Sow something simple & cheap

Cornflowers, marigolds, sunflowers and similar old favourites are cheap and easy flowers to grow in these difficult times, says Tony Venison. Choose them now for April sowings

IT’S strange how one looks back to ‘the good old days’ of childhood whenever ‘the simple way of life’ is mentioned. Certainly, my own little garden patch I cultivated when I was 10-12 years old gave me immense pleasure. All summer long I could be justly proud of the flowers raised from tuppenny or three penny packets of hardy annuals of such easy old favourites as cornflowers that the peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies loved so well, nasturtiums whose hot leaves made rather nasty tasting sandwiches, and romantic love-lies-bleeding with its long dangling crimson tassels.

As I had no greenhouse or frame, the seeds were sown straight into open ground, either scattered thinly around or along shallow drills as the notes on the backs of the packets instructed. Usually I was also given ‘leftovers’ of seeds by a local professional gardener and these were not sown until late May. These late sowings, following others in April, kept the show of flowers going right through until September.

This year the cost of greenhouse heating has forced me to think twice about raising tender bedding plants, and I am sowing an inexpensive border of the simple flowers of my childhood.

Well, not quite, because in the intervening years the seedsmen have brought out new varieties. In nasturtiums, for example, the ‘Whirlybird Mixture’, new this year, lacks the long spur at the back of the flower that we children used to bite off to suck the sweet nectar. ‘Alaska Mixed’ is a lovely ground-smothering mixture, too, with its leaves splashed with cream. Poor soil, sunshine and fairly dry conditions please them, and they can be plant 2-21⁄2ft (60-76cm) apart.