Dahlia Profile - Floret Bee's Choice Flowers
Hello friends,
Today's dahlia profile is for my Floret Bee's Choice flowers. I bought dahlia and zinnia Floret flower seeds from Emerden in New Zealand last spring, and sowed them in October.
From Floret's Website: "Floret Bee's Choice was collected from all of our different dahlia breeding patches on the farm and includes a wide range of shapes, sizes, and colors—no two plants will be the same! Most of the flowers will have open centers, which will attract lots of pollinators to your garden. If you discover a variety you love, tubers can be saved and planted out the following year." Planted in full sun, plants will reach 48 to 72 in tall.
Floret 1:
Floret 2:
Floret 3:
Floret 4:
Floret 7:
Floret 8:
Floret 10:
As you can see from the Floret Bee's Choice dahlias that have flowered so far, dahlias 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 all have yellow/orange colouring, with a range of petal numbers, with dahlias 3 and 8 having extra frills. Dahlias 7 and 10 are shades of pink, with dahlia 7 has curled inward petals, and dahlia 10 being pretty plain.
In terms of choosing which dahlias to keep at the end of the season, the only one I definitely want to keep is dahlia 3, with it's yellow/apricot colouring and pretty frills. I'm also kind of tempted by dahlia 8, but I'll see how it looks as the season goes on.
I have really enjoyed the process of dahlia growing from seed, watching the process from germination, to flowering, and I'll definitely collect seed from them in autumn.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Floret Dahlia and Zinnia Sowing
Hello friends,
A couple of weeks ago I sowed my zinnia and dahlia seeds from Floret, that I purchased from Emerden in New Zealand. And yes, if you may have noticed, I ended up ordering a third zinnia variety from Floret, their Unicorn Mix.
I sowed all the seeds in dome propagating trays, along with dahlia varieties including seeds from my favorite Lucky Number dahlia growing in my garden, and also two Keith Hammett dahlia varieties (NZ dahlia breeder), NZ Gardener mix (from the NZ gardener magazine), and also Dahlia Beeline II. I'm considering crossing the Keith Hammett and Floret dahlias to see if I can come up with a new amazing variety.
The seedlings all popped up super quick while living in our warm dining room, and within a couple of weeks they were ready to be potted on into bigger individual pots with potting mix. The seed sowing strike rate was higher than advertised on the packets, so I'm really happy with the investment.
They're now safely growing in my glass house, and are covered in frost cloth each night for protection. I can't wait for when they get big enough to plant out in the garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Floret Flower Farm and Other Seeds from Emerden Flowers
Hello friends,
I was doom scrolling on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and came across a post by Emerden Flowers announcing they were collaborating with Floret Flower Farm in the USA, and they were bringing Floret and Dawn Creek Zinnias and Dahlias into New Zealand.
Before you could blink an eye, I had zoomed over to Emerden Flowers website, and excitedly perused the pre-order links to the Zinnias and Dahlia seed mixes. I've followed Floret Flower Farm for years, and even have a couple of their books. Their book "Discovering Dahlias" is my bible when it comes to Dahlias. I was so excited, even with the very high prices of the seed packets. Now was my chance to get some seeds, and I wasn't going to miss out. I still had money budgeted for our backyard garden project, and had no problem in justifying buying 3 seed packets to hubby, along with some other seed packets from Emerden Flowers I had been wanting.
First up was choosing a Dahlia seed mix, I finally settled on choosing Floret Original Bee's Choice flower seed packet, as I want to encourage bees into my garden. Choosing two zinnia packets was more fraught with danger. After angsting over it for days leading up to when they went on sale, including spending way too much time on Instagram looking at people's photos of the various zinnia mixes, late on the Saturday night I chose Floret Original Precious Metals zinnias, and also Dawn Creek Blush zinnias, as they are colours that will fit in well in my backyard (as well as my front yard). I had also chosen a bunch of very cool Emerden flower seed packets, as some of them were on my list of plants to get for a while.
On the Sunday morning when the seed packets went on sale, I had all of the internet tabs open on the seeds I wanted, and I'd logged into Emerden Flowers website. In the minutes before 10 am I added all the Emerden Flowers into the web cart, and waited impatiently for 10 am. As soon as it hit 10 am, I reloaded the web pages for the Floret and Dawn Creek varieties I wanted, and added them to the cart. Once I was sure I got everything, I checked out, and bought it with my credit card.
It took a while before I got the confirmation email from Emerden Flowers, and then I started happy dancing.
Within a couple of days my precious seeds were delivered to my door, and it was time to fawn all over my pretty new seed packets.
The packaging for the Floret Flower Farm part of the order was stunning, and I really loved the included growing guide.
I also bought a range of Emerden flower seed varieties including pansy, larkspur, floxglove, sunflowers, cosmos, calendula, and echinacea.
I am really excited to start planting these seeds in spring, which is less than a couple of weeks away now.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Rose Pruning and Seed Sowing Round 1
Hello friends,
We're over halfway through winter now, and it's time to prune roses, and to also start seed sowing for the coming spring. My first job was to prune the roses, since I'd noticed that some of them had started breaking their buds, so I didn't have choice but to prune them early.
In the front garden I have roses including Blackberry Nip (Hybrid Tea), Aotearoa (HT), Celebration (HT), Happy Birthday (Floribunda, a birthday gift from my aunt), and My Girl (HT). They were all pruned using my grandad's tried and trued rose pruning advise. It's basically the 5D method, which is to remove the dead, dying, diseased, and damaged, and deranged plant tissue, and then trim for shaping, so that it looks like an open vase shape, with no branches that go toward the center of the rose bush.
In the end they looked much better for their pruning, and I'll fertilise them closer to spring.
Once that was done, it was time to trim the back garden roses. Our banksia rose, The Pearl, is a thorn-free climbing rose which trails along one length of the back garden. We planted the banksia rose once we found out that one of the neighbour's subdivided their backyard, and that a house was going to be built right next to our fence line. I've been training the banksia rose along the whole length of the fence line in the last couple of years, and over summer, when we tend to be out in the garden more, it provides a green wall of privacy for us.
Trimming the banksia rose basically just involved a lot of taking out the overgrown branches back to the main branches, and then tying up the lengths further along the fence line. It will still be a couple of years before it reaches all the way along the fence.
The last job was to take a look at my two Damask roses Isaphan and Duc de Cambridge. I bought them for collecting their scented flowers, which are used in rose oil and rose water production. They don't require any pruning in the first years until they become established, but there were some dead stems on them, so I pruned those off.
Next up was to start seed sowing, so I pulled out my flower seed containers and pulled out my packets of sweet peas and homegrown Calendula officinalis seeds.
I sowed the following Keith Hammett sweet peas: Blue Shift, Blue Butterflies, Burlesque, Liqourice, NZ Gardener, Somewhere, Sapphire, Triple G, and Turquoise Lagoon.
I also sowed seeds I collected from the Calendula officinalis plants I grew last summer. It's so rewarding to collect your own seed, and then grow new plants from them. Since then both my sweet peas and calendula seeds have sprouted, and I'm currently in the process of repotting them.
Spring is nearly here, and I'm very excited to be sowing seed nearly every day over the next couple of months. I'm itching to sow my tomato and chilli plants now, but want to hold off for another week at least. I need to balance when they need to go into the ground in the glasshouse, versus when I can plant all the other seedlings growing in the glasshouse into the garden. Our last frost was the first week of November last year, and it was very stressful having to frost proof so many seedlings...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Flower Seed Buying And My Seed Database
Hello friends,
It's that time of the year again in New Zealand, when seed companies send you tempting emails showing you the new flower seeds they have available for sale. This year two of my favorite specialist flower seed companies sent me emails in late May, so I had no choice but to peruse their wares.
The first temptation was from Susie Ripley Gardening, where I purchased Cosmos and Larkspur varieties.
I have a soft spot for cosmos, and really fell in love with the cupcake and fizzy varieties. I can't wait to see them floating in the breeze this coming summer.
I also love how Larkspur brings some height to garden borders, so I got some purple and white varieties of that also.
Next up was Crawford Road Gardens, where I picked up a number of seeds including aster, celosia, stock, larkspur, foxglove, scabiosa, lavender, and strawflower. My plan is to increase my garden borders in the back yard, so I picked colours that matched the seeds I bought from Susie Ripley Gardening.
Once I had the seeds in my hot little hands, it was time to enter them into my seed database. I have a seed database set up on Libre Office, one sheet each for flower, herb, vegetable, and native seeds.
The columns are set up for seed type, supplier, sow by date, whether a seed needs to be stratified, if they've been sowed in the current year, and then which months of the year they can be sowed in.
In the rows, I have sections for each flower type e.g. Allium, Cosmos, and underneath the varieties are in alphabetical order. If the variety is greyed out, it means that I don't have that seed in stock right now. If the row is highlighted in the 2024 column, it means the seed has been sown. Cells marked in green show which months the seed can be sown in.
I really love this set up as it means that I can quickly see which seeds I need to sow, if they are still within their use by date, and if I need to reorder any seeds. I recently updated the seed database for spring 2024, so I can now see which varieties I may need to buy when the Kings Seed catalogue comes out this month. I may decide not to repurchase some seed varieties, but at least I will know which ones I've had in the past.
I have separate sheets set up for all my seed types, and it really makes seed sowing that much easier. It means that I can come up with a plan each month for seed sowing, and it also means I can purchase seed sowing mix ahead of when I need it.
It's so exciting to know that spring will soon be here, I'm already loving the return of daylight earlier and later each day. I can't wait until August when it's time to sow tomatoes and chillies.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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