Higgledy Garden Cornflowers
Our super groovy cornflowers are just coming into flower and will be available in the shop in ten days or so to be sent anywhere in the Uk for a next day delivery.
This small bunch of a dozen is the first harvest…I have thrown them in a jar with some Cow Parsley. Simple…gorgeous…and they make us very happy and proud of our labours.
Sown on the 23rd of August last year….seems years ago.
The bunches we will sell will probably be much larger in stem number…more like forty I think…can’t have you lot thinking we’re skimping. 
Let me know if you wish to pre order some and I’ll reserve some for you.
email me at contact@higgledy.com or you will be able to buy at the click of a mouse in less than a fortnight.
Kindest Regards
Benjamin & Karen
An Email: ‘Dear Mr Higgledy, Thank you for such a wonderful and informative blog…you are amazing…and so hunky/handsome to boot.
I recently sowed some of your wonderful seeds but am not sure how I will recognise what is a weed and what is a flower…oh do help me please..oh do oh do oh do oh do.
Kindest Regards
Lady Samantha Von-Fluffy-Twinkle. xxx
Well my dear lady, I shall of course do my best to explain and add some photos. Thank you by the way for your photo…gosh it must have been a hot day when you took that.
Firstly, if you have followed the Higgledy garden guide to sowing seeds you would have sown in rows. Naturally it will make it easier to detect what is what when they poke up through the ground in a straight line.
Here are photos of some of the seedings from flower seeds you ordered…
Calendula Seedling
Zinnia Seedling
Bells of Ireland
Don’t forget that Bells of Ireland need light to germinate so sow them on the surface of a pre-watered bed.
Rudbeckia 'Marmalade' Seedling
This happy Rudbeckia is sitting comfortably in one of Karen’s paper pots. It looks like a very happy chappie and if you put your ear really really close you can here it whistling tunes from The Wizard of Oz.
Cosmos seedling
Give these Cosmos ‘Purity’ a little more space than Calendula, Zinnia and Bells of Ireland…I space mine to about 18 inches and 12 inches for the former. Don’t let the frost touch them…or they will be ex Cosmos seedlings. I doubt whether we will get any more frost here in the provinces.
Ricinus seedling
Lastly here is a wonderful Ricinus munchkin…remember that all parts of this plant are poisonous and should not be thrown into Hubby’s rocket salad.
I hope this has been of some use to you. Naturally if you get yourself into difficulties I should be delighted to pop over and deal with any issues/desires you may have…on a personal level.
Kindest regards
Benjamin Higgledy (Solvent/GSOH)
Great Aunty Gethsemane used to keep a bunch of twenty seven dried Blue Boy Cornflowers hanging in every room of the house. She said it stopped the poltergeists interfering with her drawers.
Why Dry Cornflowers Mr Higgledy?
Dried cornflowers keep their colour really rather well…and there is something…’farmhousey’ and comforting about a bunch of hanging cornflowers. Also if you grow your own you may find you have a glut that you can’t use…especially if you are a miserable old sod with no friends. So drying will give you flowers for the winter when most British blooms are a fading memory.
I sowed a great deal of cornflowers in the Autumn…so they are just about to pop into flower now despite the monsoon, in fact some are already out. I shall be drying a number of these to sell on the Higgledy site in a few weeks. Cornflowers left after they have ‘gone over’ will send a chemical to the plant to say ‘forget making any more flowers…let’s set seed and move on to Cornflower Nirivana’. So keep picking the blooms even if you don’t use them…’Heaven Can Wait’. (I think that’s a song.)
How To Dry Cornflowers
Be warned my darling young friends…it’s not a case of just hangin’ em upside down…not quite anyway….
*The trick is to catch the flowers at the correct stage of blooming…this is when the center petals are still pointing into the middle…rather than the later stage when they will be pointing away from the center…probably to the naughty poltergeists.
*Don’t harvest them in the morning…wait until the dew has dried.
*You can still dry these later blooming chaps but they are better as confetti or even sprinkled over upper middle class salads….dry these in a box as petals will naturally come away from the plant.
This one is good for confetti...note petals are fully open.
*So…take about 20 stems of roughly the same length and tie them with an elastic band or string and hang them somewhere DRY and DARK…spooky spooky woo.
*In the summer I use my mate Pete’s garden shed and they take about two weeks or so to dry.
*For a more contemporary vibe, try drying with Zinnias and lavender…we will be doing this later in the season…that’s how rock and roll we are.
*You can also dry the ‘Black Cornflowers’
Look out for the first of the cornflowers both dried and…er…undried, in the flower shop in a couple of weeks. 
Needless to say you can find cornflower seeds in the Higgledy Garden Shop…still plenty of time to sow for this season.
Kindest regards
Your digital chum
Benjamin Higgledy
NO!!!
Lots of us have had trouble with the monsoon drowning our seeds and the cold too has taken a toll on the germination success. However all is not lost. Most annuals will flower 10 – 12 weeks from sowing. So in fact your chances of success will be higher if you sow now. I will be sowing up another ten or so varieties this coming weekend…plus with all the rain we have had the soil is in great condition to take seed.
Many half hardy annual seeds should NOT be sown before your last frost date…usually mid May…later in Scotland and earlier in Cornwall.
If you are new to growing flowers but want to have a stab at it try my ‘Flowers to sow in May collection’
These are not only easy to grow but will give you buckets and buckets of flowers from August right up to the frosts…12 varieties for £12…with free postage and packaging which is rather good value if I don’t say so myself.
If you have any questions about these or other seeds then please leave a comment below and I will get back to you when I’m back from the field tonight.
Kindest regards
Benjamin
Previously at Windmill Cottage
Remember the ocean of paper pots I made to house our forest of flowerlings? As many of the seeds for sale at The Higgledy Emporium dislike root disturbance, these biodegrable wonders of modern day origami seemed a super-duper option and alternative to peat-pots (boo hiss).
Dig a hole and pop the whole darn kit and kaboodle in.
See Paper Pots For Seed Sowing if you haven’t memorised the article… I’ll test you later.
Guestimations range from 500 to 732 pottlings were made by my, Ben’s and my niece Madeleine’s fair hands (to differing levels of success) and offered paper-based beginnings to many a lucky Higgledy annual cut flower seed.
Pot size? Around the 10cm mark or more
We made our pots to the largest dimensions that one piece of broadsheet would allow. The plan was the plants would spend the first six weeks of their lives there, eat up the nutrients available in the seed compost to then be planted, pot and all, in the sun drenched May soil. The six week theory is being slightly scuppered by the UK monsoon season, the strength and longevity of the paper pots is still being tested now. If you listen carefully you might hear the faint sound of tenuous science.
Pot strength
Climbing Nasturtium, well, technically hanging...
This climbing nasturtium, is now the grand old age of 6 weeks. That means the newspaper has been wet for 42 days and was still strong enough to be pegged on washing line.
An incredibly scientific experiment I’m sure you’ll all agree?
N.B. No plants were harmed in the taking of this photo, in fact Ben Higgledy insisted we use a fully trained stunt double and two safety nets – but that’s him all over – always puts the welfare of our greenlings first.
Plant roots
As we all know, printed colours are made up of percentage mixes of CMYK inks. My old editor tells me newspaper ink contains minuscule amounts of copper, cyan (C) ink being the culprit.
Roots tips have apical dominance, which, when they come into contact with copper, is disrupted. Thus, more fibrous roots, that slurp up water and nutrients, develop closer to the plant. Though, judging by the Sweet Peas seen above, root tip damage wasn’t an issue.
Hygiene
We saw signs of white fluffy mould early on on the pots surface. Ben hid behind the sofa, and only came out once the mould subsided when the pots dried out a little. I sprayed some with camomile tea… who knows whether it worked?
Planting media wise, pre-mixed, bought in a 60 litre bag, seed compost has proven to be my personal favourite. My own attempt to save money (and not drive further than the local compost shop that only sells seed compost in 20 litre bags) resulted in some “orange stuff”, which I was rather excited about. Some say it’s a slime mould, some a fungus. It only affected 8 plants, and provided me with much entertainment for at least 27 minutes.
Overall
I’m pleased with paper seed pots. Thumbs up. Worthy of a little caper round the polytunnel whilst playing a sea shanty. What say you Mr Higgledy?
” …personally I think you’ve gone paper potty ” said Ben.
Karen, (AKA HG Wells)
The Higgledy Apprentice (@sanguisorba)
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