Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => General Gardening => Topic started by: Iwantone on July 28, 2010, 14:13
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Hi I gave my daughter a packet of wild flower seed to put in the front when I removed the daffs. This is our first year of growing flowers so I am pretty clueless.
After some research it seems we have a load of calendula lovely orange and yellow flowers.
They are now getting leggy and am unsure what to do with them as some are so long they are having trouble staying upright.
(http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee161/Coldfeet77/IMG_1823.jpg)
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They look good!
They hold each other up better if grown in a clump, but obviously you haven't done that.
You could use canes and twine to hold them up but I for one wouldn't bother!
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Mine too are going like that. I'm too not bothered :)
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Okay thats cool I wasn't sure how tall they were to grow. I thought maybe I hadn't done something I Should have.
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I wouldn't have thought they will get much taller than that. Keep deadheading and you will get lots of flowers all summer long. I lve my Calendula, Mine are in a pot about four years old now.
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Would I be able to dig them up and move them into pots over winter ? As I like to put daffodils in there for the spring.
Kathryn
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Bit stumped here; I thought Calendula was an annual (albeit a particularly free-seeding one!)
Hopefully sclarke624 will come back and put us in the picture! ;)
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They look good!
They hold each other up better if grown in a clump, but obviously you haven't done that.
You could use canes and twine to hold them up but I for one wouldn't bother!
Your flowers look lovely, will have to try some of them next year
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Difficult to say Katherine because its one of those plants that although perennial, it's often treated as an annual. I am very South so that is one of the reasons mine come up again and also they are near the house in a pot, and again I put all the dead heads back into the pot, so some is maybe new seeds coming up the following year. Hit and miss with the digging up I have done this and some survive the others wilt. Not much help to you at all really.
On the other hand they are really very easy to grow from seed, you can even collect the seed from the plants you already have, mine always go mouldy when I have tried this, but it can be done if you can be bothered to do it properly.
So I suppose its up to you to take the risk and if failure then new seeds. You can my packet says even sow where they are to flower in April.
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I find that if I pick the seeds on a dry day, then leave in a dry place for a couple of days to finish the process that the seeds keeps well. Just keep in an envelope until the spring. Having said that they do self seed - some have spread to my veggie patch. :)