Mini-Daffs & Tulips in pots on the balcony railings

Mini-Daffs & Tulips in pots on the balcony railings

I planted some Mini-Daffs & Tulips in pots on the balcony railings in mid-October after removing the Begonias that had grown in them all summer a few days before.

I had bought some packets of small Narcissi bulbs & dwarf Tulips precisely to put in these :

but I also put some in the troughs on the bar that goes around the middle of the balcony railings.

As I have 3 troughs I planted them all exactly the same so I’ve added photos of all 3 troughs showing how I put short stemmed Tulips, mini-Daffs &, finally, Crocuses on top but only one of each trough:

I have planted up the 8 clay pots I have, 2 of them new, as well as 2 plastic pots & have put them in the aluminium rings I bought & used many years ago in Spain when we used to live over there:

At the present moment I don’t have any Pansies or Violas to overplant them with as I do every year. I hope to get some soon from the open air market in town.

Other years I’ve bought them there & they have done pretty well though I’ve had little success with them for the last few years. Several years they were infested with a heavy plague of tiny, itsy bitsy grey-white aphids that cover every green surface & suck the life out of the plants.

I mentioned this last year to the lady on the stall, when I was buying last year’s plants, & she assured me it wouldn’t happen again this year as all their plants are treated with a systematic insecticide before leaving the greenhouse.

In effect they didn’t become infested but they died mysteriously in the spring before they had chance to flower but I’ve absolutely have no idea of the cause! They just collapsed as if their roots had been eaten away or they had rotted away. On removing them I broke open the rootballs but they weren’t rotting nor did I find any sign of anything eating their roots, the rootballs were chock a block of roots. The only symptom I noticed was that they collapsed & turned brown. I hope that doesn’t happen again. They had been planted in new compost: I’d renewed the compost in all my pots & troughs last year before autumn planting.

I also planted up the 3 big, white troughs on the balcony floor, up against the railings. I put long stemmed Tulips & Daffodils in them & overplanted them with a few Crocuses from the last 2 years that had survived. Many of the Daffs will be quite small I think as many of them didn’t appear to be of flowering size. I’ll have to wait & see what happens.

When I get some plants to put in I’ll post a last photo here.

It’s all change on the balcony!

It’s all change on the balcony! Time for the seasonal change over! Out with the old & in with the new!

Today I got rid of the Petunias & the China Pinks as well as the Morning Glory. I’ve emptied the pots of Petunias & put Pansies, with species Crocuses planted underneath them, in the vacant pots then I put them in the aluminium rings & hung them on the balcony railings.

Pansies & Crocuses:

The Pansies will give some flowers through out the winter whenever we have mild spells before their main flowering period starts in April. The Crocuses will flower before the Pansies start & the Pansies will hide the dying Crocuses’ leaves. I’ve done this for many years now with great success – though I must admit some years have been better than others! One year I changed the Pansies for Violas & had the most stunning display! The local council here has planted Violas & Pansies “en masse” for several years & the effect is always stunning!

The Petunias did very well & I shall repeat this planting in future years. I’ve grown a few other years but never in the amount I did this year.

Petunias:

I also pulled up the China Pinks I grew from seed. They took rather longer to start flowering than I anticipated – maybe I should start them earlier. The wind had shredded the poor plants & for weeks they have looked terrible. Nevertheless I liked them very much while they were in flower – if it hadn’t been for the weeks of strong winds I’m sure I would still have had a few flowers on all the plants as I had with the Petunias. I intend to grow more another year as well.

China Pinks:

The Morning Glory have done very poorly on my balcony this year. I grow them most years as I always save some seed & they add a vertical element to the balcony. This year I bought a packet of seeds when my wife & I went to Spain in May. I planted some on the balcony but I planted lots down on the allotment. I think they must be a new variety as there were many colours but the best part was that they stayed open almost all day – even on the hottest days they were still open in the afternoon! This was a surprise for me because I’ve grown them for 20 years or more & I’ve never known the flowers to remain open in the afternoon except towards the end of their growing season when the days are a lot cooler.

Morning Glory:

I am very, very happy with how they grew & flowered down on the allotment! :-)) They started to flower just at the time the Sweetpeas were coming to an end! They took over seamlessly! So I have had colour on the division created between two half allotments for about six months! The wind has damaged the plants no end & most leaves are almost in tatters, yet still they continue to flower!

The most curious thing about them was that the plants on the Balcony & on the allotment started to flower the very same day! They were also planted on the same day in May.