Month: May 2019

And so begins our venture into growing our indoor office garden! 🌿🌶️ We are starting with two Seed Pantry Grow Pods in the office, to grow as we work! 😁

Recently we moved office and we wanted to bring gardening life into the workplace. With one situated on one of our desks and the other on the windowsill.

Right now we have chillies, purple basil, broad leaf thyme and cherry tomatoes growing! Hopefully, soon we will have a range of edibles to add to our lunches! 🍽️

We are also planning to get office flowering plants in soon too! So keep your eyes out for that! 😃

Why not start growing at home or in your office with us too! 🍅

https://www.seedpantry.co.uk/grow-pods/seed-pantry-grow-pod-2.html

 

Seed Pantry Team

Following in the footsteps of Richard (Sharpen Your Spades) and Neil, it is now my turn to finish planting all of my Dahlia flowers! 💐…and you thought we may have been done talking about them!

So I have already planted 3 into containers over the last few weeks, but as I have a shared garden, I wanted to check with the rest of my building that they were OK with me planting things in the shared space.

As you would expect, they all agreed! I have planted them all directly into the ground on the garden borders as the frosts seem to be behind us now! I closely followed the instructions given to me by Neil in our blog, as this is the first time I have ever grown Dahlia flowers.

This has to be the most excited I have been to grow these Mexican flowers, so roll on Summer! 😁

Nick – Rookie Gardener

Seed Pantry Team

In all the excitement of the RHS gardening week, we almost forgot that the beginning of May went by… which means a fresh new selection of food and flowers for the Seed Pantry Grow Club!  This Month we have a beautiful range of Canna Flowers.

Canna flowers or also known as Canna lily (although not actually being a true lily) are stunning plants from the tropics that are related to banana plants! We have four varieties available this month: Canna ‘Black Knight’ has dark foliage and deep red flowers, ‘Pink and Roses’ is beautiful, ‘Verdi’ (AGM) is a tall big plant and will look great in city or rural gardens and large containers,  and ‘Stuttgart’ with striking variegated leaves.

You can see the varieties in this month’s Grow Club with the link below:

https://www.seedpantry.co.uk/grow-club/discovery-box.html

Each plant grows to around 80cm, however, the Canna ‘Verdi’ can grow up to 1.5 metres tall for a real dramatic jungle effect! On top of their beautiful flowers, they are often grown for their magnificent foliage. So much so, that some people even clip the flowers to keep only the exotic leaves!

We thought as these are unusual flowers, We would put together a quick guide on how to plant and care for your own Canna plants! 🌱

1. Now that the colder weather is (hopefully) behind us, you can start planting canna rhizomes outside, mid-May onwards, directly into borders or in containers. It can be very helpful for drainage if mix in a few handfuls of sand/grit to the compost you use.
2. Plant the rhizomes 10-15cm deep and 50cm apart for tall varieties or 30cm apart for the medium size types. Place the rhizomes with the eyes, or growing points, facing up.
3. Position your cannas in full sun for the best foliage colour and the greatest number of blooms. Or people do grow them just for the jungle-like foliage, so semi-shade works.
4. Cover the rhizomes with compost, add a splash of water and that’s it! Wait for the magic to happen.
5. For care, remove old flowers from the plant to keep them producing. Cannas are not full winter hardy, so you should lift and store in late autumn after the first frost or mulch well and leave in the ground in the South of the UK.

And that is everything you need to get you growing beautiful Canna flowers come August! 💐

Seed Pantry