tend to grow steadily, stockily and strongly.

We have some superb new varieties for you to try this year, all of which have performed well on our Suffolk trial grounds.  We love Antirrhinum Twinny Peach which is one of the first dwarf, double flowered forms of snapdragon.  Its soft, peach-coloured blooms look great in beds or patio containers.  Another brand new stunner is our Petunia Sophistica Lime Bicolour F1.  The large, single, pink flowers are splashed and striped with lime green to create a truly eye-catching display.  The blooms look as though they have been painted by hand.

Dahlias are back in fashion and our six new and exclusive varieties will make sure they stay that way!   When our talent-spotter Tom Stimpson noticed some striking new varieties on the breeder’s trial plots late last summer he had no hesitation in securing exclusive rights to six of them, all of which are the result of a breeding programme which dates back 20 years.  The brand new varieties which Tom ‘signed up’ are now offered for the first time.  “The breeder’s love of these glorious flowers is infectious’ says Tom.  “What started out as a hobby, has become a breeding programme where more than 5000 hybrids are grown out each year, with only the best and most garden-worthy retained for further trials and selections.  Visiting the trial grounds last summer was one of the highlights of my plant hunting year”.

Tom was particularly struck by the flower forms, colours and size of the varieties, backed by the strength of stems and the freedom with which the blooms were produced.  Dahlia Bangkok is a decorative type in tones of rich copper and fiery red, while Cheverny is a lemon yellow, cactus-flowered strain.  Chunghong is a also cactus-flowered, with its rich pink heads forming a spider-like effect.  Dahlias Brenda and Valentina, both ‘decoratives’, are equally eye-catching.  Brenda flowers in shades of warm apricot and orange and pink, while Valentina’s pink suffused with yellow heads appear striped and marbled.  All varieties grow to a height of around 4ft (1.2m) and produce blooms up to 6in (15cm) in diameter.
Customers who order two collections will also receive five plants of Dahlia Château D’Urville completely free of charge.  Again new and exclusive, Château D’Urville is a glorious, rich orange flowered decorative dahlia which grows to 3ft (90cm) with heads up to 6in (15cm) across.  Orders for the new dahlias are being accepted until the end of April 2010 for delivery from early May 2010 onwards.

In the vegetable garden, a word of warning.  While many seed packets will say that parsnip, carrot, beetroot, radish, lettuce, onion and many others can be sown from March onwards, do be guided by the prevailing weather and soil conditions rather than simply by the calendar.  At the moment (early March) our soil is still virtually waterlogged and is very cold.  Seed sown now would simply rot because there is far too much moisture and nowhere near enough air in the soil to allow germination.  It is much wiser to wait till both soil and air temperatures rise, hopefully by the end of March, before making direct sowings of such vegetable seeds.  The resulting young plants will soon make up for any lost time.

Eager kitchen gardeners can, however, make early sowings of tomato, pepper and aubergine seed on that warm kitchen windowsill or heated propagator.  These tender plants need a long growing season and can be brought along gradually before setting out to the greenhouse or garden much later in the spring.

Speaking of tomatoes, we really do urge you to try our new Tomato Cherry Falls. When we began the search for a new top class tomato suitable for growing in containers, we approached Simon Crawford, the breeder of the renowned Red Alert and Tumbler, and asked him to develop a tomato that had the best characteristics of these types.  Simon’s tomatoes always have earliness and flavour bred into them so there was no better place to start.  The result, several years later, is the exclusive introduction of Tomato Cherry Falls, which is offered both as seed and as young plants.

Many different lines and populations were grown out for selection with the help of our trials manager, until Simon was happy that he had just the right breeding line.  The stock seed was then multiplied to produce enough to launch Tomato Cherry Falls.  The resulting determinate plants are ideal for pots, hanging baskets, growing bags or the garden, requiring no staking or side-shooting. They have medium sized cherry fruit with a really good balance of acidity and sweetness.  

While Cherry Falls may crop as early as late June when grown in a greenhouse, it is best grown outside, providing masses of sweet, juicy ‘toms’ right through to the autumn.  In addition to having the excellent flavour we sought, the plants have proved to be very early and productive and, unlike some of the very compact determinate types, they do not run out of steam, so with modest amounts of feeding will produce fruit right through the summer.