Blooming flowers

Went out today with my new camera and took some good photos of my flowering chrysanthemums. There are still loads of plants that have not started opening yet.

 Allouise Pink

 Chesapeake

 Dennis Gill

 Hesketh Knight

 Pot Black

Salhouse Dream

Salhouse Dream

It has been a while since my last post, but I have been busy. We have been cutting Allouise Pinks since August, lovely flowers. They are still cutting now.
The Clapham Delights were beautiful, I really liked them. The Max Riley variety was also very good. Dennis Gill is also a lovely flower.
The greenhouse is now full of chrysanthemums and chillie plants, all going well. See the photos.

Allouise Pink

Cassandra Pearl

Hesketh Knight

The greenhouse

Other side

Pot black

Fantasy variety Salhouse Dream

I'll post more often now that we are well into the blooming period

All out at last

25th May, a wonderful warm bright day. I finished potting the remainder of my plants into 9" pots. They are all now outside in the bed we made for them. The ones on the left are the American Beauty variety. All the plants seem to be doing well. 

I spoke to a lady at the Chrysanthemum Direct Nursery on Monday last. She was very helpful and helped me get my head around the disbudding and the debudding to promote further stem production. That is the next thing to go for.

First plants going outside

Yesterday was a very wet day, so I used the time to good effect in the greenhouse. I mixed up some loam, compost, vermiculite and fertiliser to pot on some of my growing chrysanthemums.
The varieties completed were Max Riley, Clapham Delight, White and Cream, American Beauty, Cream and Dennis Gill.
They have all been potted into 9" pots with my special mix.

When the rain eased a bit I put them out into the bed we had made in April.
I am still not sure about the stopping of the chrysanthemums.
Which ones to do and how much to cut off them.
The Allouise Pinks I stopped some weeks ago have branched out as they are supposed to do. The tops I cut off them have also rooted and are growing well.
I will be potting the rest of my plants very soon.

Now that the weather is heating up a bit things are moving on quite nicely.

All potted on

All plants now potted on into 5" pots. all are going well.

Chrysanthemums moving on

Since starting this project things have move on. The weather has been very cold and things have been slow. I have stopped the Allouise Pinks and potted up the prunings. We have built a raised bed to contain the potted Chrysanthemums. Now that temperatures have returned to a more seasonal level things are starting to move on. Looking forward to the next few weeks.

Getting Started

Since I retired I have taken a notion to grow some Chrysanthemums. My father and grandfather before me used to grow chrysanthemums. So Ali and I tried to find a supplier in Northern Ireland, no such luck.

I searched the net and found a supplier in England, Chrysanthemums Direct. "+"Martyn Flint sent us a catalogue in February and between it and their web site we made out our order.

They arrived from Cheshire today, in very good order and very well identified. I spent an hour potting them into 100mm pots and giving them a water. I look forward to the challenge of growing these during the summer. I do hope we get one.

We now have 2 each of the following varieties.

American Beauty White

American Beauty Ivory

American Beauty Cream

American Beauty Yellow

American Beauty Lemon

Delistar Lemon

Allouise Pink

Clapham Delight

Max Riley

Denis Gill

Pot Black

Cassandra Pearl

Hesketh Knight

Mayford perfection Red

Chesapeake

Salhouse Dream

We look forward to seeing the results of this planting today.