A focus on ……Cosmos ‘Sensation’

A few weeks ago Ben sent a mailing round saying that if you are going to sow one thing this year then make it Chrysanthemum ‘Rainbow Hippy Lovechild’ and don’t get me wrong he made a good case for it. I love it for its crazy daisy flowers, kaleidoscope colours and long flowering. However, I have a different must-have flower and its Cosmos ‘Sensation’. Well to be honest any Cosmos really, but for a joyful mix of colours then ‘Sensation’ is hard to beat.

I’d better make my case, well they are easy to sow, they are one of the most productive flowers in my cutting garden, a truly cut-and-come-again flower, they have fabulous feathery foliage, are drought tolerant and are much loved by bees. Do I need to say any more?

So seed sowing, as I said really easy, they have long thin seeds that are easy to place individually into a pot or module, or spaced out carefully in a seed tray. They are one of the most reliable annuals for germination. The only thing you need to be aware of is that Cosmos is a half-hardy annual and so can be susceptible to frosts. So you have two options wait till the risk of frosts have passed and sow in May time or sow undercover and give them some protection, grow them on and plant out once the frosts are over for the year. I like to sow undercover and get them to a reasonable size before I plant them out, this means that they get off to a good start and will flower earlier in the garden. Plus the larger plants are more sturdy and less prone to any grazing by slugs. So I sow into seed trays, seeds spaced apart and just cover with compost, they need a bit of warmth to help them germinate so a sunny windowsill in my case or a propagator. Cosmos are super speedy from sowing to getting in the garden. In fact this is where you just need to be a bit careful and have a think about timings, as if you sow them too early and they grow so quickly you will need to keep them inside until the weather is fine. They literally will germinate within a few days of sowing and soon get growing. I’m lucky I’ve got an unheated greenhouse which I can give them some protection until they are ready to go out.

Once germinated I prick them out into 9cm pots and grow them on till they develop into nice sturdy plants that you can plant in your garden once the risk of frosts have passed. Another good tip is to pinch them out to encourage a bushier plant, a bushier plant simply means that it will have more flowers. When they get to about 30cm tall, they will have a number of sets of leaves up the plant by then. Pinch off the leading shoot and top set of leaves down to the next set of leaves. You will then get new shoots developing laterally from the top, more shoots and means more flower stems. They will keep flowering until the first frosts.

They will need some support, ‘Sensation’ will produce tall plants (over a metre) and quite wide. You can use netting but for these I tend to use thin canes and tie them in well. They need a sunny spot in good fertile soil, though if its too nutrient rich they can produce more leaf than flower. They will need watering through the summer but I have found them one of the most reliable annuals in the recent summer droughts. They can tolerate less watering than other annuals and that seems to be ever more important with the summers that we have had recently.

Finally they are fabulous for the bees, its well known that the more simpler open flowers are better for bees and these are just perfect. Bees and other pollinators like Hoverflies love them.

Once Cosmos starts flowering the next important thing to remember is to keep cutting, it will keep sending out new flower stems as long as you keep cutting. If you can’t keep up with cutting for flowers at least try and keep deadheading it and then I promise you they will flower for months. For the longest vase life pick when the flower bud is just starting to open, before it has been pollinated! But just pick them.

As I said Cosmos ‘Sensation’ comes in a colour range from whites, to pale pinks to dark pinks and reds so is great if you want to just sow one variety. But you might end up like me just loving all the different varieties and I especially have a soft spot for Cosmos ‘Apricotta’, with its delicious peachy pink flowers that are almost irridescent.

Here are a few cultivars that I grew last year, from the top clockwise Cosmos ‘Fizzy Rose’, ‘Purity’, Apricotta’, ‘Xanthos’, ‘Double Click Cranberries’ and in the middle ‘Xenia’.

Will you be sowing Cosmos this year?

Happy sowing

Higgledy Anne

(I’m on Instagram anne_hinks if you fancy a follow)