This is the journal of my endeavours to grow a range of fruit, veg and flowers from seed, grow organically, and my attempts to create a personal paradise with 1/2 acre of maintained gardens and 1/2 acre wild meadows. Northern Ireland's average daily high temperatures are 18 °C (64 °F) in July and 6 °C (43 °F) in January. Soil type: Clay

Friday 1 October 2010

Autumn Yellows - Sunflower, Poppy

Northern Ireland 's first day of October was filled with rain and gale force wind... the sun creeping through at intervals. My garden is filled with Autumn colour mostly flowering shades of yellow, orange and red.

Sown from seed, I really like these yellow poppies - fingers crossed they'll self seed around the garden as they're known to do. I help this process along by picking off dried flower heads and scattering the tiny seeds.
Variety: California Poppy.

Also grown from seed, my giant sunflowers are still going strong. One in particular has had a multitude of flowers (pictured above). I'm collecting seed so I won't have to purchase any next year. Some of the flower heads are as big as an adult head so I could supply seeds to half of Ireland (but will supply the birds instead).
Variety: Sunflower Giant Single (Hardy Annual), Mr Fothergill's, 75 seeds, £1.25 per pack.

"Yellow, Yellow" painting with allamanda flowers by my favourite artist Egretta Wells.
http://egrettawells.blogspot.com/

5 comments:

  1. I love Poppies, they make me smile and Sunflowers always cheer me up. Beautiful flowers, thanks for posting!

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  2. I love your poppies and sunflowers, too, and thanks for posting my painting "Yellow, Yellow". Your blog is excellent, as always!

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  3. Hello Kelli and firstly welcome to Blotanical. So good to have a another blog from Northern Ireland listed there.

    Its a wonder those sunflowers are still standing after all the rain there has been with you. They still look great. My neighbour has some with flower heads the size of dinner plates. The only sunflowers in bloom in my garden are the ones the birds sowed themselves...... shows how good a weeder I've been recently.

    Look forward to getting to know you and your blog :)

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  4. Kelli, the picture of the Allamanda flowers is very evocative for me -- years ago when I was in Hong Kong I used to grow these. Don't think they would thrive in the UK though! And your sunflowers are MOST impressive...

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